Super summary: make sure you have, at the start, a base that purchase what you're offering at least 30 people.

Being able to meet up in the days of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona can be difficult to successfully operate much as a crowdfunding campaign. Not enough intentions and desire: we must mettercisi commitment. Speaking precisely in Barcelona with Evan Cohen, Senior Director of Design, Technology and Hardware Indiegogo, one of the largest platforms of crowdfunding in the world, it is obvious that they go put in the attic some of the myths about online fundraising campaigns: the classic " Genius! "is not enough anymore (if it ever enough).

Structuring the phase that precedes the online project is almost more important than evaluating the success penny after penny donated. "When you start a campaign you already know what the target audience. Clearly this will be expanded in the course of collection, but you should have an idea of leaving, "he explains. Test of digital marketing are valuable, such as a / b tests by email, via social media and all methods useful to test the waters before jumping in the publication. Then, it can happen that are out of unexpected results, as in the two creators Sensibo, that Tel Aviv has found many donors in Singapore, discovering a new market. But that's the luck favors the brave who have already made such a deck. "People on Indiegogo are not trendsetters, but trend followers", argues Cohen: "Do not come to the platform because they saw something that they like is the fact that like many other people why they want it too."
Evan Cohen, Senior Director of Design and Technology Hardware Indiegogo

To explain it better serves the analogy of the restaurants in the same street, the empty ones will give the idea that something is wrong (not good food? Poor service?), While the full will be taken even attacked because they are already areas. For this reason, you make sure you have, at the start, a base that purchase what you're offering at least 30 people, says Cohen. "If it's something that will not buy your parents, your wife, or your best friends, why should someone else do it?". Another key thing is "never forget to tell a good story": people do not want to buy a product, they want to participate.

According to Cohen, the main trend next year will see more and more companies use crowdfunding to bring their products to market. It is the system that allows companies to understand the audience, listening to their reactions. Not surprisingly, the platform has just unveiled its version dedicated to large enterprises, Enterprise Crowdfunding. "The trend is certainly this, and it will work a lot with the IoT: on one hand there are many startups work with developers, and other large chains who want to put on the market products that people already buy."

It remains in the future issue, it seems that the crowdfunding model does not come back. It is not only the mirror of a particular historical and economic juncture, but a democratization model that will never regret the past. "If in 2003 I had an idea, I would be forced to go to the bank and explain my project looking for," explains Cohen financing. "Let's say it was the coffee business idea. All right: that person, alone, would decide my success, even if they perhaps knew nothing of coffee. " Similarly, the idea of Lorenzo Maggiore, a gun that shoots salt to kill flies, did not believe anyone. Thanks to crowdfunding, was able to realize his BugASalt, which even now exists in several versions. "We believe that the power of choice to be the crowd, and crowdfunding can reduce the risk, democratizing capital," says Cohen. For that we'll never see on Indiegogo, a committee that evaluates if the idea of an anti-pollution system is worth more hard tenth of an emerging band. The committee is the crowd, and under whose turn.

From Wired