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What are the characteristics of projects that can be crowdfunded? Or the characteristics of projects that can't?
In this third and final part of my three-part series exploring some of the aspects entrepreneurs need to consider when designing a crowdfunding platform, I explore the eight essentials of crowdfunding. The context for my posts has been a close look at the French crowdfunding market place and in-depth interviews with ten owners of French crowdfunding platforms. In my first post, I presented a few factors that I felt made it more difficult for French crowdfunding platforms to achieve the same levels of explosive growth that are being experienced by crowdfunding platforms in the US such as IndieGoGo, Kickstarter and RocketHub. In the second post, I took a closer look at the different models that are being tested in the French market.
I learned a lot from my interviews with the founders of 10 French crowdfunding platforms. While many of the opinions were quite diverse there was also clear convergence on a common theme: they all held a passion for crowdfunding and a shared belief in its potential. For those of you that have also caught the crowdfunding bug, for this third post I have shared a list of “crowdfunding essentials”, gleaned from the experts that should help you pursue your crowdfunding goals. Thanks again to all the interviewees (in alphabetical order): Smiti Arbia from carnetdemode.com, Nicolas Bailly de touscoprod, Alexandre Boucherot d’Ulule, Hortense Garand from babeldoor.com, Michael Goldman from MyMajorCompany, Nicolas Guillaume from Friendsclear, Angel Ramos de revenonsalamusique.com, Vincent Ricordeau from KissKissBankBank, and Yannick Robert from Mywittygames.com.
This is the second part of my three-part series exploring some of the aspects entrepreneurs need to consider when designing a crowdfunding platform. The context for my posts has been a close look at the French crowdfunding market place and in-depth interviews with ten owners of French crowdfunding platforms. In my first post I presented a few factors that I felt made it more difficult for French crowdfunding platforms to achieve the same levels of explosive growth that are being experienced by crowdfunding platforms in the US. In this article I take a closer look at the different models that are being tested in the French market. I conducted interviews with ten owners of French crowdfunding platforms. Specifically, I spoke with: Smiti Arbia of carnetdemode.com, Nicolas Bailly of touscoprod, Alexandre Boucherot of Ulule, Hortense Garand of babeldoor.com, Michael Goldman of MyMajorCompany, Nicolas Guillaume of Friendsclear, Angel Ramos of revenonsalamusique.com, Vincent Ricordeau of KissKissBankBank, and Yannick Robert of Mywittygames.com.
At first glance, looking through the initiatives listed on the different crowdfunding websites, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that all crowdfunding ventures are the same; projects, causes or entrepreneurial ventures that are looking for funding. However, upon closer look, a number of characteristics that uniquely identify the different types of crowdfunding initiatives become apparent. Setting aside the different areas of focus for their mission (such as initiatives related to: music, movies, shows, fashion, books, journalism, horse racing, etc.), there is a recognizable set of goals that people raising capital through crowdfunding platforms are trying to achieve.
There’s a lot happening in the French crowdfunding industry. Recent announcements have included KissKissBankBank partnering with the French Post as their official fundraising and artist discovery platform and Ulule who have just launched a new feature, a presale option supporting products coming to market once they have raised the required level of capital. I was really keen to understand more about how the crowdfunding industry is developing in general, and in particularly, how it’s doing in France. I got in touch with ten founders of crowdfunding platforms to learn what I could. In all, I spoke to: Smiti Arbia from carnetdemode.com, Nicolas Bailly de touscoprod, Alexandre Boucherot d’Ulule, Hortense Garand from babeldoor.com, Michael Goldman from MyMajorCompany, Nicolas Guillaume from Friendsclear, Angel Ramos de revenonsalamusique.com, Vincent Ricordeau from KissKissBankBank, and Yannick Robert from Mywittygames.com. In a series of three articles, I am going to look at different aspects of the topic. In this first part of a three article series, I look at what makes France different?
My count reached twenty-nine crowdfunding platforms currently operating in the French market, and there are probably more I’m unaware of. This is not to say the country is experiencing an extraordinary phenomena: crowdfunding is booming in Europe and across the world. Who hasn’t heard of Kickstarter’s success? Kickstarter can proud of having reached the dizzy heights of now raising in the order of a US$1m a week, all in less than 2 years in business, for new business ventures and special cause projects. One of their projects, the tiktok lunatik iPod Nano watch holder raising close to $1m alone. In Europe, France among other countries has not yet reached the point of such growth. Why is that?
Founded in 2010, the industry website, Crowdsourcing.org, is a neutral organization dedicated solely to crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. As one of the most influential and credible authorities in the crowdsourcing space, Crowdsourcing.org is recognized worldwide for its intellectual capital, crowdsourcing and crowdfunding practice expertise and unbiased thought leadership.
