We failed to reach our crowdfunding goal.
Here’s what we learned.
We were crowdfunding for a goal of $25,000. By the end of our one month campaign on flexible funding we reached $5002. We'd like to take this opportunity right now to give a huge thanks to our backers, we truly appreciate every one. However it still remains that we didn't reach our target. This post sums up our difficulties and pointers for anyone thinking of crowdfunding.
A quick primer on our campaign. We weren't crowdfunding to launch a product, but to support public events such as hack days, wiki editathons as a startup and a not for profit. As a result our perks were made in collaboration with partners and for you to judge here’s our campaign.
We launched officially on March the 7th 2014 and closed on April the 16th. After one month with ~1000 tweets, 74 funders, 11 updates numerous events, posts and perks we failed to reach our target.
Here’s what we learned, we hope it’s useful.
Refine your message and then refine it some more.
DNAdigest exists to make it easier to access genetic data, making diagnostics faster and hopefully one day finding treatments for cancer and a host of other genetic diseases.
We believe our work has potential for huge social impact, but the benefit of building tools supporting genetics research proved a difficult message to convey to the public.
This was a difficult and crucial aspect of our campaign that we didn't get right. The messages we used revolved around data, collaboration, research and treatments for disease. These weren't successful in connecting with our audience and may have confused potential backers on our purpose.
Our campaign aims weren’t conveyed easily. You need to be brief.
Plan your channels really really well, have backups and keep pushing.
We launched our campaign with a thunderclap with apparently, a social reach of 301,765 people. We hope to reach new supporters and create a crowd of interested initial backers. Whilst it was successful in generating interest it didn't have the impact in backers we were hoping for.
Our next channel was through Reddit AMA’s. This was useful in reaching members of interested stakeholder communities and getting direct feedback, but again the impact in terms of backers was minimal.
We also put out multiple press releases and posts through our network. These were unfortunately not successful in getting into major press. The ones we did get were well recieved such as the Huffington Post, Global Banking and Finance but still didn't have the impact in terms of backers we were hoping for.
All of this could be explained in part by the difficulty of our message. It could also be because we had been relying on our channels to create a snowball effect. We also had channels that didn't materialise and when they didn't we didn't have alternatives.
We didn't get the press to reach our audiences. Plan backups.
Get good at selecting opportunities.
During our campaign month we tried to pack our social calendar. Attending events ranging from workshops, to symposiums, to running our own hackdays.
We wanted to be everywhere to meet potential backers, investors and journalists. Of the events and people we met the reception was always good. However at the same time we were preparing our business plans, pitches and investor decks which were just as important to our long term success. As a very small startup we spread our resources really thin.
As a consequence our campaign was neglected at times for example we only hit 11 updates. Think what do you really need to do?
Our campaign month was too busy and non focused. Plan selectively for your month.
It’s OK if doesn’t happen.
In short we failed and we're proud. What we didn’t gain in financial backing we gained in industry sponsors, community members and experiences. By the end of our campaign we were also selected for an UnLtd fast growth award which will secure our work for the year to come.
Before we started our campaign we were told repeatedly crowdfunding is not easy and now let us repeat this, it is not easy.
Having said that if asked would we launch the campaign again? I believe the answer is still yes.
We've learned big invaluable lessons through our campaign that will help us in the long run about anything we do in the future.
If you are thinking of launching a campaign we hope you reach your goals. If not it’s ok.
Summing it all.
- Your message is key, refine it and make it succinct.
- Your channels are crucial but it doesn't always result into backers so have backups.
- Your campaign month is precious, make sure you have the time for it.
- It’s ok if it doesn't happen, honestly.
If this article has helped you please consider recommending it.
Feedback is always good. Find us online on DNAdigest or tweet us @DNAdigest
