The Exchanges

Q And what's your business model? Is it a transaction fee or you mentioned, it sounds like you mentioned some SAS model.

A Yeah, so right now, specifically in this market of higher education and healthcare, we have an implementation fee typically ranges between five and 10,000 dollars, and then we'll typically have an annual subscription that ranges between 12 and 25,000, depending on the agreement. We have some agreements that are, you know, 50, 60,000 dollar deals for large institutions that have multiple campuses, stuff like that, but it is a renewing annual subscription in that sense. And then for some of the smaller markets that we go into, like smaller non-profits and such, I'm sure you're going to start to see a little bit of the percentage model and the, uh, monthly fees and stuff like that. And so, and then, yeah.

AI assessment note: “we'll typically have an annual subscription that ranges between 12 and 25,000”

Q And, and so if you look at 2017 kind of goals, two questions. One, what do you think your total revenue will be? And two, what do you think the total amounts raised through your platform will be in 2017?

A Those are great questions. Uh, so the first question I'd say, you know, right now we're projecting 1.2 million dollars in revenue this year. Uh, and fortunately we already passed our Q one goal this year. So that's exciting news for us. Uh, well, basically the, it's, uh, The goal for the year was about a hundred, a 100,000 dollars for this, sorry, for this quarter, uh, because there's the buying cycle of universities, the majority of our sales come in Q two and Q three because of the fiscal year. Um, so, but anyways, yeah, so we had our Q one goal of a 100,000 dollars already passed in the first three weeks. Um, and then as far as the total raise for the platform this year, it's really hard to tell, to be honest with you. I mean, I'd, I'd like to see, uh, over three million dollars raised from the universities that are using it. I don't know if that's going to be attained or not. It really depends on how well they listen to our advice. That's been the biggest challenge, I think, because a lot of them are steeped in such policy and procedure and large organizations with leadership challenges that they can't really take our advice on how to do this new paradigm of online fundraising.

AI assessment note: “right now we're projecting 1.2 million dollars in revenue this year”

Q Yeah, that's very good. Okay, so, so what is, how do, tell me, did you get your loan through Community Funded?

A No, no, man. So this is what happened is that, uh, I had given up. I was not going to expand. I was just going to focus on my singular shop. And I was telling my story to one of my customers that came in on a regular basis. Uh, and he basically said, well, I want to see another mugs in town. I'll chip in some money. Another customer heard about that. Another customer all of a sudden had two handfuls of customers all chipping in money to help me open this new coffee shop. Uh, and that's how that new shop came to fruition. Uh, it was about five months after that shop that I heard on NPR a story about Kickstarter, and when they were just starting to expand out of New York, Um, you know, back when there's only a handful of crowdfunding websites on the internet and I just connected the dots. I say what happened to me in the real world with my community is what Kickstarter is doing for creative artists. Why not create a platform for communities to come around good ideas? Um, and so we pulled together some friends and started the, uh, nights and weekend kind of scenario of, uh, building a platform and whiteboarding all the ideas. Uh, and that's how community funded came to be.

AI assessment note: “No, no, man. So this is what happened”

Q I mean, are these, like, endowments doing things to, like, build a new building on campus, or is it, like, give the quarterback a new car because he won the Super Bowl? Like, what is, what's the kind of things they're raising for?

A Sure, I mean, not to be cliche, but we like to say anything's possible when it's community funded, and, uh, and really what it comes down to is all these universities are using it in different ways, and what we're excited about is we now start to get some more historical data, uh, is to really understand what works most effectively for universities, and so we can share those insights to, you know, really help people shape their strategies, but the reality is right now we've had everything from scholarships and research to club sports and different activities there, uh, all the way even to like a student alum Excuse me, a student that became an alumni and decided to ride a 50 cc scooter from Boulder to Alaska to raise money for a scholarship. Oh, cool. You know, so just, just really fun, creative ideas as well as very practical things. Uh, and really what we emphasize and we're focused on is helping these large, dynamic fundraising organizations basically centralize their story. You know, bring together the storytelling and the fundraising into one platform that's user friendly, that really gives an experience to the user of this is what this organization does.

AI assessment note: “we've had everything from scholarships and research to club sports and different activities”

Q Both equity. Okay. So you, they were both priced kind of equity rounds. That's great. How did you value the company? I mean, what are the investors looking at total funding gone through your platform or what?

A You know, they, they, uh, there's some appreciation for a hard market. Higher education is a long sales cycle and to have the traction we had so quickly with the product we had, uh, that was a high value, especially since a lot of them were three to five year contracts, a lot of renewing annual subscription. Um, that was one piece of it, but really, you know, really it was, uh, sold on the vision. We had a nice mix of, uh, individual investors as well as traditional, you know, venture capital and angel money. And, uh, and, and really people believed in the vision we were selling. Which is really a global platform, uh, to connect people, ideas, and capital. And we're, you know, even though we're focusing on one market as of last year and expanding into healthcare and some other markets now, uh, they really see the clear vision on what we're trying to create here.

AI assessment note: “traction we had so quickly with the product we had... three to five year contracts”

Q Okay. All right. So bring in community funded. What's it do? And how's it tie into the story?

A Yeah, absolutely. So it was a beautiful tie-in. I, uh, I had focused on my one downtown shop, just being back by my counter, really just excited to be back connected with my community instead of in an office. Uh, I went, had this opportunity. I've sat on a lot of different boards in the downtown Fort Collins community, and I had this opportunity to come across my desk for a location right across from campus and new development. And my downtown shop had gotten so busy with me focusing on that one shop that I started to have regular customers that were kind of frustrated with the lines every day and such. A good problem to have, but, uh, identified that. So even though the location is only about five blocks away, four blocks away, I said, you know, I want to split my market between my downtown Fort Collins and my community, my Colorado State University location. So I went for about 11 months fighting with the banks and the SBA, and this is 2010, to secure a loan to open this new location. I already had a lease ready to go, tenant finish, money included, ready, you know, ready to take all the lessons I learned and re-expand. And I could not find a loan to save my life, you know, as far as, you know, trying to open this new shop. Restaurants aren't necessarily the easiest to lend.

AI assessment note: “I went for about 11 months fighting with the banks and the SBA”