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We're big crowdfunding fans here at GeekMom. We write pretty regularly about Indiegogo campaigns, most recently about the Zuvo water filter and the documentary Self-Inflicted. Plus we use the platform to raise funds for our own projects like Amy Kraft's app Zeenii and Jules Sherred's book, Five Little Zombies and Fred.
- Magic Case for iPhone, like the Swiss Army knife of phone cases.
- Pinoccio: Complete Ecosystem for Building the Internet of Things, a awesome wireless, web-ready microcontroller with WiFi, LiPo battery, and built-in radio.
- Where No Man Was Born Before, a proposed documentary about the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk—Riverside, Iowa.
- People Not Stones, dedicated to preserving endangered archaeological sites by providing sustainable economic opportunities to people living nearby.
- Freeloader Child Carrier, ergonomically designed backpack seat for adventurers whose small to medium-sized kids get tired.
- Superhero For Kids with Cancer, graphic novel to be donated to kids with cancer.
- House of Cards, limited edition castle-building card set.
- SpotVac, for sub-surface carpet cleaning.
- Dead Man's Land graphic novel to be created by Barry Duffield who plays Lugo on Spartacus: Vengeance.
Of course we jumped at the chance to do a phone interview with Indiegogo co-founder, Danae Ringelmann. Passionate about helping artists, entrepreneurs, and visionaries embrace crowdfunding, Danae keeps busy spreading the word. She's recently spoken at SXSW, MAD Hong Kong, Ted, and Big Omaha. Fast Company Magazine recently named her one of the Top 50 Most Influential Women in Technology. She explains how to power up a campaign and how crowdfunding is changing the world one campaign at a time.
GeekMom: Indiegogo is easier to use, has more payment options, covers more countries, and has fewer restrictions than Kickstarter. Do you think this is widely known when "kickstarting" has practically become synonymous with "crowdfunding?"
__Danae Ringelmann:__What makes Indiegogo different starts with our philosophy and mission, to democratize fundraising and empower absolutely anyone anywhere in the world. What that means is we're an open and inclusive platform: no application, no rejection, no waiting. If you are passionate about an idea, there's a platform to to create a campaign for you to go test it, to see if there's a market for it without going through a gatekeeper. That's why we're global. If we're going to empower the world we have to be everywhere in the world. So far we're in 200 countries, we offer four currencies, and three languages.
And we're incredibly data driven. We don't pick and choose projects that come on our site, we don't pick and choose projects to promote. That all happens automatically and algorithmically. We do that through an algorithm called the gogo factor which measures the activity of a campaign and the responsiveness of the community. We think these are the two factors that should matter in success. Those are factors that the campaign and its community controls, nobody else.
And then there's our obsession with customer happiness. The reason that's core to our philosophy is because again it goes back to our belief that we don't have the right to decide who gets to raise money, because of that we focus on an open, date-driven structure. It's taken a few years but all the pieces are in place and it's truly starting to resonate. We invest heavily in customer happiness and data insights, the world is really embracing it now. The world doesn't want another gatekeeper telling them if they have the right to raise money or not, and that differentiator about us is really starting to hit home.
GM: What instigated Indiegogo?
DR: My co-founders and I came together out of mutual frustration with how unfair and inefficient fundraising was. We all had our personal experiences. Mine was trying to help get a production get off the ground. It failed because, well, the audience and the actors really wanted the project to come to life, but the investor I'd worked my butt off to get to watch this play decided they had different objectives. In that moment I realized people who wanted something to come to life most, which were the actors and the audience, should have the power and mechanism to make it happen. That's what prompted me to go back to business school to start a company that would democratize fundraising. That's how I met my co-founders, who'd all been trying to raise money efficiently online and offline, for their passions. Eric for a data company in Chicago and Slava for a charity event to raise money for cancer research, since his father had died of cancer when he was a young boy.
All of us were terribly frustrated. The processes were so inefficient. The ideas that were getting funded weren't purely due to the brilliance of the idea but the people with those ideas were lucky enough to connect to money. Pretty ironic that America has billed ourselves as the land of equal opportunity and it really wasn't playing out that way. So we all quit our jobs and dedicated ourselves to the mission of democratizing fundraising and making a level playing field for funding possible.That's what we've done and the world is embracing it with millions of dollars, pounds, euros being exchanged in over 200 countries to support entrepreneurs, artists, and charities across the world.
GM: Are you surprised about which campaigns top their goals?
DR: Yeah, one of the benefits of being an open platform is the world will surprise you about what it wants. One of those happened last year. A campaign raised 8,000 dollars for a couple so they could have a baby. They couldn't afford IVF. They actually applied to another platform and got rejected because it didn't meet the guidelines. They came to Indiegogo and raised the money they needed for their IVF treatment and the baby, I think, was born two months ago.
