Crowdfunding

“So, like, maybe you only need to, like, have a 10 to 15% buffer. But if you're talking about, like, heavy hardware that you're shipping from China and, like, all these things, you might want to have a bigger buffer of, like, 25, 30%.”

“We raised really well on crowdfunding and it's also great marketing because you're always online. You're like, people are talking about yours, like great marketing tool, but it also creates a lot of problems in the longterm.”

“Companies figured out if you spend a dollar on Facebook, you can drive 10 dollars of investment, so why would you not just Do that. It's like an infinite money glitch, basically.”

“If you want to do a 100,000 dollar campaign, for example, you need 30% of your total that you want, your goal, on day one. That's how the crowdfunding math works.”

“All the projects you've ever seen in your life focus on that funding part and they ignore the crowd part.”

“I think what it really did was it turned something, an experience that was transactional, buying and receiving a good into something fun that you're involved with. Rather than, give me 20 bucks and I'll send you a card game in a couple months. Instead it was, …”

“We built up a lot of confidence that shifting from crowdfunding to membership, which is what Patreon is now, was sort of the right move.”

“I think best practices, if anyone here is doing a hardware startup think best practices. Is you don't do it at the earliest stages and you do it later when you have like V two V three and you're ready to manufacture at scale.”

“Like there are a few things in the startup world that kind of are like one shot kill. And, you know, this is one of them. You screw up with enough people's money. It never leaves you. Like you get that permanent Wikipedia page.”

“Crowdfunding is the, you know, bottom of the barrel of companies. Like the best companies, the ones that are hot, that are growing, get picked up by professional investors. And the stuff that you end up seeing on crowdfunding sites, I don't think are the big b…”

“We were investors in, in Oculus, and I don't think Oculus would have ever gotten initially funded had it not been for the crowdfunding.”

“What happened with us in crowdfunding has allowed us to have just so much more creative control, and a more natural relationship with people who we make games for, because they're funding our games, and we're directly in contact with them.”

“If you actually look at what happened about 40 years ago in films, you'll actually see film financing came about then, and the creators were freed from a studio framework, and it's really interesting to see what's actually happening right now with crowdfunding…”

“You're left with a paywall model, which the New York Times and the Journal are, you know, and other, and the FT maybe are experimenting with. There's some other experiments going on with, like, crowdfunding and things, and then there's native advertising, and …”

“The press loves to call attention to, I think these sort of sexy, cool trends things like crowdfunding and three printing and that kind of stuff, which I actually, I think is actually a very small part of the story.”

“It's not necessarily a winner-take-all space. You know, I've heard people describe Kickstarter as becoming the Friendstoper space, but I'm not really seduced by that argument. I think that there's room for more than one platform, and they, their models really …”

“And I think that is a very powerful concept, and I think there'll be some very big businesses built over time. And I still think, I think we're still in like the second innings of this space.”

“And our hypothesis is, is that crowdfunding will have a very similar narrative arc to blogging to where, you know, 1213 years ago, blogging was this thing that had a lot of hand waving, had a lot of it was on the tips of you know, journalist tongues of the, yo…”

“I don't think we think of it in terms of crowdfunding. I often think of crowdfunding as a bit of advertising. I mean, it's great to have that money, but chances are they probably raised around a seed round before that. So it's more about validating the custome…”

“No, I actually think it helps it. I mean, a lot of the best crowdfunding runs I've seen have been alongside a VC. One. And two I think, you know, there, there's a lot of businesses out there that frankly don't need venture capital. They need capital, but not v…”

“I don't think it's got the potential to replace VC, but as a part of the funding landscape I think it will be around.”

“I think it's a very positive step, not so much because of what the Act actually is, because I think it's been greatly diluted from the original principles of when it was proposed. But what it sort of signals to the market about the fact that the alternative fi…”

“If you look at the crowdfunding sort of growth across the world, and I think you'll find UK is actually leading the market in that way before SEC.”

“And I think the economic crisis in 2008, perhaps pushed it along a little bit when Traditional credit was sort of squeezed out, but this would have happened regardless of the 2008 crisis or not.”

“I've asked a lot I've asked Luke Lang, Tom Britton, Crowdcube Syndicate Room, is crowdfunding replacing VC which many think it might do, and that VC value-add is something that cannot be replaced by the crowd, in my opinion, giving it a real sustainable longev…”

“What we're seeing is that VCs aren't coming in into a round until it reaches a certain size, and that size is getting larger and larger. So, so what A VC would have done a few years ago, five or 10 even, you know, playing in a two million round. Now they won't…”

“Over 500,000 new businesses were started last year, right? And how many of them are getting funding through crowdfunding? A couple hundred at most.”

“Historically, getting hardware companies funded was very difficult, and this allows companies to essentially prove their concept with an initial audience, which is really key.”