MBA 018: ANALYSIS – Founder of Wealth Migrate Scott Picken combines Crowdfunding with Property Investment

Empower a billion people by combining Crowdfunding and Property

Scott Picken is the founder and CEO of Wealth Migrate, a company with a vision to empower 1 billion people by 2020, through investment in First World Commercial and Residential Real Estate.

Scott has always had a passion for real estate investment and technology and the synergy between these two industries enabled Wealth Migrate to adopt the crowd funding model as a foundation that will empower ordinary people to invest in real estate.

We analyse how SCOTT combined 2 industry models and adapted this in a unique way.

The journey as a business owner.

Scott always liked to build things and did his first property project when he was 13. He did his first programming course when he was 6. He did his first official property development at 22 and bought his first property in London at 24. Scott has dedicated his whole life to figure out how he can get technology and property to meet.

“Anyone that thinks they can work a job and part time run a business, they kidding themselves. You have to jump in with both feet!”

The biggest challenge in starting the business and how was it handled?

Like any business starting out he experienced a problem with cash flow, especially in the property development area where you only receive money once the property is sold. To start out he accumulated £100 000 worth of credit card debt.

How does the company work?

Value Proposition

Wealth migrate can be compared to Uber - with technology they change the financing by incorporating crowdfunding to facilitate global property investment and taking out the middlemen. Their goal is to provide people for as low as $1 an investment vehicle that is better than what is currently offered by the financial industry.

Customer Segmentation

They offer commercial and residential property investments and with the crowdfunding the entry level at the moment is $10 000 which is targeting more affluent people wanting to diversify investments.

Marketing Channels

Education based marketing is primarily used for building confidence and trust. They do this by doing events and seminars. The secret weapon at this stage is to regularly host webinars where they teach people how to invest in international property markets.

Revenue Streams

Fixed cost on the front end (due diligence cost). Revenue share for the lifetime of the investment but can only share in revenue if the investment outperforms the hurdle rate.

Cost Structure

Fintech companies have 3 main things they spend money on :

Technology - Building a world class platform
Human Capacity - Building and training a team to deliver world class results
Branding and Awareness - Getting the message out, educating people
Key Resources

Scott is a creator - similar to Richard Branson and he needs a Supporter (Jack Welch) and Accumulator (Warren Buffet) in his team.

“Hire the best people you can possibly find - the A players will take your business to the next level.

Reset Scenario: Starting all over with the current knowledge, what business would you start?

Opportunities in 3 sectors - Medical, Education, Wealth

Scoot will focus on Education:

Giving children access to entrepreneurship education is the best thing you can do. The current education models are archaic - our children are taught to train horse but we have moved on.

“Afrikaans and the other official languages are a complete waste of time. If you want to do business and be a global player the only relevant languages are English, Mandarin and Spanish.”