Eager to find out exactly what it takes to build and deploy a successful crowdfunding campaign? We brought together 3 experienced speakers in the matter and we summed up an evening's discussions in this slide deck. We hope you find it useful and pass it along to those who might need it.

2. Key talking points
1. When is the right time in your product’s development stage to do a
crowd-funding campaign?
2. What are the main crow-funding platforms that tech entrepreneurs
use and what’s their specific profile?
3. What is the biggest challenge you’ve had in raising money in
Romania for a tech product?
4. How should entrepreneurs prepare for setting up a crowd-funding
campaign?
5. How do you gather an initial supporter’s base?
6. How do you calculate your goal? What are some hidden costs that
may appear and how do you factor them in?
7. How do you define push points in the campaign?
8. How do you test your rewards and other features of the campaign?
9. In hindsight, what are the top 3 things you wish you knew at the
start of the crowdfunding campaign?

3. TechHub Meetup Insights
The right time for a crowdfunding campaign
Dragos Stanculescu - The first time you can actually market your idea to
the right user. You need to have the idea in a state that you can easily
explain to your audience in 2 sentences.
Theodor Milian - CrestemIdei.ro approached me about the technical
projects I was developing with my team, asking if we’d be interested to
crowdfund one of them. The project was already under development,
but we had to create the presentation for the campaign and explain why
our ROV (Remotely operated underwater vehicle) was different from
others on the market.
Catalin Vasile - In crowd-funding money is the last thing you take. You
get the validation of the idea, the prototype or the MVP (minimum
viable product), which are all stages that you can pitch your idea for a
campaign. You can also build a community around your idea and all
these aspects are very valuable for your project.

4. TechHub Meetup Insights
Crowdfunding platforms you can use
Dragos Stanculescu – We started with the best known platforms: Kickstarter,
which you can’tuse from Romania, then Indiegogo, which we chose and we
didn’t go any further.
- Do more research (we didn’t have any business developer on the team)
- Look into legal aspects. Get legal advice on international law
- Look into financial matters, such as transferring your money from the
platform to your account.
If you don’t want to set up your own website and want to jump directly into
crowdfunding, it’s best to start with a Romanian platform and maybe move on
from there. If you gather a community and only go to a crowdfunding platform
when you actually need the money, then do your legal research first, because
international law is tricky.
Catalin Vasile - Romania is a young market, but a Romanian crowdfunding
campaign can be a first step before a bigger campaign on international
platforms, such as Indiegogo, because there are a lot of things that cannot be
foreseen in the beginning, when preparing for the campaign. I think the
campaigns right now could be better, which why I believe that testing it on the
Romanian market can be a learning experience.

6. TechHub Meetup Insights
The biggest challenge in raising money
Dragos Stanculescu We were lucky enough to become part of a pilot project in
Indiegogo which assigned every campaign a person from the team to guide us
and explain the mechanics and provide us with information on best practices
and that was a great help for us. I don’t know if it has become a common
practice.
Theodor Milian We made a list of people or companies we wanted to address
with this product. We then went on to make a video specifically for those people
(divers, people in research institutes, archaeologists, oil platforms, etc.). We
made a video showing the ROV exploring a point of interest into the water. We
also reached out to our friends and family, whom we got 20% of the entire sum
from.
Biggest challenges: to explain the product and its applications and to assure
backers that there are no additional fees (there’s still suspicion about payment
methods in Romania).
It’s important to have someone from the platform to help you and guide you
through the process.
Catalin Vasile - We want to have an employee who can help every project that
enlists for a campaign, because setting up the campaign is only the beginning.

7. TechHub Meetup Insights
Setting up a crowdfunding campaign
Dragos Stanculescu
- make sure that you have all your documents.
- If working with Paypal, make sure you have your account setup 3 months
before.
- Be prepared to spend every minute of your moments spent awake talking to
your funders and taking care of the campaign
- Find your tribe, the people who resonate with your idea and they will do
awesome marketing for you. Take care of them during the campaign and
beyond.
Catalin Vasile - We try to be close to the teams from the beginning. Setting up a
campaign is an entire process. It’s not just writing the campaign, making the
movie and hitting refresh on the page until the campaign end.
- Engage your friends and family to promote you, to support you.
- Learn how to market yourself. Sometimes, great projects from a technical
point of view have a very poor commercial factor. The teams sometimes
don’t think about the use case for the product, how it will scale, or how it
will go international.

8. TechHub Meetup Insights
Gathering initial support
Dragos Stanculescu
- We used social media to garner support, we went to the communities we
thought will be interested in our product and we never pushed too strong,
we never spammed anyone.
- We used the accounts we already had.
- We made sure our call to action also stated that support is as important as
contributing financially, and it worked. The people started sharing.
- We also took a shot at the moon: we emailed the top 10 most popular video
bloggers and we got support from Ray William Johnson. It was not all know
how, but we also got lucky.
Theodor Milian
- My team and I had the advantage of a rich background in tech projects. Any
search on Google would reveal our numerous successful projects and the
competition we either participated in or organized.
- You should donate some of your own money to get the campaign started and
for people to see that you believe in your own project as much as to risk your
own finances to do the best.

