The global value of venture funding

Ventropy is the web-mashup winner of the TEDxCam Hackathon Open Data Challenge 2010. The site seeks to succinctly illustrate the huge disparity between funding for technology start-ups in the Western world (data provided by CrunchBase) and loans provided by the non-profit organisation Kiva for assisting entrepreneurial activity in developing nations.

We aim to use simple technology to highlight the fact that, for example, the investment capital provided for one major loss-making high-tech start-up (Spinvox) could have instead funded 100,000 medical projects in Sierra Leone, 84,500 agriculture projects in Uganda, or 34,000 construction projects in Haiti.

Users can then drill down into specific project details provided by Kiva, and can choose to lend small amounts of money to assist with individual projects. Ventropy closes the loop between providing information and encouraging lending, neatly demonstrating that we can all be investors in grass-roots business development that really changes lives.

Ventropy was created by Hackathon contestants Juan Delgado, Sobia Hamid, Lewpen Kinross-Skeels, Lee Mallabone, Alistair Parr, Michael Platings and Mat Cook. Designed, developed and deployed in less than six hours and fuelled by pizza, caffeine and a desire to do good, Ventropy hopes to assist Kiva in reaching its goals through high-impact technology with a simple message.