You can make over $100,000 a year, have a perfect rental payment history, and outright own your own car, but if you are looking to qualify for a traditional business loan you can pretty much forget it if you don’t have credit. The only way you can build a credit file is by taking out loans, being approved for credit cards, or opening lines of credit such as with utility companies. Even if you took out a couple of nominal student loans to pay for your education as an online MS finance major at Northeastern University, your credit history may…
Over $34 billion was raised through crowdfunding campaigns in 2015 alone, according to research conducted by Massolution. If you have a business idea that needs a little financial help getting off the ground, crowdsourcing has never been a more viable resource than it is today.
In order to make your campaign as successful as possible, here are three things to consider that can help encourage more backers to contribute to your cause.
Make It Easy for People to Contribute
As crowdfunding has grown in popularity in recent years, so have the crowdfunding platform options. Some of the most popular choices include pioneering sites like Kickstarter…
Three years ago Crowdfunding industry was at its infancy, the JOBS act just passed, and funding campaigns were starting to get into the news. Every week a new platform was born and really quickly there were hundreds of new sites. I quickly realized that this business space would explode which will create a lot of confusion for small businesses. I felt there will need to be one place online where people can go and get clarity. They will need help picking the best possible site for their crowdfunding project. Some platforms could be better for certain categories or regions or…
This past week I taught a class on crowdfunding at NYC Business Solutions. I usually teach this class every six month, but this time around the content was a bit different. In this class I broke down the “one third theory” which I have seen explained in multiple places by platforms and industry professionals. The theory is that an average successful crowdfunding campaign receives the first third of funding from the initial crowd or direct contacts of the campaign manager, the second third of funding comes from the friends of the initial crowd or two point of separation from the…
Crowdfunding is not just a glorified donate button, it’s a way to empower individuals to bring forward ideas that they have. Those ideas are vetted by other people, not some high level corporate executives. If the campaign reaches the determined goal, it validates the idea and shows that there is enough demand for the project. Only than the project owner should go ahead and build upon their idea. This is the best market research there is, because people are actually voting with their money and not by checking a box on a survey. It is no surprise that large companies…