For those of you oblivious to the concept of crowd funding, it is steadily growing as a model of financing small businesses and other endeavours. Indiegogo as a crowdfunding website makes use of social networking platforms to give easy accessibility to a vast pool of investors who typically put up small amounts into projects that appeal to them. According to Slava Rubin, who co-founded Indiegogo with Danae Ringelmann and Eric Schell in 2008, one does not need a ‘right’ time or detailed business plan to pursue something one is deeply passionate about. The website has given various ventures – including films, charities, businesses and recordings – a means to raise money and attract potential customers from a global audience.
Indiegogo really makes it as simple as just visiting their website and telling people about what one is doing, how they can help and what is in it for them. The best part is that one can start immediately! They do not sieve through the campaigns to decide which ones get featured on the website, because in their opinion every idea deserves a chance! Creating a campaign is absolutely free of cost and the website only gets a share once the campaign starts raising money. Compared to other crowd funding websites, Indiegogo charges as low as a 4% fee on a successful campaign that has reached its monetary goal. They take great pride in their 24 hours customer service. However, their most popular feature which has attracted many users to create campaigns is the proprietary “Gogofactorâ€, an algorithm used by the website that evaluates key characteristics and activity on each campaign, thereby providing a merit-based determination of the campaigns that get featured on the homepage.
On the other hand, investors can look forward to the satisfaction of having supported a cause that they care about or a project that sparks their interest while being offered a series of perks that range from simple T-shirts and mugs to being featured in the credits or having their faces animated into movies sponsored! By allowing payment via PayPal, Amazon, direct credit cards and checks, Indiegogo bolsters its funder-friendliness. Their anti-fraud systems are consistently involved in identifying and eliminating fraudulent activities and scams.
They share our vision of practicing safe crowd-funding and as such we have proudly partnered with them to promote the same. Traklight is organizing a free educational webinar, “Avoiding Mistakes and Preparing for Equity Crowdfunding” on the 17th of September in part with Indiegogo and Crowdnetic.
For more information and to register for this event, click here.