In the last few years as ‘crowdfunding’ has been gaining ever more momentum and producing viable and innovative opportunities to raise money, the possibilities for students and young people with a great idea and a passion to make it happen have increased.
Crowdfunding is defined by the Oxford dictionary as “the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet”.
The concept is hardly new; in fact crowdfunding in one form or another has been around forever. However, with the power of the Internet, the potential that crowdfunding has for startups has completely transformed the business world.
Here at From Student to Startup, we have put together a list of some great crowdfunding platforms for you to check out. Please do let us know if there are any not in there that you want included, especially any specialist or niche platforms that we may have missed out.
Kickstarter is probably the most well-known crowdfunding platform. Kickstarter focuses on what it calls “independently-created creative projects, it has had 52,425 successfully funded projects to date, while a total of $888 million has been pledged to projects. Kickstarter’s philosophy is that creators keep 100% ownership of their work, but Kickstarter does receive a cut of the total amount raised. Backers that support projects help them come to life, not profit financially, and instead project creators offer rewards to thank backers for their support.
You can look back at some of the great projects of 2012 here
2) Sponsorcraft – Twitter: @Sponsorcraft
Sponsorcraft is a crowdfunding platform attempting to transform university fundraising. Sponsorcraft partners with a range of educational institutions and organisations to connect students, societies, universities and alumni with the aim of providing students the opportunity to pitch their ideas to willing alumni through a targeted process. Every project must achieve its minimum needed by its funding deadline or no there is no exchange of funding.
Founded in 2008, Indeigogo has as its aim to provide the crowdfunding solution that empowers ideas and enables people to donate funds easily. Initially Indiegogo catered to the independent film industry, however it soon expanded to include all industries and now supports businesses, artists, and non-profits all over the world. It has raised millions of dollars for thousands of campaigns worldwide. The fee paid to Indiegogo is 4% of the money raised the goal is met and 9 % if it is not.
4) RocketHub – Twitter: @RocketHub
Rockethub, the self-titled global ‘startup machine’, was founded in 2010 and sees itself as a “partner” for startups instead of a simple crowdfunding platform. Through a partnership has with US cable and satellite television network Arts & Entertainment (A&E), Rockethub is trying to help campaigns reach their targets by providing them with more exposure and promotion. As well as a crowdfunding platform, Rockethub is passionate about startup education.
5) Fundable – Twitter: @Fundable
Founded in May 2012, Fundable is a very recent creation that describes itself as an online funding platform for small businesses. Each small business is required to create a company profile that explains the type company it is, its product, and funding goals. Startups on Fundable can offer rewards or equity in exchange for funding, while they make the amount they have raised available to potential backers who can commit funds directly to the company.
6) Crowdfunder – Twitter: @crowdfunder
Crowdfunder is a California-based crowdfunding platform that facilitates collaborative investment fundraising for startups and social enterprises in the US and Mexico. The way Crowdfunder works is by helping connect businesses to local networks of thousands of entrepreneurs and investors part of their entrepreneurial ecosystem. Their goal is to democratise access to capital for small business that lack the contacts and access to wealthy investors but are made up of “successful and deserving entrepreneurs”.
One of the UK’s largest crowdfunding networks, having launched more than 3000 projects raising over £1 million. They merged with Peoplefund.it in 2012 and launched a network of 101 local newspaper websites with Local World Ltd. With a commitment to community projects, Crowdfunder.co.uk work with project owners to make sure their ideas benefit those around them and not just themselves.
8) Spacehive – Twitter: @spacehive
Spacehive is a London-based crowdfunding website for civic projects. Spacehive works with communities to develop an innovative and creative mix of projects to enhance community life by constantly looking around for new ideas and reaching out to people who might like to get involved. Their goal is to make it easy for individuals, companies and councils to fund things that make places better by allowing them to build support direct from your community.
A crowdfunding option for inventors and makers who help invent products that make life “better, faster and funner” through collaboration. The first step is submitting the idea – a step which does not require the need of a fully-fleshed out plan. “It doesn't matter if it's a little doodle, a crazy chemical formula, or a "wouldn't it be cool if...", are the guidelines on Quirky’s website. The Quirky community will then vote on the ideas they like and provide suggestions to help improve the product in question, while each week a group of industry experts and community members select the products that they will begin working on.
10) CrowdCube – Twitter: @Crowdcube
Crowdcube is a platform for UK entrepreneurs to raise business finance via equity crowdfunding. By tapping into a 'crowd' of like-minded individuals willing to invest directly in exchange for equity, entrepreneurs can access funds that they would otherwise not have been able to. A much different setup and more advanced and with much more risk to the process (which they do explicitly mention) than platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, with "armchair dragons" – a reference to UK tv show Dragons Den - to provide new source of funding for small businesses. In August Crowdcube announced that they had raised over £10m and in December they revealed plans to launch in Italy.