You want to start a small business or launch a project, but small business bankers won’t give you the time of day. And there’s no way you can raise the kind of money you need from friends and family. Are you doomed to fail before you even launch? Perhaps not. With crowdfunding you may not even have to face the sting of rejection: you can go straight to your fans and clients to raise the funds you need.
Take Patty Lennon as an example. When she decided to launch the Mom Gets A Business Conference, she wanted to make sure she could keep ticket prices within reach for her target audience. She knew that she would need more funding than just ticket sales would provide. “I would have loved to have secured a loan but that wasn’t a realistic possibility,” she says. “Prior to launching my business I had a 15-year career at Citigroup so I am closely familiar with the credit standards banks use when lending to new businesses. I am still in the first two years of business so I would have been considered ‘high risk.’”