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Crowdfunding does more than raise money

Posted on November 22, 2018November 23, 2018 by Clive Reffell

I was recently asked about crowdfunding by the founder of a startup business that makes a range of non-alcoholic wine. There was nothing confidential in my reply, so I thought I’d share it with you.

You’re absolutely right that crowdfunding can be a more time consuming way to raise money compared to perhaps a VC investment or an angel investor. Yet there are other benefits that go way beyond the money it raises.

For example, VCs were queueing up to invest in Chapel Down (the celebrated English sparkling wine maker) when in 2014 they launched their equity crowdfunding campaign. Beyond raising £3.9m in three weeks, their CEO Frazer Thompson told me that crowdfunding had generated 1,500 brand advocates who would spread positive word-of-mouth, buy Chapel Down products at every gift-giving opportunity, and create sampling opportunities by stocking their wines (now beers as well since they built a brewery with some of the money they raised, and gin too) both at home and in their company drinks cabinets. Priceless!

Crowdfunding creates a virtuous circle whereby customers can become shareholders and shareholders become customers. I’m caught up in it myself as an investor in a craft brewery and a gin maker. If “my brands” are available, why drink others? Shareholders catapult themselves right up the brand loyalty ladder.

Hop Stuff Brewery started five years ago when it raised £58,000 through offering 34% of equity. It’s now valued at over £25m, with products stocked in Wetherspoons (which encourages lower than regular cost product trial), Tesco and Majestic Wine; it has a growing chain of beer and pizza outlets; and international sales and franchise brewing agreements. Hundreds of their 1,000+ investors from three rounds of crowdfunding on Crowdcube attended an “Investor Fiesta” event at their new brewery back in August.

A network of investors can be used for research purposes and to ask for ad hoc assistance such as help recruit staff, recommend suppliers, volunteer their own services, and so on. At the Hop Stuff event I heard a fellow investor volunteer to use his contacts to help sort out supplies of CO2, which if you remember was in short supply in the summer.

Even if it’s not a main aim of the crowdfunding, it could find you an angel investor. This happened to some people I know who started a business making tissues from bamboo. To begin with, all they wanted was an initial £10,000 of orders through rewards crowdfunding to provide validation they weren’t wasting their time. A backer was impressed with what he saw and stepped forward to invest, which allowed the founders to greatly speed up product development and company growth. So do eveything as professionally as possible.

They were a top-seller on Amazon very quickly. Within three years the company founders raised £500,000 in October 2018 for 10% equity on the Seedrs crowdfunding platform – they had a business valued at £5m!

Their latest news is The Cheeky Panda tissues are now stocked in Tesco and Morrisons; in the summer they signed a £1m corporate investment deal that valued them at £20m; and right now they are running a second round of equity crowdfunding for existing investors in which they are offering 5% for £1m.

Good crowdfunding is also good marketing. I call it an ultimate direct marketing campaign. There’s a start date, an end date, lots to do, and if you fail to hit target you don’t raise any money. Naturally there are risks, though by breaking a crowdfunding campaign down in to component parts each potential risk can be addressed and minimised. I’ve created a Seven Stage Assessment to check if a business is ready to start crowdfunding, and identify areas that need to be addressed before going public.

My approach is more from a marketing angle, since that’s what I’ve always done. I am not a finance expert and not qualified to give financial advice. Though I can provide an experienced layman’s assessment on how appealing any offer may be to the public. I do have a post-grad diploma from the Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing and a Professional Diploma in Management from the Open University Business School.

One vital tip is that crowdfunding should not begin until you have done enough personal pre-selling for 30% of the financial target to fly in to your crowdfunding campaign within the very first few days. This applies whether you’re trying to generate product orders or offering equity. This gives immense confidence to other backers who don’t know and haven’t met you, and creates valuable momentum. So if you have a target of £200,000 your pre-selling should reach a guaranteed support level of £60,000 in the bag before you start crowdfunding in the public eye (ideally more to allow for dropouts).

Early success is newsworthy and hard-working PR will generate media coverage to add to your early momentum. On the other hand, crowdfunding without pre-selling is like shovelling quicksand – hard work and you get nowhere.

How much it costs and how long it will take depend on:

how well your business rates against my Seven Stage Assessment
how much work has to be done to become investment-ready
of that, what can be done internally and how much has to be outsourced
including how enthusiastic and good you are at using social media – and “it’s ok, my kids use Facebook, they can help” isn’t good enough
success rate of using PR to secure media coverage
how long it takes to drum up support to reach the first 30% of your target.

If you have no social media networks to drive people to your crowdfunding project it may first require months of work to build some. Or months to accumulate impressive media coverage you’ll be able to refer to, or both, ideally.

Outsourcing support and input can even begin with the pitch document. A 30-chart deck may be very thorough but it’s too much for a potential equity investor to wade through with enthusiasm. Most look for the first reason they can give themselves as to why not to invest so they can move on to the next opportunity. Simply having to spend too long to get a feel of an opportunity is a good enough reason to discard it right away.

Don’t forget the taxman. Many retail investors prefer businesses to be registered with HMRC under EIS and SEIS agreements. These Enterprise Investment Schemes allow tax-paying investors to claim valuable rebates of up to 50% of the cost of their investment, and shelter capital gains from CGT. Under SEIS a company founder can invest up to £100,000 in their own business and claim a refund. Make sure you understand and take advantage of these benefits for yourself and your backers.

To close, what you see online when people and organisations run crowfdfunding campaigns is like the tip of an iceberg visible above the waterline. Invisible under the water is a vast amount of planning and preparation, and a fair amount of stress. It’s not impossible to run a crowdfunding campaign alone if you’re tough and resiliant enough, though most people need some help and support, be it technical or emotional or anything else. This comes either from a team of willing supporters who between them provide all the necessary skills required to achieve your success, or you need a budget. Most times it’s a bit of both. If you want to talk about your ideas that could transform your life please get in touch, [email protected].

