The Power of the Crowd
In the first quarter of 2014 crowdfunding has made incredible strides on the global scale especially with the equity crowdfunding industry where both the UK and France have released their regulations. New Zeland has some of the most liberal equity crowdfunding regulations to date, and the world sits in waiting for the SEC to release it regulations for US equity crowdfunding to open to non-accredited investors.
The global crowdfunding industry is a multi-billion dollar juggernaut that continues to grow at an exponential rate year over year. The industry also continues to disrupt the global financial system on numerous levels. Here are some of the results released from the newly developed Crowdfunding Data Center for the first Quarter of 2014 http://thecrowdfundingcentre.com/ :
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Rewards based Crowdfunding has grown 140% during Q1 2014
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Equity Based Crowdfunding has grown 391% during Q1 2014
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Global Reward Crowdfunding Raised $124 Million during Q1 2014
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Global Reward Crowdfunding Pledged $156 Million during Q1 2014
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Over 400 Rewards Based Crowdfunding Campaigns are launched every day.
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Worldwide Crowdfunding is currently doubling 10x faster, every two months.
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Over $60,000 an hour is raised using Crowdfunding
These are amazing statistics that prove that crowdfunding is a force that is going to transform the global economy in a major way, but at its core crowdfunding is a compound word, which means two individual words have been combined to make a single word with a new meaning. The crowd component of this compound word is going to be my focus moving forward with future posts.
If you don’t build an engaged and excited crowd you will not get the funding your business or project requires to be successful. The crowd is the most important aspect of crowdfunding. So I am going to focus on the true value of the crowd because from the crowd comes the funding that is so desperately needed to grow any business or project, but crowdfunding is an incredible marketing tool that provides tremendous hidden benefits to a business or project also.
Crowd building is a strategic process that is made possible by social media and by social media I am not speaking of any particular social network, but any internet based platform that allows dialogue one-to-one and one-to-many, so lets begin the crowd building journey.
Cleveland Bookkeeper & Grant Writer.
9yThe crowd has power -a targeted crowd is an awesome force to be reckoned with 🎆
Property Investment | Mortgage Consultant and Property Development @ PWO Finance | MBA
9yGreat information indeed!! I do admire what Crowdfunding does for startups, is indeed good at spreading risk. For relatively established companies with some sense of confidentiality and privacy, ths finance sourcing strategy still needs to be improved. I wonder what kind of information entities in that sort of bracket can put out without giving out too much but just enough to secure the finance. Being Accountant, at times a client needs financing that the main street lenders consider risky and the option could be the crowd, but how do you manage such?
Skillfully understanding our clients, to professionally craft the very best finance & funding solutions and support, to gain trust, long term relationships, client referrals, and a proud, growing team
9yGreat article Bill Huston as I think that prospective borrowers, in particular, understand and want the enthusiasm of the crowd but underestimate the ability of a crowd to make good judgement and therefore too often lack good preparation and due diligence and fail in their campaign. As a scientist, the analogy I make is with experimental design i.e the bigger the sample size the more precise the result and that, in my view, is why crowdfunding produces lower bad debts to date than bankers judgement. The crowd is king and must be respected, en masse, as an enthusiastic and insightful professional body in each campaign.
Founder, Magical Methods
9yWonderful stats about crowdfunding Industry.
Author & Business Coach | Crowdfunding and Marketing Success
9yGood stats! Would be curious to see stats on real estate crowdfunding vs. startup/company equity crowdfunding.