Pirates

Part I It’s the same sunny morning. I am heading towards office with an Ice tea and a newspaper in hand. I stop by the signal near the Mystical garden for the signal to turn green exactly at 7:05 AM. People rushing towards their work, kids boarding school bus, the lady on the other side of road selling burgers and the pleasant breeze of summer. Oh here it goes green. I need to rush, so many things to do today. I cross the road and reach the Parks building, it’s just two minutes from here, my office. Then suddenly I hear it. It’s the same. The same laugh.  But why can’t I see whose it is. Why my heart is so restless?? Why I am looking for this person so desperately?? Do I know this person?? Is it an enemy or a friend or someone I know? Why can’t I see, from where is it coming? Is it from the building or anyone from the street passing by or from the nearby garden? Why again I can only hear it? Why can’t I see who is it? Why it’s making me so restless? What has it to do with ...

5 Crowdfunding News To Follow For Success You spend your days mak ing a difference, thinking about the change you want to make, the story you want to tell, and the money you need to make it all happen. You eat, sleep, and dream about the change you want to enact, the people you want to help. You know your world better than anyone else. But do you ever look up to keep an eye on the worlds that exist around you? Your cause is your passion but fundraising is your lifeblood. To make the biggest possible impact, it’s important to stay current with the latest developments in the crowdfunding world. Reading the latest success stories can help you learn from what others have done. The world of crowdfunding is growing and constantly changing. You should be a part of it. To keep you in the know, we’ve rounded up 5 of our favorite crowdfunding news to get updates, stories, and information designed to help you make the most of your crowdfunding campaigns. CrowdCrux Salvador Br...

Things you should have before launching a crowdfunding campaign Have the below things in place before launching your campaign and you’ll be in good shape: 30% of funding goal is guaranteed  by friends, family and anyone else you can line up to make a financial contribution to your campaign on the day it launches. If you can raise 30% in the first couple of days of your campaign, you significantly increase your chances of reaching your goal. Build an email list ; compile emails of all team members. The more emails you have the better. Services like  Mailchimp  allow you to send out emails and drive traffic to your campaign page when it launches and as you hit weekly milestones. As a rule of thumb you should have one email per $1 funding goal. Build a crowd on Social Media  that is large enough so you can tap into not only for financial support but also to share your campaign with their followers. Twitter is the most active social network in the crowdfunding sp...

How to run a successful crowdfunding campaign. The goal is to get at least 20% funded in the first 24-48 hours. Complete funding by 2 weeks and 200% funding by 30 days.  30 days is the ideal time for most, if you KNOW you will be very successful there are arguments for a longer campaign.   Now let's show you how it is done in order.  First and foremost you need a great product. It should be high quality, fairly priced and easy to understand. Make sure people would be willing to pay for it and find out how much. Make sure these are people who are not your friends or family.  1 year to launch  Google everything.  Your competition big and small, crowdfunding projects good and bad ones, crowdfunding tips, starting an online business, starting a business in city/state X,  your company name, similar names, etc etc etc......... Set up  Mail Chimp   to begin managing your email list of all your customers. In the short and long term ...

10 Secrets of Highly Successful Crowdfunding Campaigns As crowdfunding makes gains in popularity, the battle for page views and pledges has become increasingly competitive, especially on portal sites that feature thousands of live projects at once. If you’re depending on a Kickstarter feature to kickstart your campaign, then you could be in trouble. So how do you ensure that you’ve optimized your campaign for success? We’ve taken a look at a number of recently funded projects in order to identify some of the techniques, strategies, and crowdfunding secrets that will give you the best chance of meeting your goals. 1. Prepare Your Face Off You can use crowdfunding to help validate ideas before they are fully realized, but if your campaign comes across as half-baked then your audience isn’t going to invest. “People don’t want to back a campaign that’s not going to work,” says writer and entrepreneur  Seth Godin  on his crowdfunding experiences, and you can’t use...

4 Secrets of Crowdfunding Success Turns out, it's not as easy at it looks. Driving a tricked out BMW motorcycle with a refrigerated compartment attached like a sidecar, Simon Anguelov earns money to pay for community college in San Diego as a mobile ice cream vendor. The 20-year-old MiraCosta College student took out $30,000 in bank loans to create the customized bike with help from his sister, who cosigned for him. Recently, it dawned on Anguelov that it would be easier to generate business if there was an Uber-like app people could use to order ice cream deliveries from vendors like him or ice cream stores. In May, he launched a  campaign  to get funding for IceCreamZilla, an app-enabled network, on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. Kickstarter enables donation-based crowdfunding, where individuals make donations to business ideas they want to bring to life. “Ice cream vendors like me would benefit from an app like this,” says Anguelov. “It would draw a lot of...