Back in early 2018, I was contacted by a business associate who owned an island in the Philippines called Nici Island to let me know he was selling the said island. This got me chatting to a few friends about the feasibility of getting a few of us together and putting in to buy the island to not only have as our own private island (who would not like that) but also to run it as a profit-making enterprise.
As I am sure most readers are aware that buying in the Philippines is no easy task, with you needing a “local” partner who will own 51% of the island. Of course, there are many “workarounds”, but with these rules and the hardly foreign-friendly administration of President Duterte, we decided against pursuing buying in the Philippines.
Now, while we had decided not to buy in the Philippines, what we did have were 20 people interested in putting money into a project to buy an island. This got me thinking, what if we had 50-70-100 or 120 people who were prepared to chip in to buy an island.
I got down to the drawing board, and thus the Let’s Buy An Island project was born.
The core principle of the project is to get up to 120 people to invest $3,250 (US dollars) into the project which would raise around 400k, enough to buy and kit out an island. Said island would then be run as a profit-making enterprise but also in a democratic fashion with each member having one vote.
To simplify this, and make things transparent, we founded a company in the Cayman Islands so that when people invest they own a physical share in a company, something that (should people wish) can be sold at a later date.
We also decided that at 50 people we would “buy regardless”, which is where we are at now, ok it might not get us the biggest island in the world, but our dreams would be realised.
So, why the blog post? Quite simply because we are now at a stage when we are prepared to move outside the “friend zone” and get investments from the wider public.
Ironically, I am aware that maybe PLN won’t be the best place for this and I can GUARANTEE at least one person will simply reply with SCAM, but no great projects start or succeed without naysayers.
As for the “scam” element, I personally not only have shares myself, but a number of my friends, family and even my company have invested. And in reality, 400K isn’t enough to run away into the sunset.
So, while most of you will turn your noses up at this project, my hope is the odd visionary out there has enough interest to at least get in touch. Who knows, you might even end up owning part of a tropical island?
To learn more about Let’s Buy An Island check out our website .