Chet Bowling, one of the directors of the crowdfunding initiative Slingshot, believes that Monday’s launch at Moray House in Georgetown can become a transformative force for entrepreneurship in Guyana. He says that what Slingshot seeks to do is to provide ambitious but financially-strapped Guyanese with creative and potentially lucrative business ideas, with a vehicle that can circumvent financial challenges, long the biggest stumbling block to the realization of numerous entrepreneurial ambitions.
Since December, Slingshot Funding, has provided a virtual platform that allows entrepreneurs and organizations to share their business ideas and development projects, and connect with potential donors and supporters.
Whereas entrepreneurial ventures that depend on collective initiative have sometimes been known to fail for want of individual discipline, Bowling says Slingshot is not in the business of offering giveaways. Beneficiaries, he says, will only get out of the programme as much as they are prepared to put into it in terms of the viability of their projects and the extent to which they are prepared to adhere to the orthodoxies associated with sound business practices in terms of discipline and accountability.
In an interview with Stabroek Business earlier this week, Bowling said that the launch of the Slingshot crowdfunding initiative will help provide ambitious and inventive Guyanese with a viable alternative gateway to the realization of long-stifled entrepreneurial ambitions.