Another one that's live right now, and makes me giggle, is the campaign for the uBiome project (sequencing your microbiome) here in San Francisco. They're trying to advance citizen science, which in this case means getting people involved in understanding their gut and sending in some specimens. They're not only crowdsourcing gut contributions but it's literally people funding science to help people understand what food and environmental factors affect us.
GM: You have two different models, one where a campaign has to hit its goal to get any money (like Kickstarter) and the other where a campaign keeps whatever the project earns. What differences do these models make to the overall success of an Indiegogo project?
DR: Indiegogo allows campaigners to design and achieve their own success. One common misunderstanding about crowdfunding is that it's a way to raise 100 percent of your budget in one campaign. That's fundamentally not true, especially for campaigns that are charity or artistic-based. When it's a longer project, crowdfunding can be very helpful achieving milestones one at a time.
A flexibile funding model where you raise 8,000 dollars of a 10,000 dollar goal it makes a lot of sense because it allows you to take a few more steps forward on your project, maybe one less step than you planned because you didn't get the last two thousand dollars but at least allows you to get more done on your project and you can come back a few weeks or months later to advance your campaign. Or maybe the campaign validates your idea so you can attract other, more traditional types of funding.
You certainly learn how your product is resonating a lot more quickly with a campaign. An example of that, we had a campaign by the name of Muse. A woman developed this brain sensing technology to put inside a headband so if you're meditating or want to track your own thoughts it will alert you to your changing mental processes. Pretty amazing. She had actually raised enough funds to prototype the project but she wasn't sure who her target customer base was going to be. She turned to Indiegogo as a way to increase engagement, get the word out, get people excited about her product. What it ended up doing was helping her discover a new target customer base. She found that mothers of children with cerebral palsy also wanted it because it would help them monitor their child throughout the day, so it was was incredibly useful for her.
With respect to fixed models, that's really helpful for campagins that need a minimum amount to really move the project forward, maybe not 100 percent of their needs but a minimal amount they've identified as necessary. That's particularly useful for product or other hardware type campaigns. For most campagins the flex model is our most popular option because that allows them to at least keep the project moving forward.
GM: Social media, especially one's connections to influencers, seems to be a key element to a successful campaign. Do some campaigns manage to overcome limited social media connections or other limitations, perhaps using an especially engaging video or unusual perks?
DR: A great example is the Karen Klein campaign that went viral last year. It raised money for a woman who was a bus monitor and had been bullied by students on the bus. The campaigner just wanted to raise 5,000 dollars to send her on vacation but when he launched the campaign the cause and the story behind it was so riveting that it went viral. People from over 60 countries contributed because they were so upset about the reality of bullying, probably more as a statement about bullying than to send her on a great vacation. Maybe multiple reasons, but that's a classic example of the world voting with their wallets. [The campaign raised 703,168 dollars and the campaigner continues to address bullying.]
GM: So an issue galvanized that campaign. What can you tell us about the importance of perks?
DR: Being unique and creative with your perks is a great way to engage your audience, get people to care. One perk I saw recently was offered by a comic book artist. He'd do a live Skype interview with you and give you a tour of his house: show you his inspiration room and drawing room and all that. People are experimenting all the time with unique experiences you couldn't pull off the shelf at Walmart. It's custom, it's personal, and it's really exciting for that reason.
One cool thing about perks, they allow people who are fans to engage at the level of their excitement. I just saw another campaign by a rapper who will write you your own frame, an 8 bar frame, of your own personal rap. Perks being at all different price points doesn't just benefit the campaign owner, it pleases the perk buyer as well. If you're a musician you can save money or borrow money or get outside money to go create a music album and try to sell it, hoping to recoup that money and pay back what it took to make the album by selling 10 or 15 CD's. But they're leaving money on the table that a really passionate supporter of that band might want to spend for other things that you're not offering. On the other hand another supporter might not be able to afford the CD and need to find a free download somewhere. Crowdfunding doesn't leave any money on the table because you can offer perks for as little as a dollar for people who can't afford more or aren't super passionate about you, but you can also offer perks up to tens of thousands of dollars. Our largest perks claimed was 60,000 dollars actually. We allow people to engage at the level they're interested in and can afford. So if you are passionate follower of a band you can buy the perk giving you backstage access or like one rapper's campaign who offered the chance to grab a drink with him after a show. If you're super passionate about that guy's work you're going to find a way to buy that perk instead of just waiting for the CD to come out.
GM: What's your advice for campaigns that start out all shiny, then start falling short of their goals?
DR: There are natural highs and lows to a campaign. That's what's exciting. It's not just a fundraising drive, it's an engagement drive, it's a marketing drive, it's an awareness drive.
The first key to success for a campaign whether it starts shiny or not is to be sure your campaign is great.
- What that means is to have a pitch video. we know campaigns that offer a video raise on average 114 percent more than campaigns that don't.
- It means a very specific funding target with a transparent use of funds. So make it clear how you're spending the money, what the funds are going to, what you will do to achieve your goal.
