Question from Aaron:

Happy Sunday Samson! I’m definitely enjoying and appreciating all your posts and article on the power of crowdfunding and crowdinvesting to help gain market share and loyal customers for the long haul. I had a question about the best place to launch a crowdinvesting product on a platform to gain the most views from future customers/investors, as I’ve been working on a project for the last year that revolves community development. I’d love to get your feedback and opinions on this at your best convenience if would be that great of a human! Thanks and happy Sunday! 😊

Answer from Samson
TODAYSamson Williams sent the following message at 8:52 AMView Samson’s profile Samson Williams  8:52 AM
 
 
Morning Aaron!

You have 3 options:  

1. Book time on my calendar so for $500 an hour an I explain why it doesn't matter which platform you select here: https://www.milkywayeconomy.com/schedule-a-call
2. Just take my word for it. 
3. Stop believing platform

Generally it is assumed that the options for startups and businesses to pursue  financing are as follows:  

• Option A - VCs
• Option B - Angels
• Option C - Broker Dealers / PE / Hedge Funds
• Option D - Crowdfunding 

In truth the options are: 

• Option A - Crowdfunding / Angels / VCs / BDs / PE/ Hedge Funds
• Option B - Bootstrap then crowdfund

The reason that Crowdfunding is every startup’s first option is simple: 

• Crowdfunding enables Founders to set investment terms
• With these universal crowdfunding terms, Founders can solicit investments from investors at all levels (accredited, non-accredited, institutional)
• Currently, Founders and Entrepreneurs exhaust themselves pitching to ONLY 4% of the accredited investor population; which is well known to have a 99% failure rate.
• Less than 1% of Startups receive VC funding.
• Crowdfunding enables Founders and Entrepreneurs to take the same pitch deck, due diligence, financials and disclosures and literally cast a wider net

By Samson Williams

TL;DR

1.    Investment crowdfunding enables you to set terms on your terms
2.    60% of investors in crowdfunding campaign are already accredited
3.    Crowdfunding platforms make managing your cap-table and communicating to investors easier  
4.    Increase in sales revenue while running your investment crowdfunding campaign
5.    Increase in the lifetime value of your customers, as Investomers

Any discussion about raising money should start off with the obvious. Raising money is hard AF and sucks. Too, there is no guaranteed way to raise capital for your business or startup. That said, if you are considering offering your Startup baby to Sharks for capital, here are a few things you should know about why Investment Crowdfunding should be your first option.

1.   Setting The Terms

So, you are looking to raise capital? But on whose terms? Yours? Or Sharks? The primary benefit of crowdfunding is that i...more

“Silicon Prairie is pushing the industry so that it is less about whose platform you use (because investors will go directly to the Founder’s “own” website) and more about the Founders/Issuers themselves. Which means, CF portals are headed to the plumbing side of things, a la Internet Service Provider (“ISP”).  No one cares who your ISP is and no one will care who provides their funding portal’s plumbing.”  Samson Williams, internal email on Silicon Prairie’s new “private portal” offering. 

Investment Crowdfunding turned 5 years old in May 2021. Why do you care about what this VC killing kindergartener is up to? Simple, the ability for Founders to raise up to $5M via RegCF is changing the culture, perception and reality of venture investing. How? This article will shed light on how and why this matters to you as a Founder, an Investor and more importantly as an Investomer. 

Founders are the Future of Funding 

Investment Crowdfunding is “new”. As such the...more

The key to understanding, appreciating and then monetizing the art of Regulation Crowdfunding is the realization that it's more art than regulations. What that means is: 

1. There are no profitable funding portals
2. Especially if the funding portals came into existence before 2019
3. However, there is a new breed of funding portals that will be profitable by the end of 2021

The art of RegCF is that in order to reach the lofty goal of $5M there isn’t any single route. Yes, there are some guide rails but WHAT you do to raise your goal be it $5M or $50k is the fine art of strategy. HOW you execute that strategy is the dull nature of tactics. Why you care is because if you come from “traditional finance” your disadvantage is the speed at which innovation can occur, does occur and is pursued. 

Crowdfunding = Innovation

The sole reason that RegCF exists is because traditional finance and venture capital is broken. If VC funding worked so well, RegCF simply wouldn’t exist. It's not a deba...more

Every health ecosystem needs top predators. Predators at the top of the food chain help maintain a healthy balance between species and environmental systems. We become keenly aware of this in the ocean when sharks are removed it causes an increase in red tides, toxic algae blooms and a general imbalance to the ecosystem. This effect is called "cascade" or marine trophic cascade when talking about the oceans specifically. However, the cascade can take affect in any environment. The thing about the ocean is that since we, meaning Humans, can't see the cascade directly its the classic "out of sight, out of mind" tragedy of the commons. To help make this more relatable to us land based a simpler example we can all probably relate to:  

• There are more deer in the USA today than in 1800. 
• Meanwhile, deer predators (bears, wolves, mountain lions etc...) populations have been reduced to critically low numbers.
• The lack of predators keeping the deer population in check has incre

Regulation Crowdfunding turned five years old on May 16, 2021 and celebrated its birthday with 63 FINRA licensed portals and over $700M raised via RegCF. This is an amazing milestone for the investment crowdfunding industry and what I refer to as "The League”. The League is the 63 and counting FINRA licensed Funding Portals. Even today, there are another two dozen entities with Funding Portal applications with FINRA looking to join the league and 2022 is shaping up to be a $1B year. On behalf of the Crowdfunding Professional Association we are rooting for all of you. 

As I think about the state of the Crowdfunding industry and the individual funding portals I often compare them to the National Basketball Association (NBA). That league started off small, hit an inflection point and then grew into the dynamic global presence it is now. So too with the 63 “teams” of the CfPA.  To that end here is a peak of what the Crowdfunding Professional Association will be doing to help the ...more