March 2013
2 posts
October 2012
2 posts
Crowdfundraising will *also* take ~3 months
Elad Gil had a post this week why fundraising from conventional private capital sources (VCs, angels) will usually take two-three months. It occurs to me that that general rule applies to crowdfunding, too. I think this is important for anyone who wants to go the crowdfunding route to understand from the outset. What takes so much time?
Research, 2 weeks: Almost all crowdfunders...
Doing a Crowdfunding Campaign? Learn from Obama.
For all the talk (including on this page) of the revolutionary nature of crowdfunding, it’s really a pretty old fashioned model: It’s more or less what political parties and public radio stations have been doing forever. With that in mind, here are a few things that we can learn from the Obama fundraising machine. (Note: I was on Michelle Bachmann’s mailing list for some reason...
September 2012
4 posts
I've Said it Before and I'll Say it Again: It's a...
I’ve been saying for months now that crowdfunding represents a brand-new micro-public capital market and should/will act like the conventional capital markets that have evolved over the past couple hundred years around the world.
With this in mind, it’s been obvious to me what should happen when people who have raised funds fail to deliver: Nothing. In a capital market...
Even in Crowdfunding, It's Buyer Beware...
Felix Salmon has a post out today that’s about a topic that’s become (for unknown reasons) near and dear to my heart over the past couple weeks. The focus of the piece is a project to create some sort of awesome LED lightbulb that Felix is pretty sure will never actually ship. He seems to know a lot about what it takes to make a brand-new lightbulb and makes a compelling case that is...
No, You Don't Deserve a Refund (Cont'd)
My post on what should happen when crowdfunded projects fail to deliver — short answer: Nothing — has received a couple of interesting responses, including this one from Fund All Be All, who wrote:
Whoa whoa whoa, why should we be encouraging people to just give up if they can’t deliver? Even if they burn through all of the crowdfunded money shouldn’t they still try to some how...
1 tag
No, You Don't Deserve a Refund
NPR ran a piece this weekend called “When a Kickstarter Campaign Fails, Does Anyone Get Their Money Back?” and accurately concluded that, generally speaking, they don’t.
And I think this is okay.
While this might sound like a cold way to treat generous people I’m pretty sure it’s entirely fair (assuming the crowfundraiser didn’t flat-out scam their backers)....
August 2012
6 posts
5 tags
There Are No Crowdfunding Secrets
I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about crowdfunding strategies and, judging by the number of “Secrets of Crowdfunding” posts and expert talks out there, I’m not the only one trying to figure out how to crack this nut. (I’m one of the few, however, who’s trying to make a business of it.) A few examples: Venture Beat wrote a “Secrets of” post a...
2 tags
Neighborhoodies -- How We Did It
SeizeTheCrowd’s first campaign, Neighborhoodies on SmallKnot, finished up yesterday and was a big success all around. Their goal was $7500 and ended up raising $9450 from 72 different investors. I’m very happy for Lori and her team and proud of Josh (marketing/PR) and Dave (video) for helping them achieve this success. So, what’d they do right?
Strong community-centric message:...
3 tags
Creative Mornings' Big Raise -- It Doesn't Just...
I wrote a blind item-type post a couple weeks ago about how working in NYC’s high creative metabolism neighborhoods allowed me to reconnect with a linchpin of the world’s creative community. Well, that linchpin was Tina Eisenberg (aka Swiss-Miss) and when I said that she is a linchpin of the world’s creative community, I wasn’t being hyperbolic. Tina is the woman behind...
2 tags
The Platform Wars
A friend asked me recently what I thought will happen with all the niche crowdfunding platforms. It’s a question I’ve thought about a bunch and in this post I predict that equity-based funding portals’ two sets of customers — issuers and investors — will allow portals to successfully focus on niches. [Insert caveats about TONS of regulatory uncertainty here.]
...
Crowdfunding Rewards are Derivatives (I think)
I’ve written previously about Ouya’s strong team and great updates but I haven’t yet said much about their rewards. (By the way, with 55 hours left in their campaign Ouya has raised $6.8m from almost 52,000 backers. Expect these totals to increase dramatically as the campaign sprints to the finish line. Kicktraq is predicting $7.5m.)