How Crowdfunding is Changing Business

Posted on August 26, 2018August 28, 2018 by Clive Reffell

For many startup entrepreneurs (and d-i-y investors who back them) the most significant form of modern day crowdsourcing is crowdfunding. Rather than trying to impress a single backer to support a business idea, perhaps through chasing a grant or bank loan, or by catching the attention of an elusive angel investor, crowdfunding has decentralized the process and enables business startups to ask crowds of people directly – some of whom they know and many they don’t – to each provide a relatively small level of support. It also builds communities of followers and supporters, where customers become investors and investors become customers in a virtuous circle.

Favourable “light touch” treatment of equity crowdfunding (where investors pay for a slice of ownership of a business, and accept the risk that it may fail) by the financial regulators allowed the UK to emerge as the world’s market leader. Crowdcube was one of the first equity platforms to appear, in 2011, and it recently announced a total figure of more than £500 million invested so far in 700 funding rounds. The banking app Revolut and the Scottish brewery Brewdog, both currently worth over £1 billion, launched through Crowdcube.

Although some of the startups supported by crowds of sometimes relatively unsophisticated backers might be mocked by professional investors for some fanciful financial forecasts, many disruptive and challenger brands have emerged whose impact on established business sectors often far outweighs their market share or company valuations. Being new can mean a fresh approach unbound by a legacy of the past, even though a lack of a track record makes it hard to interest traditional investors at the beginning.

Here are examples in three business sectors where challenger brands used the power of crowds and are disrupting the status quo.

Banking
London-based Revolut, the UK’s fastest growing fintech company, ran a crowdfunding campaign as recently as 2016 to raise £1m and get started. Crowdfunding was also good marketing for them as it generated a core crowd of hundreds of investors who would become keen customers and brand ambassadors.

Revolut’s CEO and co-founder Nikolay Storonsky

The co-founders’ business idea came from their personal frustration with exchange rate markups, inexplicable foreign transaction fees and the overall hassle of managing a bank account abroad.

Today, Revolut provides over two million customers (two million customers acquired in two years!) with a debit card allowing the holders to spend money in 150 currencies with no fees. They estimate they have saved their customers over £560m in traditional banking fees, and in 2018 raised $250m through corporate investment which valued the business at $1.7bn (£1.2bn).

Brands like Revolut and fellow banking newcomer Monzo are definitely shaking up the traditional banks and changing customer expectations. The technology was there, but the existing high street banks still provided us all with slower, less sophisticated and more expensive services. With us all the way, are they?

Brewing
Behind Brewdog which is now a unicorn startup valued at over £1bn, there are many smaller craft brewers that continue to launch with modest funding and provide UK drinkers with a vast choice of beers and ales made with hands-on quality control and finer ingredients than high volume mass-market brands can access in sufficient volume.

An example is the fast growing Hop Stuff Brewery in south east London. City finance professional James Yeomans found he enjoyed home-brewing more than his time spent in the office and became determined to take it further. In 2013, without any commercial brewing experience – but he could talk “money” – he used equity crowdfunding through Crowdcube to raise £58,000 in exchange for 34% ownership of his startup craft beer brewery.

The business grew, and alongside attracting corporate investments it ran a second round of equity crowdfunding that closed in January 2017, and then a third smaller one in early 2018. Although corporate investors were by now queuing up for a slice of the business and crowdfunding was unnecessary for purely financial reasons, crowdfunding has provided Hop Stuff with a dedicated following of over a thousand supporters happy to perform unofficial Brand Ambassador roles. They influence people to sample the brewery’s products through positive word-of-mouth, and ask pubs and bars where they drink to stock them.

Hop Stuff is currently opening a number of its own “beer and pizza” bars under the Taproom brand, filling a global order book and signing overseas franchise brewing agreements. Compare this to the rest of the UK beer trade: the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) recently reported annual sales were 1.7% down, and in August 2018 the BBC reported UK pubs are closing at a rate of 18 a week. Hop Stuff Brewery is certainly bucking the trend, has just moved to larger brewing premises, and five years after launching with £58,000 raised through equity crowdfunding it is valued at over £25 million.

At an invite-only event for his crowdfunding investors in August 2018, founder James Yeomans announced that packaged Hop Stuff Brewery products will soon be on the shelves in London branches of Tesco, Oddbins and Majestic Wine.

Grocery items
Bamboo is a fast-growing sustainable product with four growth cycles a year. Tissues made from bamboo rather than paper are naturally stronger, softer and more hygienic. They can be made with a 65% smaller carbon footprint.

Who created and introduced this breakthrough eco-friendly product to the UK? Was it corporate giants Kimberly-Clark or Procter & Gamble that own market-leading worldwide tissue brands? No, it was a pair of UK holidaymakers who returned home from China, researched possibilities and wrote a business plan to utilise abundant supplies of unwanted surplus bamboo they had seen being left to rot.

A modest reward crowdfunding project on the Crowdfunder UK platform with a target to generate £10,000 of orders gained the attention of a crowd of early adopters and, by chance, an angel investor. Within three years the founders of The Cheeky Panda tissue company ran an equity crowdfunding campaign with Seedrs that raised £500,000 and valued their business at £5m. The brand is a top seller on Amazon.

So even in the high-volume fmcg sector (fast moving consumer goods) dominated by massive brands that are supported with multi-million £ advertising budgets, crowdfunding – the crowdsourcing of both money and a community of supporters – enables entrepreneurs to introduce innovative products and disrupt existing markets.

If you are considering crowdfunding as a means to launch a startup, or maybe to grow an existing business, I can provide you with independent crowdfunding advice and hands-on support. I have no ties to any particular crowdfunding platforms. Please email me, [email protected]. Let’s discuss your ideas and set about building them in to a plan of action.

Mayor of London has £1m for Community Projects Using Crowdfunding: Sep 3 Deadline

Posted on July 22, 2018July 22, 2018 by Clive Reffell

The Mayor of London recently announced an allocation of £1 million available to a range of grassroots community projects. Operating in conjunction with UK crowdfunding platform Spacehive and the Greater London Authority, community project leaders can apply for a maximum contribution of up to £50,000 for new not-for-profit projects that serve the wider community. It’s a competitive process, and I can help applicants to succeed. The deadline for applications is September 3.

