Entrepreneurs in the central Texas region have good reason to be excited this week. Not only has Austin been recognized repeatedly for the relative strength of its local economy in recent weeks, but on Monday, Austin-based Microventures launched its new site for peer-to-peer venture funding.

The site takes the form of a marketplace where startups can submit their companies for funding, and investors can choose to invest anywhere between $250 and $5,000. If the deal doesn’t reach 100% of the offering, then the money is returned to the investors.

The concept behind Microventures is not entirely unlike other notable efforts across the country, and the concept of micro-investments itself has been around for a while. But Microventures differentiates in several meaningful ways. They will focus on getting many investors to fund startups with small sums that ideally add up to a more sizeable deal.

We should also point out that the platform, at least initially, is not an incubator or accelerator program like Y Combinator or Austin’s own Capital Factory. Furthermore, the company says it will not be raising its own fund or investing in the startups in its marketplace.

The company is aiming its efforts at deals between $50,000 and $250,000, but intends to facilitate larger deals in the near future. That is to say, Microventures.com hopes to differentiate on the size of the deals – and move significantly further up the deal-size food chain than other comparable sites and many of the existing incubator programs.

They will also help to facilitate the regulatory challenges of the deal-making process and perform due-diligence on companies for the investors.

There’s no doubt that microinvestments are a big trend, but what’s particularly promising is the increasing amount of choice and support that entrepreneurs in Central Texas now have available to them when they need to kick-start their businesses.

Aside from the traditional VC firms, Capital Factory is now embarking on its second year. Last year the tech startup accelerator received over 300 applications, indicating that there’s a big appetite for non-traditional venture funding and incubation in the area.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise considering recent reports on the central Texas economy. Today, the Huffington Post compiled a good slide show on major US cities with local economies that are growing faster than their pre-recession pace. The full Brookings report upon which they based their article can be found here.

And if you haven’t heard about it already, TIME magazine had a few good things to say about Austin’s job market recently, too.

There’s no shortage of opinions on the various venture capital models that are budding across the country. Most entrepreneurs have their own opinions and preferences based on the particulars of their startups, or their past experiences in deals. But one thing is for sure: choice, variety and growth are all very nice things to see.