Chapter 16
Crowdfunding
Essential Idea: Get People to Invest in Your Cause in Exchange for Something Other Than Money
Crowdfunding has been around for a while, but the term is very new. One of its first incarnations was back in the 1992 presidential election, which Bill Clinton eventually won. But before he garnered the nomination, he was in a heated primary battle with a slew of better-known Democrats, ex-California Governor Jerry Brown among them.
As the primary season moved on, and as Clinton slowly emerged as the front-runner, the other candidates began to withdraw one by one as their money and votes dried up: Paul Tsongas, Tom Harkin, Bob Kerry. But Brown was able to stick around and grind it out against the popular Arkansas governor because he hit upon a then-unique strategy: Brown created an 800 number and asked people to call in and donate to his campaign. He would accept donations of no more than $100. In these pre-Internet days, this was a revolutionary way to tap a lot of money by asking for a little amount of money from a lot of people.
Jerry Brown crowdfunded his campaign.
More recently, filmmaker Kieran Masterton was able to successfully crowdfund his startup—a film distribution business called OpenIndie.com. Masterton says that his month-long crowdfunding campaign netted his business more than $12,000 in funding, along with some great publicity and a “built-in audience and user base for our site.” (“How to Crowdfund Your Startup” by Kieran Masterton, ThinkVitamin.com, ...
