By Emily Kuo, Expedition PR
Recently, the use of crowdfunding has skyrocketed, increasing 81% in funds raised between 2011 and 2012 across the 308 platforms according to the Crowdfunding Industry Report by Massolution. Crowdfunding is an alternative financing method where collective effort of individuals supports and funds the initiatives of other individuals or companies. Projects funded can vary from movie production (via sites like Seed&Spark) to starting a business to disaster relief. The amount of platforms worldwide has been increasing steadily, as well, nearly doubling between 2010 and 2012. There are four basic types of crowdfunding: equity-based, reward-based, donation-based and lending-based. Currently, most campaigns are either reward- or donation-based, since the laws and regulations surrounding equity- and loan-based crowdfunding have not yet been implemented by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Last week the consulting and CPA firm EisnerAmper hosted a diverse panel at Internet Week NY to speak about the different aspects of the crowdfunding economy. Stacy Robin, the Director of Marketing at EisnerAmper led the discussion with Candace Klein, CEO of Bad Girl Ventures and SoMoLend, Jon Ostrow, Campaigns Director at Cyber PR, Matthew Savare, Partner at Lowenstein Sandler LLP, and Vladmir Vukicevic, Founder and CTO of RocketHub. Having seen many successes and failures, the panelists provided useful advice for those looking to run a crowdfunding campaign.