LaunchGood launches as crowd funding site for Muslims

LaunchGood, a crowd-funding site aimed at the Muslim community, is opening out of Midtown this fall.

The fledgling startup aims to help make entrepreneurial ideas in the Muslim community a reality, such as helping people raise the initial seed capital to make a new children's book or an innovative prayer mat. What makes LaunchGood unique is it hopes to concentrate the interest in these projects by broadcasting them to the audience that would care the most about them.

Among its first campaigns are for the production of "Here Come the Muhammads" (a self-described Muslim Cosby Show) and "Nadoona Extreme Fitness DVD" (a workout video for Muslim women that emphasizes modesty). As of Monday, it has raised a little more than $16,000 for 10 projects within a few weeks of its launch.

"There are a lot of really cool people that do a lot of really cool stuff, that are Muslim," says Chris Abdur-Rahman Blauvelt, co-founder & CEO of LaunchGood. "I feel strongly that we need a platform where we can share our stories."

Blauvelt, a Muslim convert, is also the driving force behind Patronicity, a crowd-funding website that focuses on creating a culture of micro-patronage by putting Metro Detroit-based crowd-funding projects in front of a local audience. That strategy allows crowd funders to cut through the white noise of thousands of projects on national crowd-funding sites.

LaunchGood looks to do the same thing with the Muslim community. At first it is aiming at the millions of muslims living in North America. It one day hopes to be the go-to, crowd-funding site for the entire Muslim world, which is nearly 2 billion people.

"It's not possible that among that many people there aren’t creative people," Blauvelt says. "Historically, Muslims have been the inventors and entrepreneurs."

Blauvelt leads a core team of three people working on LaunchGood from his desk at the Green Garage in Midtown Detroit.

Source: Chris Abdur-Rahman Blauvelt, co-founder & CEO of LaunchGood
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.