The Mayor and GLA’s main purposes of the initiative appear to be to:

Crowdsource ideas at a grassroots community level that add to or improve local facilities, maybe through new uses of disused buildings and locations, to inspire City Hall regeneration policy-making.
Show Londoners that their City Hall and elected representatives are listening and responsive in a demonstration of growing transparency and accountability.

The re-purposing of abandoned locations and unused buildings, particularly high street retail units, is a matter of growing national concern. Online shopping, road congestion, scarcity or cost of parking spaces and a recent hike in business rates have all reduced footfall and raised costs at traditional retail outlets.

The #CrowdfundLDN project will crowdsource many ideas that could influence local authority policies on how to respond to the hollowing out of previously vibrant areas within communities, and also empower groups of volunteer citizens to work together to deliver their solutions at a lower project cost than full funding from any local authority’s budget.

In 2017 the initiative also attracted a number of corporate donors who wanted association with the initiative. Backers included renewal energy company Bulb, creative co-working space Second Home, Ladbrokes and B&Q alongside Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Growing a Greener Britain and Veolia.

Here’s the 2018 timeline.

Workshops are currently taking place throughout London to raise awareness and participation levels, and to brief interested parties on the scheme details.
During July and August project leaders will start to build their crowdfunding pitch on the Spacehive platform, identifying necessary skill sets and assembling their team(s) to finalise the pitch, raise the money and then deliver the end project. Completed crowdfunding pitches, including plans on how the project will be delivered and then maintained as a going concern, must be submitted to Spacehive by September 3.
Later in September the projects that meet a required standard of community benefit, validation of local community support, short-term achievability and longer-term viability will go live on Spacehive and start to generate funding.
30 to 40-or-so projects selected to receive a contribution from the Mayor of London’s £1m budget will be announced in October at an event staged in London’s County Hall, headquarters of the GLA and Mayor of London (as in main image in 2017).
Each project will then continue its crowdfunding efforts during November and December to reach their target. The crowdfunding will be on an “All or Nothing basis,” meaning if a project fails to reach the outstanding balance of its overall target the Mayor will keep his money and the project will not go ahead.

Being selected is naturally very positive news to tell potential backers through PR and social media. Projects that fail to receive a Mayor’s contribution can still choose to continue their efforts to raise funds, though of course they will have a tougher job to reach their target.

Benefits for the funding applicants are numerous, and include:

At a community level, participation in the scheme draws together people with a shared focus on involvement in a project for ulterior motives. Firm friendships and alliances between local businesses have been forged in the previous two years of the scheme.
At a personal level, a number of individuals may develop new skills through the experience and interaction of being part of a team, and gain personal confidence through empowerment. All and any of these factors could boost their employment prospects and future personal earning potential.
All successful projects will improve the number and range of London’s community facilities available to the city’s population.

Previous successful projects include building a sustainable food yard, kitchen and event space at Bankside near the Tate Modern to act as a hub for the promotion of sustainable food activity. The project provides education, outreach and advocacy for innovation in sustainable food practices, and incubator space for startups. Affordable access to a professional kitchen as a community resource enables hopeful commercial food and drink suppliers and would-be chefs and restaurant owners to experiment, gain experience and refine skills.

One project completed the external refurbishment of an iconic and much loved local art deco cinema in Hackney. The project also created a second screen allowing for more local events and the sustainable operation of the enterprise as a non-profit community facility.

A south London disused railway space will enjoy a new lease of life as a 900m pedestrian walkway and natural garden area in what was previously a rail yard used for coal wagons. It is a facility comparable to the inspiring and better known elevated walkway examples in New York and Paris. An initial crowdfunding project in 2015 on Spacehive raised money for a feasibility study, now published as a 180-page document. In addition to a contribution from the Mayor of London, Southwark Council also donated £10,000.

Previously abandoned garden allotments in Tolworth, Kingston Upon Thames, were re-purposed as a suburban farming project to teach food-growing skills and create a productive, sustainable source of locally produced food. The designers of the growing space went on to win an award at the prestigious Royal Horticultural Show at Hampton Court with an edible garden.

Details of all 25 projects backed in this initiative by the Mayor of London in 2017, which between them received a total contribution of £400,000, are here.

Spacehive has made a lot of useful information and planning guides available, and also gives details on additional sources of funding in some boroughs. Though if you’d like extra support and insight about using crowdfunding to make your idea for a local community project become a reality then please contact me via [email protected]. There’s no charge for the first meeting or conversation on Skype or the phone, and let’s take it from there. You can also follow me on Twitter, @Cliveref.

10 Tips on Reward Crowdfunding from a Tech Startup

Posted on July 20, 2018July 22, 2018 by Clive Reffell

Hribarcain is a newly founded UK technology company that was launched on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter in 2016. After starting in a small design studio in Bristol their first product launch was “Magno, The World’s First Magnetically Controlled Pencil.” They then developed a range of titanium pens and expanded internationally to provide products to thousands of customers worldwide, raising over £250,000 in revenue. As an SME marketing and crowdfunding specialist I was keen to meet the company founders at a recent networking event and hear more of their story.

Co-founders Ashley Hribar-Green and Matthew Aston Cain are British entrepreneurs with a wealth of experience in product design engineering. After working for one of the largest technology companies in the world (Dyson), Ashley and Matthew launched Hribarcain to pursue their dream of designing products that challenge convention as a result of ground breaking innovation. In this case it began with a range of magnetically controlled propelling pencils with a subsequent brand extension in to pens.

Rewards crowdfunding allowed Hribarcain to promote their products direct to end-user buyers without first needing retail distribution agreements. They also used Indiegogo in 2018 for a campaign with US dollar pricing, whereas their Kickstarter campaigns have been priced in UK pounds.

Matthew already had previous experience from using reward crowdfunding on Kickstarter to generate orders for his range of Astoncain minimalist watches with top quality components and functions at a reasonable price. At a recent networking event in London organised by Masterclass Crowdfunding, he happily shared 10 top tips based on his seven years’ experience of using reward crowdfunding.

