What You Should Know About Crowdfunding

Key Takeaways

welcome everybody to tonight's talk on crowd funding and we're going to be talking about how crowdfunding works how to prepare for crowdfunding perhaps some tips and tricks on how crowdfunding works and give you an insight into cedars we've got karina joining us who's going to be talking about how cedars works they are the leading if not definitely globally one of the leading uh crowdfunding sites in the world and they have done some incredible campaigns in fact i've invested in one business that was on uh cedars that raised money one million pounds in 20 minutes so it really is one of those platforms if you get the launch right if you get the setup right then you can raise serious money to power up your business and power up your dreams so let's get straight into it now you guys have sent some questions into us which we're going to ask but later on on discord live we'll be answering questions from you up on stage so why don't we kick off karina if you don't mind tell a little bit about yourself and what you do at cedars and your thoughts on crowdfunding as an opener yeah absolutely um thanks for that intro simon i'm really excited to be here and tell you guys a little bit about what i do and what cedars does as well so my role at cedars is a campaign associate and essentially my day-to-day job is finding early stage startups and pre-seed startups that are looking to attain investment and a lot of them don't really know anything about crowdfunding so some of it is more me educating them and in other cases they've raised investment before but they're just kind of looking for whether it's a top-up or a marketing exercise to further launch their product and their business into the sphere of investors eyesight so to speak um now i have kind of an extensive marketing and pr background myself which has come in really useful when it comes to working as cedars because i also understand you know how to better position a campaign so that it you know drives that momentum and attains the investment that they're looking to acquire so with crowdfunding um essentially what happens is a lot of the time you know we kind of look for different forms of investment as a as a startup founder so whether that's you know an angel network a private investor looking for your friends and family essentially once you've acquired kind of a lead investor and those conversations don't have to be you know huge numbers they can be anything from you know 10 000 to 20 000 just to work as your lead investor the target goal for many of these founders can be quite on the lower side as well because they're literally just looking to get up and running so that can be a target from 100 000 to 300 000 and as they look for you know those further invest investors crowdfunding can become an incredibly lucrative way of really reaching that target because you're essentially allowing um all of the conversations that you're having whether it's with investors your friends and family the community that you're building with your product or your brand to be able to invest through one portal and that's through the cedars platform so when those investors are able to invest through cders they are viewed as one name on your cap table and they we like that's how we kind of structure our all of our crowdfunding campaigns is that it works under the nominee structure so um the founder who is often very time poor who is already dealing with multiple people and has to think about different things all the every single day we really kind of take care of fostering those relationships and ensuring that you know you only have one major shareholder and you don't have to mitigate a thousand demands and different people's questions and concerns so crowdfunding um is a really great way to launch your product into kind of the sphere and whether it's a product a business you know even a concept i've spoken to companies who are yet even to be up and running completely but they have a great idea and they just need that extra bit of investment or um their first stage of investment and they want to at the same time build their community and crowdfunding kind of marries this ability between um investment and also a marketing exercise so um i hope everybody caught that i always think one of the key things is the nominee piece you know a lot of people can raise money from a lot of people but if it can be a lot to manage whereas i guess under your system there is often one entity that manages the investment right exactly and it's and you know you're working with people at the end of the day like cedars um we all manage the campaigns we ensure that you know the founder is happy with how everything is going and also that there's you know no one no no confusion that everything is clear-cut we have our a dedicated legal team we have a dedicated due diligence team um and you know we are the ones that are managing uh everything on the back end so that we can really help the founder focus on the front face of the campaign which is you know building your campaign page uh putting together the content that goes along with explaining uh what your product does which i guess i should kind of get into as well we kind of have this perspective that you know there's these three key pillars when it comes to a crowdfunding campaign and that is your lead source of investment so like i said that can be even a number on the smaller scale but it's someone that really believes in what you're doing there may be someone that has been involved from the beginning um and someone that wants to kind of be part of this journey with you then there's your community so that's the people that are either using your product our followers you know your personal network is incredibly important in this because you know those are the conversations where people have said oh yeah like i'll maybe i'll invest a thousand pounds but where where do those conversations go you know they can occasionally drop off and you know fall into the ether but the thing is is that those conversations are really crucial for um actually converting it into investment when through the cedars platform so that's kind of the second category and then last but not least is our investor base and the way that we target our investor base is through multiple different ways we have over 300 000 hits on a campaign page that's live on our site at any given point we have a wide pool of really high highly sophisticated investors to just retail investors like myself you know just people that are believing in what the brand is doing um and then there's also sector focused investors who you know will will really be on the lookout for the next health and wellness startup the next fintech brand that's really interesting to them so when we look at targeting our investor base we're really thinking about engaging with both their head and their heart which is a good way of ensuring that you know your brand strategy and the way that you position yourself is able to like get that emotive um investment so usually telling you know your your growth success story the way that you uh started out how you know the hardships along the way is actually also a great way to showcase um the proof of how much you know time and effort has been spent into creating something and that also seems to get a rise from our investors as well interesting so when um some of some of the questions that were sent into us so anybody wants to ask a question by the way in a moment uh that karina will come up on stage on discord where we're hosting this live and we'll answer any of your questions so if you do have any questions about crowdfunding you can put your hand up on and i'll bring you up on stage in a moment but these are the questions that were sent in from the community today and so you've touched on it there but i just want to clarify you know what makes a successful crowd campaign i mean apart from of course having that initial fan having a community and of course then cedars supporting do you see any pointers on the creative you again you mentioned there the story is there any other points you think