Strategy

April 7, 2014 @ 6:05 pm By JD Alois  |  

Lima, an integrated piece of hardware and software that was briefly called “Plug”, raised over $1.2 million on Kickstarter last fall.  Almost 13,000 backers came together to support a product that really is what iCloud aspires to be – but isn’t. Lima creates an environment… Read More

April 5, 2014 @ 2:43 pm By JD Alois  |  

BNN Funding has announced the beta launch of their crowdfunding platform for social good. The key feature of the platform is their ability to market crowdfunding campaigns nationally across 350 cities.  They are currently accepting applications for projects now. Patrick Kitano, CEO of BNN Funding… Read More

April 4, 2014 @ 11:47 am By JD Alois  |  

Crowdfunding Research. At the SVCrowdfund conference on April 3, 2014, Richard Swart, PhD., gave a fascinating presentation on the growing ecosystem of crowdfunding and alternative finance. Dr. Swart is a well known authority in the crowdfunding world.  He runs the UC Berkeley’s crowdfunding research initiative… Read More

April 4, 2014 @ 8:47 am By JD Alois  |  

Last October Pressy  “the Almighty Android Button” – crushed their crowdfunding goal on Kickstarter raising just under $700,000 on a $40,000 goal.  The Pressy team had designed an elegant android button to facilitate manual actions on Android phones.  With a simple approach and an integrated… Read More

March 31, 2014 @ 8:46 am By JD Alois  |  

Recently TED corralled a group of crowdfunding cognoscenti including Yancey Strickler, Amanda Palmer, Tim Schafer (Double Fine), Ivan Askwith (Veronica Mars), Neil Gaiman, Max Temkin and several others to talk about crowdfunding their creative projects. This is an interesting discussion as each participant shares their… Read More

March 29, 2014 @ 1:24 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

In the past few months, we’ve seen a steady increase in crowdfunding emails. It seems like the hip thing to do now: 5 out of 10 emails now start with “Can you help us promote our Kickstarter campaign, so we can build this cool product!” There… Read More

March 29, 2014 @ 12:41 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

This past week, Reddit did something previously unthinkable yet again, and it’s thanks in part to a crowdfunding campaign. At an upcoming NASCAR race at Talladega, Josh Wise’s #98 car will don Dogecoin livery. Yes, Dogecoin… the niche cryptocurrency created by a marketing junkie and… Read More

March 28, 2014 @ 12:30 pm By Jon Troutman, Co-Founder of Canary  |  

Four strategies for successfully harnessing customer insights to build a better product. When you crowdfund a product, you invite anyone and everyone to give you their unbridled opinions and ideas. You invite them to tell you what they love, what they hate, what you should… Read More

March 28, 2014 @ 9:20 am By Charles Luzar  |  

So you’ve got a great idea for a product. Some great pain point in your life would disappear if this product existed, and of course you aren’t unique; in solving your problems you’ll solve the same problem for millions of other people. It’s perfect. The… Read More

March 24, 2014 @ 8:33 am By JD Alois  |  

Running an effective crowdfunding campaign is a ton of work.  Not only must you have 30% committed up front but a successful campaign takes weeks, if not months, of planning.  Once a campaign launches you have to be on every day promoting, communicating and dealing… Read More

March 24, 2014 @ 7:41 am By JD Alois  |  

Pozible is introducing some new social tactics to help crowdfunders on their platform.  In a recent statement the Australia based company have asked all “past, present and future” crowdfunders to use the #PoziPics hashtag on instagram and twitter for campaign photographs. Each Friday Pozible will… Read More

March 22, 2014 @ 1:11 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

OurCrowd Head of Investor Community & Partnerships Zack Miller recently hosted a webinar that featured Heidi Brun, Joint Head of the Patent Department at Eitan, Mehulal & Sadot. The webinar tackles common investor pitfalls related to IP, including but not limited to… The various types of Intellectual… Read More

March 20, 2014 @ 3:54 pm By JD Alois  |  

One of the largest self-crowdfunding campaigns ever – Tile – has announced they are preparing to ship their finder devices to early backers. The pretail crowdfunding campaign launched back in 2013 and blew past their initial $20,000 goal within minutes of launching.  The campaign closed at over $2.6 million…. Read More

March 19, 2014 @ 8:50 am By JD Alois  |  

Craigslist founder, Craig Newmark, has shared an infographic depicting crowdfunding success for charities.  He states that $5 billion was raised worldwide for non-profit organizations using crowdfunding in 2013.  He has compiled some key points associated with crowdfunding best practices including: After researching crowdfundings impact on… Read More

March 18, 2014 @ 7:33 pm By JD Alois  |  

Sweden Based Crowdfunding Platform Raises Capital for Expansion. Stating that 2013 has been their best year to date, equity crowdfunding platform FundedByMe is now inviting the public to own shares in their Northern European investment platform by launching a self-crowdfunding campaign.  Based in Sweden, but… Read More

March 18, 2014 @ 9:03 am By JD Alois  |  

Wareness.io is a studio division of VSC, a global PR firm based in San Francisco.  Wareness came about as a type of epiphany on the power of crowdfunding in creating a successful hardware product. Founded by Vijay Chattha, VSC (or Visibility, Strategy, Creativity) is one… Read More

March 18, 2014 @ 7:00 am By JD Alois  |  

BackerKit, a maker of software tools for successful crowdfunders, has launched a beta of its Crowdfunding Partners platform, which makes it easy for fulfillment houses, e-commerce tools, and other services to build apps for crowdfunders. The platform gives businesses an API to plug directly into… Read More

March 13, 2014 @ 11:53 am By Charles Luzar  |  

If you happen to have used the Internet in the past year or two, chances are you’ve stumbled upon a page created and hosted by LaunchRock. It’s a service that allowed anyone with an idea to quickly and easily set up a landing page and… Read More

March 13, 2014 @ 11:16 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Jamie Siminoff is the definition of “serial entrepreneur.” He has six startups to his name including a successfully funded (and eventually refunded) Kickstarter campaign. He launched a crowdfunding platform called Christie Street that is currently dormant, but before it went dormant he also crowdfunded a second product… Read More

March 5, 2014 @ 9:26 pm By JD Alois  |  

Crowdfunding entrepreneurs may now have a new way to streamline outreach and improve the effectiveness of their crowdfunding campaigns. Velocity Kick, a new service that made its debut at the 2014 LAUNCH Festival in San Francisco, wants to dramatically reduce the time spent organizing contacts… Read More