1. Have a clear and concise video that runs under 2 minutes – it’s your business card. This is his advice after sometimes using longer running videos.

2. Advertising – use some! Let people know you’re crowdfunding

3. At the close of the project don’t simply just fulfill the reward item orders, up-sell to the buyers. In Magno’s experience it can add a further 15% sales income

4. Make your pricing attractive, reduce it to create urgency within the limited time period of your crowdfunding project, maybe to 50% of RRP

5. Possess a clearly defined USP (Unique Selling Proposition) to stand out from competitors

6. Use quality photography in your crowdfunding project. It will help to enhance the image of your product or service and reassure people you’re serious about what you’re offering them

7. Only use quality, reliable manufacturers who won’t cut corners and reduce the value of your items

8. Price in a minimum 50% margin to allow for mistakes and to afford some marketing (see Point 2)

9. Consider fulfillment delivery costs right at the start of selecting reward items and maybe opt for smaller, lighter ones, or at least smaller packaging to meet postal rate sizes

10. Find other crowdfunding project owners who have complementary products, such as matching up pen makers and notebook suppliers, or maybe cooler boxes and food and drink providers, and agree to co-promote each other’s products to your respective networks.

All of these are great pieces of advice, though there’s also a lot more to consider. If you are considering using reward crowdfunding yourself then please get in touch via [email protected] for us to meet, either in person in London or maybe on Skype, and discuss your ideas and how to effectively plan for success. You can also follow me on Twitter, @Cliveref.

Successful Equity Crowdfunding On A Shoestring

Posted on April 2, 2018 by Clive Reffell

When Joel Burgess studied Mechanical Engineering he had little idea he would one day almost single-handedly raise over £190,000 through equity crowdfunding to launch Nutrifix, an app that combines convenience food with nutritional advice and signposts where to find a meal to suit any specific nutritional need. Joel describes his equity crowdfunding as the hardest work he has ever had to do in his life. Thorough preparation was the secret to his success.

Background
Joel’s personal story is that he was a very competitive rugby player, though had to give up the game due to a serious injury. As sports people sometimes do, Joel continued for a while with the same diet but he wasn’t burning off as many calories. He took advice to redesign his diet, though was rather non-plussed as to how to maintain the correct protein, fats and carbohydrate balance when faced with the array of items available in salad and sandwich bars and restaurants. A simple mention of the calorie content of each menu item wasn’t enough.

So to help stay in shape he researched and built himself a spreadsheet based on food and meals from a range of outlets he used. The results were evident, and when Joel found 10 people were prepared to pay him £75 for a copy of the spreadsheet he began to think this level of traction showed him he might have a worthwhile idea for a business startup. He decided to develop it as an app to be more functional and interactive. He started that in September 2016 and it launched in January 2017.

Preparation before crowdfunding
Joel also built up his social media following and engaged with potential users. He discovered he had a very keen audience to test and trial the app before it was released, and in time went on to reach over 1,000 users before spending a penny on marketing.

Further encouragement came when Just Eat contributed £20,000 seed money after Joel pitched to them during London Food Week. They also invited him on their first food tech accelerator: they bought into him (people buy people!) and the problem his app was trying to solve, and the size of the market made it a viable commercial opportunity.

Support from a recognised backer, in this case a high street name, always reassures small retail investors who believe that the company’s legal team will have undertaken a thorough due diligence, and that it’s safe to get behind the startup. Joel really leveraged Just Eat’s support during his crowdfunding that followed.

A friend worked at the equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube and so that was pretty much the extent of deciding which platform to use. Working with Crowdcube, Joel spent a lot of time on his business model and creating a P&L statement. The platform drilled right down to check any claim he was making as part of their due diligence to safeguard investors’ money.

Another pal offered to make his video for him at a reduced rate, and again Crowdcube were there to help by checking his video script avoided any false or unsupportable claims.

In the pre-crowdfunding period before his campaign went ‘live’ Joel created the majority of the social media and email content he was going to send out, with images filed and ready, and spreadsheets of financial projections and cash flow forecasts if these were asked for. He prepared to use every touchpoint available to him, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

His preparation also included creating a list of what he imagined were going to be the most Frequently Asked Questions, and came up with answers. This way, Joel was able to answer most questions quickly with a ‘copy and paste’ technique, and to be on the safe side he added to the list every new question that was put to him, with the answer that he gave.

He was also in no doubt as to how vital it is for a crowdfunding campaign to start with a bang rather than a whimper, and he set about meeting contacts to encourage some early support. Reaching around 30% of target in the first few days, certainly at least 20%, is generally regarded as essential to create momentum and impress other investors who may otherwise be more inclined to stay sitting on the sidelines. Crowdfunding can’t be done totally online, there is still a need for some vital face-to-face personal selling.

Crowdfunding delivers more than just money
Joel’s high level of preparation meant that when the crowdfunding was ‘live’ his diary was free enough to fix meetings with potential investors who wanted to meet him, and to speak at a couple of events Crowdcube organised for him.

This part of his journey was a real emotional roller coaster. Some investors said they really liked his idea and business plan, others tore him apart and made him sometimes wonder if his dream might collapse rather than become a reality. “This is where you discover your inner resilience, you have to rise to the challenge and be ready to impress the next potential backer.”

The crowdfunding target was £150,000. In the end Joel overshot his target by 29% and raised £194,310 from 375 investors (an average investment of £518) in exchange for 24.46% of his equity. This meant he had a business that the public crowdfunding process had given a market value of £485,000. Through his crowdfunding campaign he had also grown his user network to 750 and gathered 3,500 social media followers. Effective crowdfunding is effective marketing.

And finally, Nutrifix now has a network of active investors, and many have become brand advocates who are keen to help it grow through positive word of mouth and other more direct assistance when contacted. Joel keeps in regular contact through monthly e-mails, and also reaches out to them when he needs some particular help or wants to make new contacts.

Crowdfunding for charities: friend or foe?

