South African travel crowdfunding platform Trevolta is to close down this month, with the founding team blaming a complicated business structure, shareholding and management, and global trading limitations for the startup’s demise.
Trevolta is a crowdfunding platform dedicated to helping users raise money for worldwide travel. While users can create any travel related campaign, the platform intended primarily to support inspirational trips, or those aimed at helping others.
Launched in 2013, Trevolta has successfully funded a number of trips; but it is this popularity which the founding team say led to the wrong business structures being put in place, and ultimately the failure of the startup.
“It is incredibly difficult to run this global business from South Africa, where the founders are currently based and the company was formed,” the Trevolta founders said.
“From the initial growth in popularity of the platform in late 2013, we needed to take a couple of urgent steps that sadly resulted in a very complicated business structure, shareholding and management, as well as trading limitations globally.”
These challenges could not be sufficiently addressed, the founders said, and as such the startup is closing down.
As of July 20, no new campaigns can be listed on the platform, while all donations will be suspended on August 17. All outstanding balances will be settled by August 23.
Trevolta will assist in redirecting existing campaigns to new platforms, with the founding team recommending more established crowdfunding platforms such as Indiegogo, GoFundMe, and TravelStarter as alternatives.
