It is rare enough that a Dubai-based financial venture sees Lebanon as one of its key target markets and is eager to set up a Beirut office during these confusing times. It is rarer still that a new option is offered whereby Lebanese entrepreneurs can access that extremely scarce resource: affordable equity funding. The conflux of these two factors in the new crowd investing platform Eureeca in itself makes the venture worth looking at, even as their particular version of the crowdfunding concept, which claims to be the first “global solution” of its kind, raises its own cloud of questions. For small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Lebanon, the venture wants to serve as a vehicle to raise equity in an open-access private placement structure. From the perspective of financial markets, Eureeca hopes to complement established but very restrictive funding organizations such as investment banks, venture capital and private equity