Posted on February 28, 2018April 20, 2018 by Clive Reffell

Crowdfunding and charities: friend or foe?

I am an independent crowdfunding adviser. When I started my business to inform, advise and support people and organisations using crowdfunding I found a lot of valuable transferable knowledge and techniques from charity and compassionate/social cause fundraising. Three years on I had anticipated that I would have worked by now with a charity or two, but it hasn’t panned out that way. I had a few ideas why, and I was also very curious about what I might learn at Fundraising Live 2018, a conference primarily for charity and nfp fundraisers organised by Civil Society Media.

Finding it tough
It was apparent from on-stage speakers and anecdotes at networking breaks that many charities found 2017 to be challenging. 10 years of economic austerity, Brexit concerns and prices rising faster than incomes have reduced the UK public’s willingness (or is it simply ability?) to support charities and compassionate causes to the extent they had in previous years. There are several outcomes from this.

One is a natural response to avoid risk and focus on areas of proven abilities and previous success. It encourages people to play it safe within a comfort zone.

A second one is to find some other external scapegoats, and crowdfunding is a candidate. Several charities and the fundraisers within them are aware that crowdfunding has become more widely established as a direct means for people to donate to help other people (or dogs, donkeys, whatever) without using an intermediary charity or other organisation, and have suggested that it is cannibalising their income streams. I will return to this theme.

So what is crowdfunding?
It’s nothing new. Church collection plates are a form of crowdfunding. Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square was paid for by public donations – crowdfunding. What is new is that it’s 10 years since Apple launched the iPhone, heralding an era of mobile, mass connectivity that many visionary entrepreneurs have taken advantage of to disrupt traditional ways of doing business in many sectors.

It is online crowdfunding that is new, and it has become a recognised means for anyone to launch a new product, fund an arts project, launch or expand a business, or raise money for compassionate causes. It enables anyone to try and make a difference to their own lives or to others’ without having to rely on support from the previous gatekeepers who controlled access to being heard about – the media, and access to money – including banks, grant providers, government startup loans, high net worth individuals and venture capitalists. Crowdfunding is thus often described as having democratised access to financial resources, it’s no longer so much about who you know to go to.

The usual crowdfunding process is for individuals or organisations to create a project with a timeline and fixed purpose rather than open-ended generic fundraising, with a written ‘sales pitch’ and usually an encouraging video, hosted on a crowdfunding platform (a website). A platform is an online marketplace that enables potential backers to contact the project owner and handles all the transactions. The platforms bring together people who seek money with people who are looking for causes, projects or new businesses to support, in a trusted environment.

A very important aspect is to recognise that successful projects have access to a crowd of people to drive to their project on a crowdfunding platform. This can be achieved by various means, such as traditional press releases, publicity stunts and other types of events to achieve media coverage, though the make-or-break is usually successful use of digital marketing and social media. And when I use the word ‘drive’ that’s exactly what I mean: co-ordinated, continuous and persistent efforts through a variety of communication channels that actively encourage, cajole and hustle busy people who have many other priorities to visit your crowdfunding project.

Are charities equipped to exploit crowdfunding opportunities?
Forgive me if you operate at or for a charity that doesn’t fit what I’m going to say, but I do have to speak in general terms.

My own experience is that small charities rely on part-time and volunteer staff, who are often using dated IT equipment. Amanda Bringans, director of fundraising at the British Heart Foundation and chair of the Institute of Fundraising, mentioned at Fundraising Live 2018 the importance of keeping such volunteers enthused so they keep turning up. To me, this suggests it could be risky to ask them to leave the comfort zone of what they know how to do and set themselves on a learning curve to master new skills and techniques. Whilst I already believed this applied to smaller charities, I learned at #fundraisinglive that this can equally apply to some larger ones as well.

Nina Saffuri, director of fundraising at War Child, said that research had found 50% of UK charities do not have a digital strategy. This piece of research also found 57% of respondents said their charity suffered from a lack of skills, and 52% said there was a lack of budget to do anything about it. 50% said other challenges are considered more important.

Source: Charity Digital Skills Report 2017

A situation exists where in many charities the leadership focus is elsewhere, there is a low level of expectation in part-time volunteer staff, a low level of investment in them, and thus a continued low level of delivery. It’s a conspiracy of under-achievement which leaves many charities and other fundraisers for compassionate causes unable to take advantage of the growing acceptance of online crowdfunding, or even feel confident about testing it.

Further evidence of keeping the internet and digital marketing at arm’s length comes from an analysis by nfpSynergy of a breakdown of advertising expenditure by media type by charities in 2016. It showed that compared to an overall average of 46% of all advertising budgets being spent online, the corresponding figure for charities was just 5% of their total spend.

The implications of low-level IT skills and a relative unfamiliarity with online advertising and marketing will go further and impede the charity sector’s take up of using machine learning and the application of artificial intelligence.

Is crowdfunding really cannibalising traditional fundraising?
Charles Wells, CMO of JustGiving, presented the results of some personal research he had undertaken. Yes, it was true that crowdfunding initiatives can be up and running in response to a disaster faster than established charities. This does not surprise me. Any well-meaning individual can launch a crowdfunding project, whereas any organised charity or similar organisation has a set of procedures that require authorisation to be sought, considered and given. It becomes a slower B2B-like process that has to consider several people’s input before going ahead, or not.

However, Charles also found that crowdfunding draws in new people to support a charity or cause. “Crowdfunding can teach the joy of generosity,” he said. Beyond their initial donation, new donors can of course be followed up, bedded in more closely, and converted to a regular supporter, perhaps in more ways than simply giving money.

So there is evidence that greater use of crowdfunding would be beneficial. More on what he said at the conference is here.

How to go forward
Crowdfunding platforms and crowdfunding advisers, like me, recognise the dilemma facing many charities over staff availability and social media and IT skill levels for driving a crowdfunding campaign. There is plenty of free advice available, with case studies, best practice guides, online webinars, and introductions to like-minded people who have “cracked” crowdfunding. The crowdfunding platforms JustGiving and Hubbub particularly stand out in this respect, though others are also very helpful including Spacehive at a local community level.

