Funded Today -The Biggest Con In Crowdfunding Marketing History? You Be The Judge

Funded Today exploded into the crowdfunding industry early in 2015 and soon gained the attention of many. They appeared to go from zero to 2,000 miles an hour in only a few short months. Fast forward to today and they claim to have raised almost $150M for their clients.
Fact. The Funded.Today domain was registered during August, 2014:
Updated Date: 2017–03–14
Created Date: 2014–08–15
In this article I’ll share my thoughts and opinions and leave the rest up to you to draw your own conclusions.
In essence, Funded Today began as a Facebook advertising company whereby they firstly run validation testing adverts for (mainly) live reward based campaigns at a cost of $2,500 — $5,000 to the client. If the results look good (positive ROI), they will take you onboard and run ads for your live campaign for you, but take anywhere from 25% -35% of the funding raised in the process. If your campaign does not pass the validation testing, your money is gone. According to Funded Today, 60% of applicants fail validation testing so it seems like quite a money spinner for them.
How do I know all of this? I’ve had Funded Today spam many of my own clients when they were live on various platforms, so have received a lot of valuable feedback over the years.
What is Indiegogo’s InDemand program?
Indiegogo launched their InDemand program on January 6th, 2015
In a nutshell, The InDemand program allows ANY successful campaign on ANY platform to bring their successfully funded campaign to Indiegogo and continue to raise funds for their project. You can read more about this on the Indiegogo blog HERE
“InDemand is now available to any project that meets its full funding goal.”
What does this really mean? Well, many things. But, most importantly, it means that any campaign that is already millions of dollars funded on Kickstarter, could easily be brought across to the Indiegogo, including the fully funded amount displaying on the Kickstarter campaign, across to the new InDemand Campaign on Indiegogo.
This caused confusion. Indiegogo backers were confused too.
My advice to clients who are going the crowdfunding route has always been to never operate the same campaign on multiple platforms concurrently. Besides looking shady, it certainly is hard enough to work one campaign to success, never mind several. Suddenly, clients were challenging what I was saying, stating “But, there are many campaigns that are on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo” they would say. They did not know of the InDemand program at the time (many still don’t) so understandably, they were confused.
The confusion continues today.
Funded Today identified a potential opportunity for sure. If they were to target highly funded successful campaigns on Kickstarter, and pitch this new InDemand program as an exclusive, they could bring over hundreds of campaigns to Indiegogo and make claim to the entire amount of funding the campaigns had already raised on Kickstarter, even though Funded Today had nothing to do with the successful funding already raised.
A few questions to get you thinking:
Did Funded Today get wind of what was about to happen at Indiegogo or was it coincidental?
Was there already a relationship between Funded Today and Indiegogo prior to the official announcement of the Indiegogo program on Jan 6th. 2015?
Did they have access to privy knowledge from an “insider”?
I guess we’ll never know for sure.
Some will call it clever, some will call it shady and nothing but a con.
You be the judge and jury on this one!
About the Author
Shane is one of the top influencers and thought leaders in the crowdfunding and cryptoconomy space. A seasoned entrepreneur and CEO, Shane’s knowledge and expertise of crowdfunding has allowed him to deliver campaigns for entrepreneurs, startups, corporations and filmmakers across the globe. He has provided support and guidance to over 500 crowdfunders with campaign development, consulting, marketing and promotion services with some of his clients successfully raising millions of dollars in capital during the process. Shane is the CEO at Cryptologist, the firm is dedicated to revolutionizing modern business and digital infrastructure.
Shane served previously as the Executive Director of the Crowdfunding Professional Association, As a noted thought leader and innovator, he is a sought after speaker and contributor for various media outlets including the Creating Wealth Podcast, Bitcoin Space, Business Class News, Swaay Media, Dice Insights and CEOWorld Magazine.