What is noteworthy about the rewards is that...
High Metabolism Cities
Yet another Wall Street Journal story jumped out to me over this past weekend. It was a bit of fluff about why some big and dense cities have high creative and economic “metabolisms” while other big and dense cities don’t. The author’s explanation is that high-metabolism cities do a better job of maximizing ‘the potential informal contact of the average person in a...
July 2012
11 posts
"The segregation of capitalism from virtue"
I pulled the title for this post from Charles Murray’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, which is a tiny bit lengthy and much too sophisticated for me to understand perfectly but which is worth reading if you are in love with Steve Jobs, dubious of Mitt Romney and pretty sure you’re a capitalist but not sure why.
Since not everyone has a WSJ subscription (thanks, Andrew!) or the...
1 tag
Ouya -- Still killing it
When I last wrote about Ouya, they had absolutely killed it in the first couple days of their campaign and had raised $3.8 million from 30,000 backers. I noted at the time that their massive success was not a fluke and, instead, was the result of a professionally run marketing and messaging campaign.
Well, with 12 days left in the campaign the Ouya team is continuing to kill it. They’re up...
Crowdfunding Cutting Edge -- Meetup 1
I launched a Meetup group focused on crowdfunding a couple weeks ago and the first event was Monday night at Flavorpill’s offices. (Thanks @jainspotting!)
It was a great and diverse group and I think I managed to speak with almost all of the 30-something people who showed up. There were inventors, developers and non-profit board members contemplating campaigns. There were startup...
2 tags
Creative Financing: Neither an oxymoron nor a...
Who do you believe when it comes to the prospects for equity crowdfunding in the US once the JOBS Act comes on line in the next few months?
Do you believe Fred Wilson, who has predicted that the crowd will invest $300 billion?
Do you believe the venture capitalist that I spoke to last week who was a seed investor in a prominent rewards-based crowdfunding platform and/but thinks that the JOBS Act...
1 tag
Why it might not work: App.net (cont.)
Dalton over at join.app.net has posted a response to some of the criticisms and critiques he’s received since launching a crowdfunding campaign to raise $500K for a user-fee supported Twitter community.
The first thing to say is that, while the campaign is less-than-perfect, it is getting much more traction than many other campaigns ever manage: They’ve got about $62,000 in...
2 tags
Scott Britton's lifehack class will change your...
Last week I went to a great lifehack Skillshare class taught by Scott Britton of SinglePlatform. Even if you don’t care about how to get free coffee from Starbucks and have no position in the credit card points vs. miles debate, I strongly suggest taking this class. There were lots of great tips and I won’t steal Scott’s thunder by giving out specifics but I think I can boil a...
1 tag
Why it might not work: App.net
A short post by Gordon Bowman turned me on to a $500K crowdfunding campaign for app.net, a user-fee supported version of Twitter. Even though they’re only three days into a 30 day campaign, app.net is already instructive but mostly for the mistakes which may doom it.
Target market: We can guess at who app.net’s campaign’s target market is by the rewards they’re offering:...
2 tags
Ouya: That just happened; But it didn't _just...
Unbelievably, Kickstarter’s launch in the UK is the second biggest crowdfunding story of the week. The biggest story, of course, is Ouya the video game console that (as of 7:21 AM in New York) had raised $3.8 million and had more than 30,000 backers. As a friend put it to me in a gchat:
those aren’t some kids in a dorm room
those are professionals raising capital
for their...
3 tags
Why it Worked: Bicycle Frame Handle
Today’s crowdfunding campaign review: The Bicycle Frame Handle (h/t: VentureBeat)
Basic Stats:
Platform: Kickstarter
Goal/Pledges/Backers: $3,500/$19,584/513
Best reward: $275 —> 12 handles for $23 a piece (encouraging retailers to buy wholesale)
Beyond having a good product this campaign did a lot of things well:
Short and sweet video. They were, of course, aided by the fact...
