The Crowdfunding Revolution: How to Raise Venture Capital Using Social Media

Book description

THE GROUNDBREAKING NEW METHOD FOR RAISING VENTURE CAPITAL THROUGH SOCIAL NETWORKS

“The declaration of independence for our industry!”
—MAT DELLORSO, WealthForge Inc.

The Crowdfunding Revolution should be on the mandatory reading list for everybody active in the industry or for everyone who’s planning to be.”
CROWDFUND NEWS

“Kevin Lawton and Dan Marom have done a great job. . . . A must-read for everybody entering the field of crowdfunding!”—GIJSBERT KOREN, Smarter Money

“We recommend this book highly to anyone who is fascinated by this new methodology for funding projects and endeavors. . . . A wonderful read.”
—BRIAN MEECE, RocketHub

“Read this book if you want to catch the next wave!”
—FRED BRYANT, WealthForge Inc.

“A must-read for anyone interested in the early stage funding process.”
—MANDAR KULKARNI, pluggd.in

The Crowdfunding Revolution offers fundraising inspiration for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.”
—BUSINESS2COMMUNITY

The Crowdfunding Revolution offers fundraising inspiration for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.”
—SMALL BUSINESS TRENDS

YOUR POOL OF INVESTORS JUST INCREASED BY 2 BILLION . . .

Since the day the first human being approached a prospective investor, the province of capital allocation has been controlled by a small and entrenched minority.

All this has changed. Now, the power of the Internet—particularly social media—enables anyone to connect with more investors in less time than it used to take to connect with one. The investing pool is open, everyone is in—and The Crowdfunding Revolution shows how to get to the forefront of the new world of venture financing.

This groundbreaking guide explains how the explosive growth of connectivity is obviating human-to-human networks and centralized planning of capital allocation—and describes how crowdfunding can be used to tap into a “collective intelligence” for far superior results.

Providing a wealth of information that will make your crowdfunding efforts more efficient and productive, the book is organized into three thematic sections:

THE ROAD HERE: A thorough overview of what crowdfunding is—and how and why this radical new approach is replacing traditional means of venture financing
THE CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN: Proven methods for marketing to the crowd, setting clear objectives, building a crowdfunding team, and communicating in a way that inspires action
THE ROAD AHEAD: The crowdfunding ecosystem, intellectual property issues, mining collective IQ, new investment models, and regulations

More than 2 billion people globally are now active online—and that number is guaranteed to grow at an extraordinary rate. The Crowdfunding Revolution explains all the ins and outs of raising investment capital by using social media and new technologies to draw small sums of money from an almost countless number of sources.

Organic. Transparent. Decentralized. This is crowdfunding. This is the future. Read The Crowdfunding Revolution and become the first expert in your crowd on this radical new approach poised to supplant age-old venture financing methods.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. The Crowdfunding Revolution: How to Raise Venture Capital Using Social Media
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Introduction
  7. Part | I The Road Here
    1. Chapter | 1 The Rise of the Crowd
      1. The Dynamic Duo: Social and Physical Technologies
      2. Affinity Groups
      3. Participation and the New Pro-sumer Class
      4. The Response to the Loss of Social Capital
      5. The New Crowd-ployment Paradigm
      6. The Crowd-poration
    2. Chapter | 2 The Decline of Established Financing
      1. The Rate of Change
      2. The Durability of Expertise
      3. A Multidisciplinary World
      4. Market Time Compression
      5. Capital Efficiency and the Rolling Close
      6. Macroeconomic Sensitivity
      7. The Start-Ups’ Response
      8. The Venture Capital Industry’s Response
      9. The Market Sizing Fallacy
      10. The Base of the Funding Pyramid
    3. Chapter | 3 The Decline of Outlier Identification
      1. Curation: The New Leadership
    4. Chapter | 4 The Emergence of Early Financing
    5. Chapter | 5 The Rise of Crowdfunding
      1. At the Edge of Chaos
      2. Do It With Others (DIWO)
      3. Critical Mass
      4. The New Ritual, the New Status
      5. Rivers Without Cascades
      6. Valuations
      7. Long Tails and Shrinking Heads
      8. Gender Equalization
  8. Part | II The Crowdfunding Campaign
    1. Chapter | 6 Benefits
      1. Money
      2. Marketing
      3. Participation and Emotional Attachment
      4. Currying Serendipity
      5. Returns, Rewards, and Perks
    2. Chapter | 7 The Artful Ask
      1. Authenticity: Keeping It Real
      2. Impact and Appeal
      3. The Team
      4. Clear Goals
      5. Starting Fires with Influencers and Core Fans
      6. Rewards and Perks
    3. Chapter | 8 The Journey
      1. Follow Inspiration with Massive Action
      2. Drive Traffic with Social Networking
      3. Motivate Your Network: Keep Them Involved
  9. Part | III The Road Ahead
    1. Chapter | 9 Infrastructure and Ecosystems
      1. The Power of Virtual Infrastructure
      2. The Ecosystem
      3. The Power of Tags
      4. Integration and Evolution in the Ecosystem
      5. When Dartboards Are Better Than Groupthink
      6. Funding the Way the Market Wants It
      7. Solving the Hoarding Dilemma
      8. Kicking It Downstream
      9. Intellectual Property Entanglements
    2. Chapter | 10 Prediction Markets and Mining the Collective IQ
      1. Diversity Matters
      2. The Performance-tocracy
      3. What’s an Expert?
      4. Trendspotting
      5. The Market Is the New Seniority
      6. Prediction Markets Commoditized
    3. Chapter | 11 The Intersection with Crowdsourcing
      1. No Network, No Funding
      2. Crowdfunding Crowdsourced Ideas
      3. The Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing Nexus
    4. Chapter | 12 The New Investment Models
      1. Venture Capital Meets Crowd Capital
      2. Incubators and the Crowd
      3. Crowd Capital Meets Crowd Capital
      4. Donations First, Investments Later
      5. Here Comes Wall Street
      6. A New Capital Allocation Mechanism
      7. At the Community Level
      8. Grants and the Arts
      9. Reinvigorating the Community
      10. The Virtual Tech Hub
    5. Chapter | 13 Regulation and Policy Status
      1. The Current State of Affairs
      2. United States
        1. The Crowdfund Intermediary Regulatory Advocates (CFIRA)
        2. Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA)
        3. National Crowdfunding Association (NLCFA)
      3. Europe
      4. International
    6. Chapter | 14 Regulation and Policy Directions
      1. Pray for Much Failure
      2. Taxes, Taxes, Taxes
      3. Patents and Crowdfunding Platforms
      4. The IP Landscape
      5. The Velocity of Innovation and the Effects of the IP System
      6. A Perpetual Motion Machine of Innovation
  10. Epilogue
  11. Notes
  12. Acknowledgments
  13. About the Authors
  14. Index

Product information

  • Title: The Crowdfunding Revolution: How to Raise Venture Capital Using Social Media
  • Author(s): Kevin Lawton, Dan Marom
  • Release date: December 2012
  • Publisher(s): McGraw-Hill
  • ISBN: 9780071790468