{"id":30021,"date":"2020-09-28T22:29:01","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T02:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/?p=30021"},"modified":"2020-11-01T13:28:15","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T18:28:15","slug":"world-tree-usa-becomes-the-most-successful-female-founded-company-ever-on-wefunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/world-tree-usa-becomes-the-most-successful-female-founded-company-ever-on-wefunder\/","title":{"rendered":"World Tree USA Becomes the Most Successful Female Founded Company Ever on Wefunder"},"content":{"rendered":"
>> Back to October 2020 Issue<\/a><\/div>\n

Started by Wendy Burton in 2015, World Tree USA, LLC recently surpassed $2M on the Equity Crowdfunding Platform. This marks the third most successful capital raise in Wefunder\u2019s history and the highest amount raised by any female founder.<\/h3>\n

Above photo: World Tree founder Wendy Burton (on the left) inspecting a farm in Costa Rica with World Tree\u2019s Program Manager in Costa Rica, Mariana Alfaro Stivalet.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Wefunder is a giant in the industry. It is the largest equity crowdfunding platform in the US, with nearly 42% of the current market according to Crowdfund Capital Advisors. In the 9 years since it was founded in 2011, Wefunder has helped hundreds of companies raise almost $170 million.<\/p>\n

The majority of that money has gone to male-founded companies. Of the 330 most-funded companies on Wefunder, only 18% were female founded.<\/p>\n

And then there is World Tree<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

World Tree is an agroforestry company that is breaking all the norms. It offers accredited and non-accredited investors the opportunity to participate in a timber investment through its Eco-Tree Program<\/strong>; a investment that creates direct environmental benefits relating to forest conservation, carbon sequestration, and promoting healthy ecosystems. The Eco-Tree Program leverages the fast-growth rate of the non-invasive Empress (Paulownia) tree to maximize the economic and environmental benefits of agroforestry.<\/p>\n

World Tree\u2019s objective is to meet the growing global demand for timber in a sustainable way. The Empress (Paulownia) tree has been rated the fastest growing hardwood tree in the world, maturing in only 10 years to produce a timber that has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any hardwood commercially grown. While growing, the tree sequesters unparalleled amounts of carbon, the main cause of climate change. One acre of Empress (Paulownia) trees can absorb up to 90 metric tons of carbon per year. That is four times as much carbon as the average American family of 4 produces in one year.<\/p>\n

\"World
World Tree\u2019s Chief Investment Officer, Angela Nauta (left) with samples of Empress (Paulownia) wood at The Social Finance Forum in Toronto with Rita Fromholt, Marketing and SDG Special Projects Coordinator (center), and Dr. Cathy Key, World Tree\u2019s President and Chief Operations Officer (right).<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOur investors love to back companies that are tackling an important cause,\u201d says Nick Tommarello, Founder & CEO of Wefunder. \u201cThere are not many issues more important to our generation than climate change, so I\u2019m not surprised World Tree raised over $2 million on Wefunder. It\u2019s a win-win where investors hope to earn a return while helping the planet.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Dr. Cathy Key, President & Chief Operations Officer of World Tree had this to say about working with Wefunder, \u201cWe had previously worked with two crowdfunding platforms in Canada where 95% of our investors came from our own database. By tapping into Wefunder\u2019s database of over 400,000 investors, we were able to expand our reach significantly. Now, 80% of our investors are new to us. On top of this, the passionate team at Wefunder introduced us to financial advisors who helped spread the word even further.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n