2 tags
As many video styles as there are ideas
I attended a panel discussion on Kickstarter campaigns last night that included five people who managed to pull off very successful crowdfunding campaigns. Unfortunately, the organizers only selected people who had raised money for consumer projects so there was a bit of a lack of diversity in that respect. It was, nonetheless, useful to see five successes lined up next to each other.
The event...
3 tags
The occasional payoff
As I’ve written before, the past few months have been heavily focused on developing relationships with lots of new people; which is to say, I’ve been networking.
While the networking effort has been semi-focused with respect to industry, it’s been free-form and agenda-less with respect to specific people. For the most part I have followed relationship threads wherever they led...
June 2012
9 posts
4 tags
Crowdfunding: It Doesn't Just Happen - Rubicon
Hi!
I found another great crowdfunding post-mortem, this one from a video game developer Wick Perry in Portland, OR.
Basic stats:
Platform: Kickstarter
Goal/Pledges/Backers: $2000/$5215/278
Duration: 30 days
Highlights:
Wick came up with a great reward for the $16 donor level: That group’s names became cheat codes in the game. This is a great reward because it has the characteristics...
3 tags
Crowdfunding: It Doesn't Just Happen (Part I)
If I’ve spoken or corresponded with you in the past, say, six weeks it’s very likely that I’ve brought up crowdfunding. My basic thesis is that this brand new capital market is actually much harder to access than it seems and that people who have succeeded have run much more sophisticated campaigns than it may seem. So, starting today I’m going to have a running series of...
Can You Literally Sell a Fantasy? (cont'd)
TheThoughtPolicePolice points out that I might have entirely misunderstood the Kia ad I wrote about earlier today:
Think this ad is saying that a Kia is willfully included in the dream world of awesomeness that will never happen. But the Kia could happen.
Hmm … . I see his point and appreciate the different (and probably more accurate) take: “Your dude-dreams contain beautiful...
Can You Literally Sell a Fantasy?
Throughout its first five seasons, an occasional theme to Mad Men’s in-show ad campaigns’ has been selling men their fantasies and the corollary of selling women the promise of becoming a man’s fantasy. Season 1 had “Are you a Marilyn or a Jackie” (woman becomes fantasy) and the most recent season equated a Jaguar with a mistress (man buys fantasy). In each case the...
Stories Go Stale
Two years ago I was trying to decide whether to take a career risk by leaving my large and famous law firm in New York for a small and obscure impact investment private equity fund in Australia. I discussed the prospect endlessly with family, friends and my now-fiancee. Would the work be interesting? What would I get to learn and do? Was it too big a pay cut? What story would I be able to tell...
There's a Reason They're Called "Campaigns", cont.
I discovered recently that a colleague from my old firm left the law a few months after I did and has been building a fashion consultant business for the past year or so. Her angle is advising female lawyers on how to dress for their workplace. Keen to connect with fellow legal services refugees and fellow entrepreneurs, I met her for a coffee today.
She seemed happy and satisfied with her change...
Palpable Momentum
Another sports inspired post … .
The game to game, quarter to quarter, and minute to minute momentum swings in the NBA’s Eastern and Western Conference Finals have been amazing. Those ten and fifteen point runs that the best basketball teams can pull off are breathtaking and awe-inspiring. And they’ve got me wondering about what momentum actually is.
It seems to me that for a...
There's a Reason They're Called "Campaigns"
Like a lot of first-time entrepreneurs, I foolishly believed (okay, hoped) that my company, Book City Jackets, would experience hockey stick growth just as soon as the right blog or magazine wrote about us. With that in mind, a lot of my PR energy went into developing relationships with blogs and magazines that I thought were cool in the hopes of getting that magic mention that would open the...
Getting Out There
A significant portion of my days are spent meeting and speaking with people I don’t know. It’s intense work that I put a lot of effort into but the good news is that it’s something that has come naturally to me. My approach to meeting new people is to have and convey a sincere interest in the immediate moment and only later try to think through the strategic prospects of the...
May 2012
12 posts
10 Years and 5 Years
I attended my 10 year college reunion in Providence this weekend and, in order to avoid holiday weekend traffic insanity, my friend, my fiancee and I took Amtrak.