After Fundraising Live 2018 I raised the issue of possible low IT skills through Twitter. It was spotted by the free-to-use crowdfunding platform CrowdPatch who said they were aware of this as a possible concern, and they provide social media and digital marketing training courses.

I spotted in a Google Alert that Crowdfund360 and Chuffed.org had teamed up to provide an 8 week, one morning a week course in London during April and May for charity and compassionate cause fundraisers on how to use crowdfunding successfully. I tweeted about this, and as a result that they were contacted by people in the north of England asking for a course to be held for them in Greater Manchester.

For anyone reading who doesn’t use social media much or at all, are you beginning to see how it informs, connects and opens new opportunities, sometimes quite far afield?

What next?

Crowdfunding is far from being the foe of charity fundraisers, though in many cases it’s going to take some internal investment and perhaps a change of mindset before it can be a friend.
Crowdfunding can reach new donors and respond faster to events.
There are many providers of free advice and low-cost training on how to use it successfully, and a number of potential ad hoc campaign managers to create an overall framework and keep a crowdfunding project on track.
What are you waiting for?

If you’d like to discuss your own views on this issue, or maybe you’d like advice on your own possible crowdfunding project, then please email me at [email protected].

UK energy newcomer raised £487,000 through reward crowdfunding

Posted on January 4, 2018March 20, 2018 by Clive Reffell

The UK consumer energy market is dominated by six companies who between them supply over 90% of the market. Newcomer and disruptive brand People’s Energy raised almost £488,000 last year through reward crowdfunding on Crowdfunder UK, and started trading in August 2017. They needed startup cash, and offered savings against future bills as rewards. Their eventual aim is to really shake up the market through acquiring a million customers who will all be shareholders, making company decisions and receiving a slice of refunded profits.

Here’s the “gap in the market” they want to exploit. None of the current “Big Six” energy companies are recognisably customer-centric. There is a generally critical public perception that they offer complicated tariff structures making it difficult to find the best prices or to compare different suppliers, and that they deliver similarly uninspiring levels of customer service – no more than 43% of any of the Big Six’s customers would recommend their supplier.

There is also public resentment over their “profits before people” ethos: consumer prices never drop when wholesale energy prices do, and energy prices have risen at three times the rate of general inflation over the past 20 years. Amid unproven accusations of collective price-fixing, in April 2017 the Government put in place a price cap on each suppliers’ top tariffs, possibly remaining in force until 2023.

A relatively uncompetitive market dominated by a few large, unresponsive companies who lack customer trust is a ripe target for disruptive new entrants, which is what People’s Energy aims to be. Karin Sode, People’s Energy’s head of marketing, kindly answered some questions for me.

People’s Energy launched by using donations-for-rewards crowdfunding to raise over £487,000 and generate 2,055 customers. What was the thinking behind this?

We differ from all the other suppliers in that we want to give our customers shares in the company and pay back the profits to them, not to some other faceless shareholders. For that reason, we turned down potential investors who wanted equity in return for their investment.

Equally, equity crowdfunding was not an option because although it would have been easier for us [than reward-based crowdfunding] it would dilute the model and our unique offering of ownership to customers. We knew that it was a tall order but we were determined, worked very hard at it, and are pleased that we succeeded and were able to launch the company on 1 August 2017.

Was it difficult to get an operator’s licence given you will operate very differently from the Big Six?

Ofgem (the UK energy market regulator) has been very welcoming and appreciative of the very different model we offer to help shake up a market that suffers from real trust issues. Getting the initial licence was not the hardest thing, a bigger challenge was one of initial funding to get started, and we resolved that through our crowdfunding campaign.

After receiving the licence, we then went through a probationary period called ‘Controlled Market Entry’. We could take on only a limited number of customers while we proved to Ofgem we had the operational capability to serve them well. We went through that period fast, and successfully, and I’m very pleased to say we are now fully licensed to operate and welcome as many customers as we can.

A stated aim is to put 1 million people in charge of their own energy as shareholders in People’s Energy. Will you need to raise more money to achieve this?

We will operate on a “cost plus model” based on wholesale prices and our fixed costs, plus a small buffer that allows us to be robust. We’re a new business with no legacy costs to have to cover. There will be a single tariff for all customers, with our prices always in the lowest 30% of other tariffs on offer. Right now we’re in the lowest 10%. We are now broadly self-funding.

However, there will be a need for some further funding to realise other ambitions to invest in innovative renewable and energy storage solutions. In the meantime, a key interim aim is to sign up 20,000 customers within 18 months of our launch, which is a deadline of February 2019.

Where will People’s Energy customers come from?

We hope to appeal to younger customers through our sharing economy model. Market research shows that the more innovative companies operate in a more community/membership way, such as Giffgaff (a mobile/cell network) and Monzo (banking services).

We plan to build out the community approach and encourage people to share what we offer through personal endorsement to their contacts. This will help us grow the numbers at pace. In addition, we are currently in talks to establish partnerships with various bodies that will help drive up customer numbers more quickly.

In terms of offering your customers control, what sort of issues will they have a say in?

A key aim is to rebuild trust between consumers and energy providers. That can’t be done through words and promises but has to grow through the actions we take. Offering customers an element of control is therefore a direct attempt to make people feel heard and valued, really given a voice.

We want customers to have a say in whether or not we use the profits to purchase renewable generation facilities (including wind and solar farms), invest in development of power storage, or if they prefer to have the profits repaid to them.

We also plan to consult customers on whether they want profits shared depending on their energy usage or if every customer should get the same rebate. The latter option would support individuals in lower income households, but may not be considered fair for people with large usage such as small businesses. We believe the customers should have a chance to decide for themselves rather than us deciding on their behalf in a remote boardroom.

People’s Energy will provide electricity only from renewable sources. Will residential prosumers be able to sell back to you energy they produce from renewable sources?

We are not yet able to accommodate this, though it is absolutely something we want to facilitate as soon as we possibly can. For now, after switching over to People’s Energy for their energy supply, people will be able to continue to sell back surplus energy they produce to their current supplier.

