New and growing startups require some source of funding building great companies. Bootstrapping, angel funding, venture capital and equity and debt financing are common and popular way of financing businesses. Crowdfunding has proven to be a great way of securing funds for your next startup. Crowdfunding or Crowdfunding (alternately crowd financing, equity crowdfunding or hyper funding) is the collective cooperation, attention, and trust by people who network and pool their resources, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations.
Pebble, which is developing a “smart” wristwatch that connects to Apple iPhones or Google Android phones, in April turned to crowdfunding website Kickstarter Inc. to raise $100,000 to build its watch. At the time, Pebble was running out of money and badly needed new funding. Within 28 hours of being on Kickstarter, Pebble had raised more than $1 million from people who were willing to plunk down $115 to pre-order the watch. By mid-May, Pebble had snagged a total of $10.27 million from 68,929 people, making it the most crowdfunded start-up ever in dollar terms, according to Kickstarter and other investors
The following are 14 of the best resources for securing crowdfunding.
- Seedrs – Equity-based crowdfunding platform.
- Crowdfunder – Equity crowdfunding for your business.
- CircleUp – Like AngelList with a crowdfunding twist.
- Grow VC – Get visibility with the right investing audience.
- appbackr – Crowdfunding for mobile apps.
- Kickstarter – World’s largest funding platform for creative projects.
- Indiegogo – Fund your passion.
- Crowdtilt – Group fund anything.
- Invested.in – Raise money, reach goals, build community.
- Funding Circle – Online marketplace where people lend to businesses.
- Sponsume – Fund your project through social networks.
- RocketHub – Launch, fund and fly.
- SellAnApp – Make app ideas happen.
- Petridish – Crowdfunding for science startups.
