It’s a well-known story: you have a great idea, you work out a business plan, form a company and dream about your inevitable success.
Then you go to the bank to ask for a small business loan, and... you get denied. Until about a decade ago, this was the end of the road for countless start-ups.
In recent years, crowdfunding has become enormously popular as tech-savvy entrepreneurs turn to the online community when traditional funding can’t be secured.
Crowdfunding allows smaller and non-traditional businesses to gain a foothold in the market by raising the money they need to launch their organizations.
In this book, you’re going to learn what crowdfunding is, how it works, and how you can use it to your advantage.
We’ll look at where you should crowdfund, what your campaign should look like, and how you can bring in investors with this great new method.
Crowdfunding is the method of raising funds through multiple small donations from a range of investors through an online platform.
Given that crowdfunding is a relatively recent addition to the world of business, it’s easy to track its growth and evolution.
Some historians argue that methods such as selling war bonds and artist patronage are pre-cursors to crowdfunding, but crowdfunding as we know it definitely developed in the 1990s.
The first large-scale crowdfunding campaign was hosted in 1997 by the English rock band Marillion, who raised $60,000 through online fan donations to fund a U.S. tour.
This sparked a trend of artists using crowdfunding to finance their projects and the first crowdfunding platform, Artist-Share, was set up in 2000.
From 2008 to 2011, crowdfunding soared in popularity for businesses outside the arts industry, as platforms like Indiegogo, Kickstarter, and GoFundMe were established.