If you are considering a crowdfunding project, whether offering equity or providing rewards, please get in touch if you’d like an objective assessment of your ideas from an independent crowdfunding adviser. Please email me at [email protected] or contact me through Twitter, @Cliveref.

Update on 20th March 2018
CrowdFundRES is a European project that contributes to the acceleration of renewable energy growth in Europe by promoting crowdfunding for financing renewable energy projects. It has published a practical guide for crowdfunding platforms, project developers, investors and policy makers on “Crowdfunding Renewable Energy.” You can access it here.

Swedish Crowdfunding

Posted on November 30, 2017November 30, 2017 by Clive Reffell

Alongside my role as an independent crowdfunding adviser I also source and create original content for a global organisation that covers trends and developments in the crowd and sharing economy, Crowdsourcing Week. The various forms of crowdfunding make up some of its 14-part crowd economy landscape. As part of the build-up to a March 2018 conference in Swedish Lapland I took a look at the current state of crowdfunding in Sweden.

Crowdfunding in Sweden

Crowdfunding in Sweden continues to grow and make headlines, from startups using donations-for-rewards crowdfunding as a sales channel for innovative products to quickly achieve high turnover, to the electric vehicle manufacturer Uniti raising €1.2m through its own equity crowdfunding just last month. It also took pre-order sales deposits on 915 units (main image).

The Swedish government wants to generally encourage crowdfunding as a credible way for small and medium size businesses to raise money and conduct business, and is scheduled to publish a report in December 2018 to propose new legislation which will hopefully create a more secure and better defined crowdfunding market. Source: ECN Review of Crowdfunding Regulation 2017.

There is no central professional body for the Swedish crowdfunding platforms and the precise number of them is open to interpretation under the existing vague rules as to what exactly is or is not a crowdfunding platform. There are also international platforms that operate in Sweden, including Kickstarter and Indiegogo in the rewards-for-donations sector and the Finnish platform Invesdor in the debt and equity sectors. General estimates reckon there are 20 to 25 players in the market. Here are the key ones.

Rewards-for-donations

As in many countries, entrepreneurs with an eye on international markets gravitate towards Indiegogo and Kickstarter, with domestic platform providers reaching a primarily internal audience.

A recent Swedish tech success at an international level was the Trippy wireless docking speaker for smartphones that operates through electromagnetic induction. 165 backers supported the project, raising €15,390.
In numerical terms a far more popular product was a range of cutaway, odour-free socks for men that aren’t visible outside shoes. William & Sterling raised over €153,000 from 4,418 backers in August 2017.
CrowdCulture, which launched in 2010, combines crowdfunding with citizen engagement. It has around 5,000 registered supporters who donate to cultural projects around the country and claim their rewards. Each donation is match-funded by regional or local funding sources operating within corresponding parts of the country. “This civic involvement in allocation of public funding has so far seen 152 projects funded, a success rate of 45% with a total allocation of over €800,000 (SEK8m), “ said Gustav Edman.

Equity and debt crowdfunding (p2p lending)

These two categories are combined as there are platforms that provide both services.

The biggest Swedish operator is FundedByMe which launched in 2011. They have a network of over 100,000 registered investors who have so far invested over €46.3m in equity and loans. FundedByMe is considering an IPO in 2018 (Initial Public Offering) to be listed on the Swedish stock exchange, and are running their own equity crowdfunding campaign through to mid-December 2017. If the IPO goes ahead there will be an early exit point for shareholders.
In August FundedByMe joined forces with Finnish investment company Privanet. Their first joint venture raised €1.2m for the Finnish media-platform builder BCaster.
In a reverse situation, the Finnish crowdfunding platform Invesdor, which already operated across other Nordic countries and in the UK, opened its first Swedish office in Stockholm in September.
Toborrow is a p2p lending platform based in Stockholm and since its launch in 2011 it has provided entrepreneurs with over €6m. Borrowers have to be already trading with a turnover of over SEK1m (around €100,000) and secure the loans with personal guarantees. It isn’t an option for anyone who requires seed or early stage funding.
Tessin is a property crowdfunding platform. It gives people opportunities to invest in a number of properties to spread any risks alongside other investors.
In June 2017 Trine, a platform based in Gothenburg, raised €6m to pursue its aim of tackling energy poverty through closing the gap between private capital in developed countries and local solar partners in emerging markets. A subsequent project in Kenya then raised over €145,000 (17 million Kenyan Shillings) to deploy solar energy systems for 6,000 townspeople.

What does the future look like? In addition to a likely new regulatory framework for crowdfunding in Sweden, right now everyone’s talking about ICOs being “the new crowdfunding.” Funds raised through ICOs now exceed early stage venture capital (VC) investments.

In Sweden, Uniti CEO Lewis Horne has set out plans to launch the first green ICO, Uniti Green Tokens (UGTs). The company will use the upfront income to accelerate its work with the open source community. Early investors will gain access to data generated by the first vehicles on the road in 2019. Further options on how to redeem UGTs could potentially include access to mobility services and car charging options – watch this space!

10 Top Tips for Crowdfunding

Posted on October 30, 2017 by Clive Reffell

In my role as an independent crowdfunding adviser I attend many live pitching events and meet plenty of people who have run successful crowdfunding projects. My 10 Top Tips are based on many meetings and conversations with people working at crowdfunding platforms and with entrepreneurs who have run successful crowdfunding campaigns, mainly equity based and some donations-for-rewards projects. This is intended more for commercial enterprises than fundraising for worthy causes, though many aspects would still apply.