really ensure a successful campaign yeah absolutely um i think community is the driving force you know it's not about the number of investors you have that are interested in what you're doing but the community that you're building and growing it's something that we are always on the lookout for you know you could have a you could be just a you don't you could even not have a product um you could just have a an idea but if you have a lot of people that believe in what you're doing and if you have that kind of personal uh profile as well online that's great and i know that it's difficult you know to say like not everyone can just be like a linkedin influencer um tomorrow but it's about you know nurturing uh those communities as well and speaking to people as much as you can so that they're aware of what you're doing and what you're trying to build secondly i guess you know as as with everything it's about having you know all the organized elements uh the tick box exercise of having a marketing plan having a plan of you know proof of concept having a go to market plan all of those things are really vital for us as well because we want to ensure that you know what the future holds and in that way we're able to kind of put our trust into the product and into the brand and ensure that it's going to grow and that it will fund with us and potentially even over fund so that's something that's really crucial and we work really closely with um a crowdfunding kind of uh like incubator almost it's called iceq crowdfunding and they really focus on helping um early stage founders really collate that those materials and really explaining the nitty-gritty things like you know how how what makes you seis eligible you know how to put together a business plan things that might seem basic but sometimes you know there's gaps of knowledge for everyone and especially as an early stage founder you're juggling so many plates you need to be aware of you know everything that needs to be done uh before you you go to market and look for investment you mentioned a couple of things that i want to make sure people don't miss and we can put the links in the um resources area later but it's icq crowdfunding that's the company that helps you isqc that's my dyslexia playing up there isq crowdfunding okay yeah because that'll be an important contact for people to have too i think a lot of the time people do see platforms like cedars almost like solving all the problems for them but it's good to know you have partners to help people gather these bits and bobs they need like the marketing plan like the proof of concept to allow them to have a successful launch on your platform so that's that's good for people to know yeah and you know i again like building that community is something i look for in every time i'm speaking to an early stage founder like if they're saying you know we have 200 engaged followers with an email database where we're sending out you know alerts and information to those people all every day or not every day because that'll be too much but you know every every once a week or whatnot that's great because it showcases that you know you have people that are really interested in what you're building and that gives me a faith in that you know we would be able to tap into those groups and when we go live with a crowd fund we'd be able to call you know get them to invest as well in the campaign so um again in a moment you guys can come up and ask questions and of course if you're watching this later on youtube you can leave comments down below and we will answer them or ask karina to answer them so uh please feel free to ask any questions that we don't cover in in this chat today but another question that was asked um what do uh what do cedars look for in companies now again you've mentioned a few things there but is there like any um reason a lot of people will be scared to ask you i guess might be scared to even approach you because they think that they need to be raising a million pounds as i just mentioned in the opening but is there for example a minimum that you'd look for to raise so that people know whether or not to bother you and i know a lot of people want to know that sort of bar that you have so they know oh right i'm only raising like you just said there for example 200 people in a database that doesn't sound like a lot to me therefore a lot of people have probably obtained that and feel like they've probably got a big enough community to approach you but is there any other points you'd like to make as to a suitable candidate to approach you yeah absolutely i mean we we we love being approached i think that you know that's not to say that everyone needs to span our inboxes but um you know we ever every business owner starts at one point or another and not having all the answers or not having everything all together at the beginning is very much part and parcel of the journey right so we essentially look for a minimum of a hundred thousand um for a raise because that's kind of also how we're able to make money as a business uh but you know again we i speak to founders all the time who are looking who don't have a lead investor and need to be connected to angel networks who need to speak to somebody just someone like isq about what they need in order to have a successful crowdfund so when it comes to you know at the starting point of what what where am i where am i meant to go i think that having the business plan having the kind of proof of concept having those future facing goals ambitions and being realistic about them as well is great then having that community yourself that you're building again is a massive benefit when it comes to conversations with us and you know again like being realistic about what it is that you can deliver so that we're realistic about what we can deliver and if that's you know a conversation of um the founder not having a lead investor at that moment in time it we will actually you know ensure that we can provide the utensils and you know we have something called like a campaign tracker so that you know the founder is able to then list all the people that they can speak to and that they can potentially seek investment from and we really want to ensure that we're covering all the bases possible in order to reach the campaign target um so when we say that we need a pre-commitment figure it's usually around the 50 mark so you know that's 50k if we're talking about 100k um but again if say for example you have a much wide a much larger community then we would see that as like a great opportunity to tap into that um pillar and as a result we could potentially be over funding and that's something that happens on our platform a lot um especially because if you take it from the perspective of a retail investor you know if they see that a campaign has already partially funded or has funded half half the way they're going to be more inclined uh to be investing themselves because they'll see like okay this is a campaign that people already believe in that has already achieved investment and this is my chance to be a part of something that whether it resonates for me on an emotional level or on a you know more of a practical business perspective but i see a future for this company and it's about you know creating that momentum which is what we help uh the founders do throughout the entire process wonderful well um i feel like uh maybe we should switch over to discord so everybody listening there doesn't have to listen to pings coming on my computer and be bothered but i appreciate you taking time to share the basics um if you don't mind maybe pop your hand up on discord and then i'll bring you over to discord to take further questions from people in the audience and then we'll stop this recording i think and then we don't get an echo on discord so we'll see you over on discord and if you haven't joined our discord channel you absolutely need to because we always give you the basics here but sometimes for the nuance of the questions that you might have you need to be on the discord community so that we can we can host that for you there so we'll see you there