While we successfully avoided traffic, we were not able to listening to other people’s conversations on the crowded train. The loudest conversations were being held by a crew that was pounding tall boys and headed to Brown for...
I Thought I Was the Only One!
Having been out of the country when Spotify-mania first hit, I am late getting to the extremely cheap music party. Now that I’m at here I’ve been finding myself playing the same “Top Tracks” over and over again as I hustle from one meeting to the next. While my musical knowledge and imagination are not growing, it’s been a good soundtrack.
Among the Top Tracks,...
Opacity and Access
I studied mechanical engineering as an undergrad and then, after some time working abroad, went to law school. It’s a funny but not unheard of combination and I argued in my law school essay that legal analysis and the scientific method are actually analogous:
facts : law :: data : science
legislation : law :: natural “laws” : science
holdings : law ::...
Feeding the Pipeline vs. Thinking Deep
Among the many things I learned in my brief time working in private equity was the importance of feeding lots of opportunities into the deal pipeline. For us, finding a deal was a matter of keeping the volume of relevant items entering the pipeline as high as possible, turning the crank — having the meetings, reading the decks, debating internally, deciding whether to move forward or not...
Brutal but not Malicious (cont'd)
A friend responded to my discussion of whether it might be tacky to credentialize yourself by telling people the specific sale price of your previous company by pointing out that, not only is it not tacky, it is the best credential of all. His point was that, at base, entrepreneurs are supposed to create value for their investors and that’s why it’s good to tell people you sold your...
Brutal, but not Malicious
I attended last week’s Ultra Light Startup pitch night and discovered that critics can be brutal without being malicious. Eight companies pitched for two minutes in front of four judges (real-world VCs) and about 200 audience members. Some pitches were strong and some were weak and there was surprisingly little schaudenfreude when the pitchers stumbled or were stumped.
A couple highlights...
High-percentage shots
The Knicks’ Tyson Chandler had two notable achievements this season: He was named Defensive Player of the Year and he had the third highest field goal percentage ever. Each of these distinctions relate to different parts of the game — and opposite ends of the court, to boot — but they are both pretty clearly the result of a single core attribute. Namely, Tyson Chandler works...
1 tag
WatchObama on equality: Finally.
House of Genius
I attended a novel networking event last week organized by House of Genius and held at Think Conservatory. House of Genius shares DNA with a lot of tech networking events — three companies presented and received feedback — but the genetic connection is like that of penguins and ostriches.
The defining novelty of House of Genius is that for almost the entire three hours the twenty...
Be the 100%
One of the big and mostly pleasant surprises of moving from a well-resourced law firm to a decently funded impact investment private equity fund was that I had unwittingly joined a startup.
It is unusual, I think, to describe an investment company as a startup but that’s what it was (per Ries): The fund was trying to deliver a new service — double bottom line investing on behalf of...
April 2012
6 posts
Indistinguishable from magic
It’s rare to see jaws drop at enterprise tech demos but that was more or less what happened at last week’s New York Enterprise Technology meetup when iRise demoed StudioMX, which lets you create “incredibly realistic simulations of iPhone apps without writing code”.
Over the course of ten minutes, nimble fingered Eli Bozeman created a working mock up of a hypothetical...
NBA Complaining: North America's soccer flop?...
[NB: For some reason, tumblr cannot accept apostrophes in post titles.]
I was an avid basketball fan in my youth but, like so many who came of age watching Patrick Ewing almost win an NBA title, I lost interest in the NBA around the time I got my drivers license. When Linsanity hit, I jumped on the bandwagon and have stayed on despite the fact that a knee injury means that the Knicks are now just...
Who should you share with?
Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT and the author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, had an opinion piece in the Sunday Times describing and lamenting the phenomenon of a smart phone-equipped society that is lonely despite being constantly connected.
It’s a good read and I was struck by the following paragraph:
And we use conversation with...
Not Presuming to Know
Without a doubt, the best chats, meetings and get togethers I have are the ones where I take the time to get to know the other person and their business before we ever met. It makes it easier to understand what they’re saying (including their jargon) when I’ve got a context to place it in and it’s easier to develop a rapport with someone if I have a sense of where they’ve...
