The intriguing part of Crowdfunding is you don’t have to have any money, but your project or business idea and a good plan. However, a viable concept is crucial to avoid campaign failure. For non profit aspect, it allows individuals to get funded in life threatening situations.
Crowdfunding has been used to fund a wide range of Projects such as artistic and creative projects, medical expenses, travel, weddings, or cosmetic surgery, with the help crowdfunding a daughter was able to meet her lost dad, and many more.
Did you know that $3 billion has been pledged to independent creators on Kickstarter ( the no 1 largest platforms) ? It has raised a lot of eyebrows that Prestigious Publications like CNN, the Wall Street Journals and the Forbes picked it up. It’s a big figure, but stepping back, what it represents is much bigger. There is no denying that it is one fast moving train you may want to hop on.
What is Crowdfunding? Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture or business idea by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet. If the Crowd love your idea or project they contribute individually towards it.
Crowdfunding is a form of Crowd-sourcing & alternate finance rather than raising funds from traditional sources like banks, business angels & venture capitalists which is quite difficult to achieve as they don’t want to take any risk. In 2015, a worldwide estimate totaling over $34 billion was raised by crowdfunding.
There are over 20 Crowdfunding platforms/websites i.e Kickstarter, Fundable, Indiegogo, gofundme etc. Remarkably, so many projects has raised way more than their funding goals. i.e The Pebble Smartwatch raised $10.2million but initially wanted to raise $100,000. Furthermore, the Pebble smart watch which was formerly rejected for Venture Capital, eventually secured a huge amount of Venture Capital Finance after its Crowdfunding success.
Most intriguing, people with life threatening illnesses can get people to fund them, nothing beats this.