10. TechHub Meetup Insights
Calculating your goal
Dragos Stanculescu
- Take the fees into account: fees charged by the platform, banking fees, Paypal
fees, fees between the platform and Paypal and between Paypal and yourself,
there are taxes and a lot of things that will eat away some of the campaign
money.
- A risky play is only to ask for 30% of what you think you need. A conservative play
would be to ask for 60% more, and a safe play would be to ask for 100% more
than what you think you need. It’s less risky if you deal with physical products,
but you still have to do a 30-50% extra.
Theodor Milian
- For us, the campaign was help to develop the project faster, a year faster actually.
- As a result of the crowdfunding campaign, we got a lot of publicity and we
attracted the attention of other investors, companies (as ISU for example) who
needed the product that further funded us for future versions of the ROV.
Catalin Vasile
- Be transparent about what you’re going to do with the money, because people are
always worried about that.
- We do consultancy for the projects on the platform, to make sure they cover all
their costs and leave nothing out of their planning.

11. TechHub Meetup Insights
Defining push-points in the campaign
Dragos Stanculescu
- Research many campaigns before. We noticed that the interest in the campaign is
always a U shape: the beginning and the end see a lot of interest. If you fail to gain
traction in the beginning, the people who stumble upon your campaign in the middle
and see it has no traction will not trust you and won’t get involved even if otherwise
they would. If you have a marketing budget, make sure you spend it at the beginning of
the campaign.
- At the end of the campaign, you typically get the money from the people who wanted
to back you up in the beginning, but didn’t have the money, and got a pay-check in the
meantime.
- Close to the end, send out a press release and an email blast to make sure that you get
all the people who’d be interested. Remind people that time is running out (give them a
brief status update and encourage them to get involved).
Theodor Milian
- Going to specific targets in our audience worked for us, people who would actually use
our product.
- We went for the 3 months, the maximum allowed length, because we thought we’d
need more time to raise awareness. We weren’t pressed with the time, and if you’re
the same, you should to for the maximum amount of time.
- We used Facebook intensely, we kept our website updated, wrote a lot of emails and
did a more personal approach. The audience in Romania is very different, so you have
to see what works best with them.

12. TechHub Meetup Insights
Creating and testing rewards
Dragos Stanculescu
- We had 2 types of contributors: people who spend time on crowfunding
platforms and want to get involved to give something back to society, and people
who are looking for deals.
- Bring the deal seekers on your project’s page. Sell your idea to them and make
them feel like they’re getting something worthwhile in return. Since they’re
backers in the beginning, they’re shouldering all the risk, so you have to give
them a better deal (twice or thrice a better deal). Offer them deals and it’ll be
more likely that they’ll make accounts to back you up. Don’t rely solely on people
who already have accounts and are looking for campaigns to support.
Theodor Milian
- Make sure you don’t spend too much money on the rewards.
- Create a special experience for your backers, that nobody else gets (our biggest
reward was a diving course in a secret location where he’ll be able to dive with
the ROV and watch it in action).
Catalin Vasile
- The beauty of crowdfunding is that you can pre-sell your idea before you have the
product, and you can develop your product with the backers’ support.
- The people who contribute are people who work in large companies and don’t
have time to do anything else.

14. TechHub Meetup Insights
Top 3 things you wish you would’ve known before the campaign
Dragos Stanculescu
1. Paypal will give you some trouble with the money (it cost us a
month in delays to deal with that).
2. Set up your Paypal account at least 3 months before the campaign.
3. Have all your papers in order.
Theodor Milian
1. How to promote our project better,
2. Involve more students to contact more companies and send more
emails,
3. Be careful about the commissions.
4. Get fully involved in the campaign or find the right people to do it.

15. TechHub Meetup Insights
Resources
Read more about crowdfunding here:
• http://www.nesta.org.uk/news/crowdfunding-tips
• http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2014/01/01/crowdfunding-hot-top-
campaigns-2013/
• http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/12/10-things-to-know-about-
social-media-savvy-crowdfunding/
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/amadoudiallo/2014/01/24/crowdfundi
ng-secrets-7-tips-for-kickstarter-success/
• http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229436
• http://www.fastcompany.com/3026978/work-smart/4-secrets-
behind-successful-crowdfunding-campaigns
• http://www.xojane.com/diy/how-to-crowdfund-a-project-kickstarter
• http://socialtimes.com/tips-for-running-a-crowdfunding-
campaign_b134559

16. See you at our next event!
Bucharest.TechHub.com
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