Entrepreneurial Finance Crowd Funding
Goal: Fully develop a crowdfunding campaign for a business.
Due date: May 9th
You all now understand how to build financial projections, what investors are looking for, and how to use Excel if you start having to do complex math. All of this will now come together to allow you to create a crowdfunding campaign. Note that you do not need to launch the campaign—that’s entirely optional.
For this project, you will develop a campaign for a business, service, product, performance, cause, etc. of your choice—your own, someone else’s, or a made up one. You will need to fully develop the campaign from the pitch video, to the backer reward tiers, to the amount you wish to raise, to the explanation, to the FAQ, and anything else I may have forgotten in this list here. This is not nearly as easy as it first seems. (And if you’ve been following along this semester, it shouldn’t look too easy to begin with…)
We will have a workshop on the weekend where you will have direct access to me to act as a mentor and provide insight. If you are unable to make it to the weekend session, there is no makeup work; you still have to develop the campaign, just without the benefit of the opportunity to ask questions. The weekend session is one of the few times you’ll be able to have access to me for this project as I will not answer questions about this project outside of class time. This is your opportunity to apply everything you’ve learned, including your ability to research!
At the end, you will send me the link to your unpublished page and a write up of any research and calculations you did to prepare the page. This will include the financials for your business/idea to show that you’ve effectively and accurately considered the amount of money you need to raise to fully launch. Everything should be based solidly on real numbers, so if you are offering T-shirts as a prize, cite the cost, who is printing it, how much will it be to ship, etc. The same goes for determining how much you need to raise. If your idea is a new headphone design, you better have actual numbers for design and manufacture. If you’re doing a charity cause, then make sure you’ve worked out all the logistics. Keep in mind, the campaign and prizes must be real—no proposing a perpetual motion device or a revolutionary new way to instantly cook food unless you know how to do them. If you couldn’t press “Launch” at the end, then it’s not real. (Note: You don’t have to press “Launch.”)
You will also be responsible for developing your marketing approach (who you will market to, how, and initial outreach) and a preliminary schedule of updates and their content. Remember, these are planned updates, so you can’t include things like “It’s only been a week, and we’ve successfully achieved our goal!”
Note: You do not need to use Kickstarter. You may use other crowdfunding platforms if you find one that is better suited to your idea. For example, if you’re doing a purely charity project, look at Indiegogo.
Grading:
· The crowdfunding page (video, backer tiers, information, Q&A, target funding, etc.): 40%
· Planned marketing and updates: 20%
· Research, calculations, etc. to get everything in place: 40%
2 examples:
13 Kickstarter Post-Mortems to Read Before Launching a Crowdfunding Campaign
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/176187/how_camouflaj_saved_rpubliques_.php
