For a long time, I have considered myself a perennial entrepreneur with the most obvious incarnations of this being my adventure travel company Young Pioneer Tours, which I initially founded in April of 2008, but this is far from being my only business venture. For example, I also currently own the stag company GNTours and Pioneer Media amongst many others.
Like any entrepreneur, I have had successes, failures and some mediocre, but I still constantly have ideas, many of which I sit on for years until they come into fruition, and one of those ideas that is now ripe to talk about is Let’s Buy An Island.
So, what is Let’s Buy An Island? LBI is an idea I initially had around 2008 (which is when I purchased the domain name) with the idea being to crowdfund buying a tropical island that would then be run as a micronation/private island/profit-making enterprise. The initial idea was to get thousands of people to invest like $50 or so, but the idea I know was before its time, and thus I sat on it…..for 10 years.
In early 2018, a friend of mine was selling Nici Island in the Philippines, and around 15-20 of my friends including me considered buying it. We eventually decided against buying in the Philippines but realizing we had 20 or so people interested in buying an island we decided to restart my project from 10 years earlier.
We decided we would try to recruit 50-120 or so people to invest $3250 and thus buy an island.
In the last 18 months we have raised over 100K from friends, family, and friends of friends, something which means we will “buy regardless”, but also means we are by far the most successful project of our kind in this field.
So, why blog about LBI? Currently, we sit at 50 plus people, and 100K, but we are ready to go public and take things to the next level. This year we will buy an island.
I also feel this to be the crowning glory of all my projects so far and I am very honoured to not only have had a hand in starting LBI, but also having a seat on the board of directors.
But what I am most proud about is that this project is not only bigger than me but will outlive me.
Check out our website, follow the link for info on buying a share, or feel free to contact me if you have further questions.