What is crowdfunding?
The current time is the era of opportunity, when you can quickly implement any good idea without using your money. Yes, you can open your own business without investing a dime! Let’s talk about what crowdfunding is.
Crowdfunding is a way to get money for the development of a project in exchange for access to some chips. That is, for example, an entrepreneur decides to make a documentary film. He needs money for shooting: he needs to take a loan, ask relatives or get it from a bank under the bed. Or you can start raising funds using crowdfunding.
In exchange for money, the director will mention someone as a sponsor, give tickets to a premiere, or send a postcard, depending on the amount invested in it. Interesting projects thus quickly collect the necessary amounts.
Types of crowdfunding
There are several types of crowdfunding, they depend on what the entrepreneur gives in exchange for money:
- for non-commercial projects, you can simply donate money, while a person does not receive anything;
- investments for a fee: valuable gifts, etc., this option is relevant for the pre-sale stage;
- investments with a return, that is, with the attraction of debt capital: a startup will return the money with a percentage of the profit;
- investments in exchange for a share in the project, that is, in fact, for shares in the company;
- an exchange option, that is, an ICO: the company issues its own currency that can be used in their project, and exchanges it for real money – this can be done with games and mobile services.
What are the crowdfunding platforms?
Crowdfunding platforms are special sites that allow investors to search for projects, and vice versa. Both before starting crowdfunding and before investing, it is important to carefully study the rules of the platform. Some of them are dishonest. For example, if an entrepreneur wants to raise 500 thousand for a project in six months, but only raised 200 thousand, only the platform will receive the money.
On some sites, you need to collect at least 50% of the declared funds in order to withdraw money. In this case, the site commission will be higher than if he collected the entire amount. Among the reliable and well-known platforms are Planeta.ru, Boomstarter and Patreon.