‘Airbnb for brains’ opens to investors
11 November 2020 at 6:16 pm
Mindhive has launched a crowdfunding campaign to fund the next stage of its growth and move closer to its goal of being the world’s biggest problem solving community
An Australian start-up is looking to bring the shared economy to problem-solving with help from a $1 million crowdfunding campaign.
Mindhive, described by CEO and founder Bruce Muirhead as an “Airbnb for brains”, is a cloud-based software platform that uses a matchmaking algorithm to connect problem solvers, to problem-solving teams, to problems.
Individuals or companies can pose questions to a community of contributors (the hive) for input to an optimum solution. Current topics range from how we can best understand and mitigate new forms of business disruption, to reimaging the New World Fair, and the unintended consequences of COVID-19 policy decisions.
The concept was first developed in 2014 with commercialisation beginning in 2017. Since then it has grown to have 11,000 members.
But Muirhead said the goal is to scale up into 150-plus countries and create a community of more than 250,000 members.
He believes the platform could disrupt “all layers of the consulting industry”, providing an alternative to high-priced consultants for organisations wanting to workshop problems and ideas.
To drive the next stage of expansion Mindhive has embarked on its first crowd-funding campaign on the Birchal platform.
Muirhead told Pro Bono News it’s not just about profit, but profit with a purpose.
“It is an investment that seeks to give both financial return and a positive social and environmental impact,” Muirhead said.
He said they were on a mission to transform the way we engage the power of many in problem-solving, with the ultimate vision of bringing the shared economy to problem-solving.
“It will be the world’s biggest problem solving community – efficiently and quickly accessing and bringing to bear otherwise latent skills and experiences, to deliver insight and innovation in addressing difficult problems,” Muirhead said.