- Then you need perks. Campaigns that offer between three and eight perks average 100 percent more than campaigns that don't. Make sure you offer a 25 dollar perk because that's the most common contribution at Indiegogo.
- And when you make your video and pitch your project, you're not just pitching your project you're talking about you as a person, what your goals are, and how the funds will help you make the impact in the world you're hoping to make. People fund people, they don't just fund ideas. If they can't look in your eyes and see you speak about why this is important it's harder for them to part with their money.
The second key to success is being really proactive and getting the word out. We know campaigns that do an update everyone every one to five days raise an average of 100 percent more than campaigns that don't. It doesn't mean do an update about the campaign specifically but provide content related to the campaign. A sad example, a filmmaker was making a documentary on the bullying crisis (a separate campaign). Every time a news article hit about a young kid who committed suicide because of bullying she'd share that article as an update with her funder base, knowing it kept giving her community more fuel to get campaign totally funded so she could finish the film to be an amplifier of the message about bullying and how to fix it. Now we've started seeing experiments by some of our campaign owners around our referral programs. One cool thing Indiegogo provides is all the referral data for your community. We don't just tell you how many dollars your campaign has raised and how many referrals your community has driven, we actually tell you which person in your community is sending how many people and how many of those referrals are resulting in dollars. So your cousin says, "I'm sharing your campaign on social media" and because of our data you'll know he's shared on Facebook where it's gotten 100 views resulting in a 1,000 dollars. So you can call your cousin and say, "yo thanks." We make it very easy for the campaign owner to turn their community into team members essentially, it's one big group of people all fighting for the same cause.
The last key to success is having an audience that cares. You can have a great pitch, a great campaign, but if actually nobody really wants it in the world it probably won't be successful. That's okay. It goes back to our belief that when we create a level playing field for people with ideas, then the people who succeed are those willing to work hard , and have an audience who wants their ideas to come to life as well. That's a true meritocracy. If they don't want the idea to come to life, that's okay, it means the world doesn't want it right now.
GM: Do you see overall differences in types of projects that are fully funded? For example, there are plenty of campaigns collecting money for worthy causes while others promote a great new gadget. I guess I'm asking if crowdfunding best lends itself to some areas more than others?
DR: We know there are 4 reasons people fund anything on Indiegogo: passion, participation, pride, and the perk.
Whats happening in crowdfunding is there's typically a dynamic mix of several of these in play when people make a contribution. If you are funding a gadget campaign, and one of the perks is the actual gadget when it gets made, yes, the perk may be the primary motivator but participation may be a big element too. People like to be an early adopter, be part of the reason a cool new innovation gets off the ground.
For more cause-oriented campaigns it might be more the desire to do good, do the right thing, and support what you care about. My sister, for example, recently funded a campaign called DrinkSavvy. I was surprised by but I also wasn't surprised. Why? Because the product is a cup [or straw] that changes color when it detects the presence of a rape drug. It's a very practical and amazing product, definitely doing the right thing. I saw that she funded it, she posted it on Facebook, she emailed about it. My sister is a mother, she doesn't go to bars anymore, she's not in that social scene at all, so it's not like she'd even need to use the cup but she's someone who is fundamentally passionate about violence against women issues and she always does whatever she can. Her funding was her way of participating in a greater movement she deeply cared about so she got the perk, she participated, she showcased it on her Facebook page and she gets the sense of being part of mitigating this tragedy. So those are some of the factors that go into the decision to fund something.
GM: Can you share some unusual campaigns happening on Indiegogo?
DR: A campaign I just discovered the other day, a campaign from Tokyo [called Tailly], just makes me laugh but it also speaks to the benefit of having an open platform where everyone has an equal chance. At first glance you're like, "who would ever fund this?" But that speaks to the power of an open platform because there could be a community out there that will fund it and if they do, they totally have the right to bring the project to life. This specific product is a wagging tail that you can put on your body. It'll wag faster when your heart rate goes up so when you're excited to see somebody, the tail will wag more quickly than if you're sitting calmly, reading a book for example. I laughed when I first saw it but they're raising money and hopefully they'll reach their goal.
GM: Can you share a few links to other Indiegogo campaigns?
DR: Community funding the community, true people-powered finance where the people are voting with their dollar as to what idea should come to life such as Help Us Launch Our Experimental Perfume Lab, where they create products in the medium of scent.
Verified Non-Profit like Plus One Collection, a photography book with proceeds funding the purchase of cameras for children in Kenya.
Products doing good, amusingly, like Who Gives a Crap offering eco-friendly toilet paper with half the profits going to aid water causes in the developing world.
Custom products such as Moku, hand-crafted wood-framed sunglasses made out of Urushi.
Tech ideas like Robot Dragonfly, a palm-sized flying robot and and StickNFind, bluetooth powered ultra small location stickers.