Examine projects by other crowdfunding users in your business sector.
Build your own networks of relevant people for as long as possible before going live. Every person you have ever met is a potential backer! This crowd-building includes making professional media contacts to ensure a good response to press releases in your local area and sent to relevant trade/business sectors.
Thorough planning and preparation is vital. Decide on who (the types of people) you want to tell about your offer; create in advance what you’re going to tell them (the content); plan when to tell them (don’t overload demands on your own time by telling everyone all at once, stagger it); decide which communications channels to use – social media, PR to secure media coverage, meetings and events, content marketing, paid-for advertising. You might want to start getting media coverage months in advance to allow time for items to be published so you can refer to them in your crowdfunding pitch.
Pre-sell to your closest contacts and supporters so that you can count on at least 30% of your funding target or pre-orders arriving in the first few days. This gives the project vital momentum and encourages other would-be backers to get off the fence. Also check for opportunities through your crowdfunding platform (when your project is accepted by one) to identify and contact backers in their network with a relevant investment/product history.
Ensure you and your partners/support team (a team of people is important because most crowdfunding attempts by a sole individual fail) have appropriate social media skills, or have a budget to access some.
Crowdfunding can be a fulltime role. Why wouldn’t it be? Success is possibly going to transform your life for the better. Organise your day job, maybe by taking on temporary support, so you have the time to answer questions, send out information, and personally meet prospective backers. Don’t forget – people invest in people, get out and meet some would-be equity investors or people who could place large orders.
Set weekly targets to monitor progress and check that you are doing enough, and establish what’s working well and what isn’t. Change your plans based on your weekly assessments to do more of what’s working best.
Make it easy for your backers to tell their own networks about your crowdfunding project, provide them with content to use by email and in various social media formats.
Be flexible to accommodate other opportunities that may arise, such as offers of retail distribution or interest from an angel investor.
Invest some time on your new backers because they could turn in to important brand ambassadors for your business.

In short, you will need:

soft ‘people skills’ and confidence to engage persuasively with potential backers;
an ability to segment audiences and identify key prospects;
skills to harness the power of the written word;
social media skills;
an easy-to-deliver and understand SMART business plan and financial projections (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timetabled);
a budget to bring in extra help and any skills or capabilities you lack within your immediate team (such as video production, effective use of social media, writing press releases, organising events);
a campaign plan with KPIs to monitor progress;
and maybe a campaign manager to help you hold it all together and make it work, if you think you need one.

Or contact me, an independent crowdfunding adviser, at [email protected] or on 07788 784373. I can take you through a seven-stage assessment of your readiness to start crowdfunding and identify areas that ought to be strengthened before you go ahead. Then we can start planning how you will achieve success.

How Digital Tokens and Initial Coin Offerings Work for Video Gamers

Posted on September 24, 2017 by Clive Reffell

Independent game designers and smaller-scale publishers often use reward crowdfunding platforms including Kickstarter and Indiegogo to launch new products. In the 10 years since the iPhone was introduced the computer and video gaming industry has been shifting from stand-alone offline platforms (consoles and PCs) to a $multi-billion online industry with a host of new benefits and possibilities. Mass direct connectivity has disrupted yet another market.

Research released earlier this year shows mobile gaming (on smartphones and tablets) is now the largest market segment, accounting for 42% of the total global market and worth an estimated $46.1bn. Mobile gaming is expected to have a 50% share by 2020.

Global Games Market By Segment
Source: Newzoo Global Games Market Report 2017

Benefits of online gaming for game enthusiasts include opportunities to compete against other players. Tournaments have also drawn back in as spectators plenty of former players who can no longer invest sufficient time to excel personally. For game creators, they can connect directly with gamers rather than rely on expensive intermediaries, which is particularly good news for smaller publishers and independent game developers.

As a business model, game companies rely almost entirely on direct consumer spending, rather than an advertising-based model used by many digital or broadcast media companies. In addition to the initial game purchase, players buy advantages such as superior weaponry or access to exclusive content that gives them an edge over other players. Natural ability ultimately hits a ceiling, and serious players can spend considerable sums of money amassing virtual goods to be competitive at the top level.

An example of this is Chronicles of Elyria, the highest earning game crowdfunded on Kickstarter when 10,752 backers had pledged $1.36m by June 6 2017. It was created by Soulbound Studios based in Bellevue, Washington. In addition to enhanced weaponry and other accessories, or accelerating progress by starting the game at a superior level, the biggest backers were able to name locations and characters in the game which made them co-creators in the process.

This income was achieved via cash-only pledges through the Kickstarter platform, though a significant online benefit for game developers is to move away from a direct cash-purchase system to the creation of game-specific tokens. Purchasing tokens can be incentivized with savings against ‘retail prices’ when they are later used, thus encouraging gamers to invest larger sums in advance, boosting the early income stream for the developers. Game developers may also choose to award tokens as prizes to expand the token user base, and a strictly finite supply of tokens for any game also drives demand through FOMO – fear of missing out.

Tokens can usually be purchased with cash or cryptocurrencies including bitcoin and ether. The game tokens can be stored alongside the cryptocurrencies in crypto-wallets until they are required. The same underpinning blockchain technology ensures the tokens cannot be used fraudulently or duplicated, and keeps transaction costs to a minimum.

Age of Rust, a futuristic game of intergalactic warfare and rogue artificial intelligence developed by Space Pirate Games, uses Rustbit tokens as a means for players to enhance their performance. In addition to setting a fixed limit of 100 million Rustbits they were sold at an escalating price equivalent to 100,000 tokens for the value of a bitcoin in week 1 to 50,000 tokens pegged to the value of a bitcoin by Week 5.

The emergence of this market has attracted entrepreneurial fintech innovators. Rustbits were created for SP Games by Counterparty. Counterparty-generated tokens can be used for a wide range of purposes and act as their own cryptocurrency, while still running on the Bitcoin blockchain. In effect, game developers are thus releasing their own ICOs – Initial Coin Offerings.

Other providers in this market include GameCredits Inc whose ambitious mission is to create and provide game developers with GameCredits that become a globally-recognized universal currency of the entire gaming world, and thus inter-changeable from one game to another. TokenMarket operates on a wider scale with any blockchain-based business or organization that wants to raise funds for projects through a token or ICO crowdsale.

If you are considering crowdfunding in any of its reward, debt or equity formats and would like an objective overview of the possibilities and benefits relevant to your business or idea then please contact me for an initial no-charge conversation. Please drop me a line at [email protected], I am an independent crowdfunding adviser and not tied to any particular platforms.