So crowdfunding is the ability for anybody around the world to raise funds for
whatever they are interested in.
Whether it is an entrepreneurial venture or a cause venture or
an artistic venture, it is a platform.
Indiegogo is a platform so people can come to our site and they can
create campaigns and they can raise funds for whatever they're interested in.
>> And how is it different than venture capital funding or other types of finance?
>> That's a great question.
So Indiegogo was created essentially as a step back from that.
Because we believe that access to capital should be given to people
who have great ideas and have passion audiences.
Venture capital is a great way to raise funds for what you're interested in but
there are serious barriers to entry to getting venture funds.
And on Indiegogo, we believe that if you have a passionate audience and
a great ideal you shouldn't be held back from getting those funds and you should be
able to achieve anything you want just by accessing the audiences passion about it.
And in some ways, Indiegogo is more than just finance.
But there's actually other benefits that you get from launching
a campaign on the platform, right?
>> Absolutely, I would say that in fact,
if you come to Indiegogo specifically just for the funding, you're doing it wrong.
There's so many amazing benefits you can get from running a crowdfunding campaign,
like having an audience, building up marketing momentum, establishing a brand,
and reaching out to the people who are passionate about what you're doing and
connecting with them and getting their feedback.
Because ultimately your campaign is a direct to a consumer model so
when you launch a campaign you're not just getting the money,
you're building an entire business.
And you're building an idea and
you're getting the support from people that are so passionate and
enthusiastic about what you're doing, that you have so much more than just money.
In fact a lot of the people that run really successful campaigns,
when I ask them hey what was the most valuable thing you got from the campaign?
Rarely do they say it's the money.
Because having a lot of money is great but having customers, having an audience,
having a marketing and a brand and
being recognized around the world, that's almost priceless for them.
>> What was Misfit?
>> Misfit is an activity tracker.
It's founded by Sonny Vu who's a former Apple engineer and, or
Apple designer I should say.
And he came to the platform with his first design for
a wearable fitness tracker, and it was beautifully designed.
And for him what he wanted to do was he wanted to gauge the market.
He wanted to obviously take the product to market and sell them and pre-order them.
but at the same time he wanted to what people were interested and
learn from the people that were going to buy his product.
And interact with them in a powerful way via crowdfunding so
that when he goes to market he's making the best product that people want.
And for him, he always says that his Indiegogo experience allowed him to get
smarter faster.
Because instead of traditionally going to Best Buy or Apple Store or any retailer or
he would have had to go to market and then get market feedback in a longterm route.
He went directly to consumers via Indiegogo and he learned so
much through the campaign that.
>> Can you give me an example like what did he learn?
>> Yeah, I mean one of the things was the accessories.
So for him, he obviously had the activity tracker, and
he had initial ideas of how people were going to wear them.
But through the campaign, he learned about color variations,
and other accessories for the product that were incredibly profitable for him now.
But he didn't even know that demand existed until the campaign came out.
And people were writing comments on the page, and sending him notes,
and saying hey, I want to wear this as a bracelet or a necklace,
or I want it in jet-black or pink.
And because of that, now all the Misfit Shines, they're in different colors,
there's tons of accessories, which are incredibly profitable for him.
This is an entirely new business that he didn't even know
existed before the campaign launched and
he was able to interact with the customers and hear what they wanted.
And now, I mean this sort of raised nearly 50 million in venture funding
since the campaign in 2013.
>> What was their target for the campaign and what did they end up raising?
>> I believe that their target was around 150,000 but
they ended up raising 850,000 from nearly 8000 funders.
>> Can you talk about Ubuntu edge?
I think that was sort of another example that most people,
their original support did not, they couldn't raise that support, right?
>> Sure. >> What's the story?
>> The Ubuntu Edge is a Linux-based cell phone created by Canonical,
which is one of the backing partners of Linux.
Linux, obviously is an open operating system.
It's been around for decades and people use it all the time on their computers.
And Canonical wanted to bring to market the first Linux based mobile phone.
And so they launched a crowdfunding campaign for the Ubuntu Edge.
And it raised over $12.8 million which at that point in time was the largest
crowdfunding campaign every in history, reward based.
So and they garnered several, several thousand people to support them.
It was all over the news.
It took over social media for I believe a month and a half.
And for them they set a $32 million goal.
So they actually didn't even hit the goal that they initially established.
And for their founder, he had always wanted to make a Linux phone.
And he had pitched the idea to several OEM and contract manufacturers, and
handset manufacturers.
And all of them were saying, well we have iOS, we have Android, Windows phone is on
the rise here, is there room for another operating system in this market place?
And for them it wasn't worth the dollars because they couldn't demonstrate
the demand.
They're saying, hey this is a great product.
You're right, you could probably make something awesome.
But is it worth our time and energy because there's already a competitive
market out there and we don't know if it's worth investing in Ubuntu or Linux.
>> And it's also open source.
>> Exactly, and it was open source.
So they came to Indiegogo, they raised $12.8 million.
They didn't hit their goal, but they had several thousand, over 30,000 backers.
So people were super excited about this product.
The second that campaign ended, sure everybody got refunded through
the campaign, but Canonical was reached out to nearly every single