Crowdfunding - How To Do It
Crowdfunding. It’s a way of financing your startup that more and more people are using, but still many people have many questions about. A good moment for StartupDorf to dedicate the monthly meetup to this theme, and invite three startups that have successfully ran crowdfunding campaigns. Now, before we go any further, we should take note of one thing: crowdfunding is the process by which a large number of people provide money to an entrepreneur to execute a business plan. In return, the ‘crowd’ gets a gift. Please not that this is not crowd investing, where the crowd gets shares (equity) in the new company in return for their money. That is not what we are talking about here.
So, back to the most recent StartupDorf monthly meetup. Three very different projects presented their crowdfunding experience: Liwo Drinks, Meshable Watches and Project Silent_Runner. Here are three lessons their presentations taught us
Emotions count!
As Michael of Liwo said, you are asking people to give you money because they like you or your project. It’s an emotional thing, so in your campaign video and texts, you should appeal to their emotional side. In a way, this was echoed by Nemo from Meshable Watches, who talked passionately about their bootstrapped image campaign: a type of campaign usual for luxury and fashion brands, where it’s not the product at the center of the messages, but the emotion and the lifestyle that it’s designed to become a part of.
Think hard about the length of your campaign
Andre of Project Silent_Runner was very happy that their campaign was offered a 3-day extension. Right up to the end, they had received a number of pledges, but not even for half of what their goal was. In those last three days, they were somewhere at exactly the right time, and the number of pledges exploded far past their fundraising goal.
Interestingly, Liwo and Meshable Watches were quite contradictory when it comes to campaign length. For Liwo, the campaign felt too short, because it proved to be a very valuable part of their marketing mix. Meshable Watches liked their campaign short. Due to their preparation (see a bit further), they peaked at the beginning of the campaign, and actually were glad the campaign was over, as they saw people pull out, and the effort they put in could not continue for ever.
In conclusion, it’s hard to say something about the perfect length of your campaign. It really depends on what your goals and plans are.
Find the best partners, communities, evangelists for your product. They are out there!
All three projects had a strong focus on finding the right people to work with. Liwo found a scientific partner in a university, which helped them open doors and talk to the right people who could actually make orders for their new drink. Meshable Watches found the right bloggers and journalists to talk about their new watches and their crowdfunding campaign at the right time. On top, they found the right forums of watch aficionados, which also helped them in finding funders for their campaign. Silent_Runner focused on both online forums and off-line events to show off their prototype. As said above, it was particularly one event, where they showed their remote controlled blimp, that was key to the success of their campaign. They found their potential audience all gathered at one event, days before their campaign deadline.
So, did you do a crowdfunding campaign? What are your tips?
And, of course, here are the campaign videos of the three projects.
Liwo Drinks
Meshable Watches
Project Silent Runner
