Ever wanted to listen to a podcast on equity crowdfunding? I was interviewed in the Innovative Leaders Podcast, a show I also co-host. We discussed quite a lot about crowdfunding and, in particular, equity crowdfunding.
You can listen to the episode on your favourite podcatcher by searching ‘Innovative Leaders’ or
You can also download the mp3 file, if you prefer.
Here’s an approximate transcript of the topics we cover on the episode. Enjoy!
- Tell us about you
- Born in Barcelona
- After studying engineering at Uni I spent 2 and a half years in Italy, working for Fiat Auto
- I moved to the UK in 2005, working for Kimberly-Clark and honing my marketing skills in brands like Andrex and Kleenex
- After leaving KC I worked for two years and a half with Universities.
- I then decided to start offering my marketing services as a freelancer and quite soon I came across the world of crowdfunding and never looked back.
- More recently, we’ve created Crowdeasy, an agency that can help in all of the aspects of a crowdfunding campaign
- What is crowdfunding and how can help businesses?
- Crowdfunding is the funding of ideas, projects or companies by raising relatively small amounts of money from a large number of people via the Internet.
- Not only funding and pre-selling
- But also validation, marketing and community
- How did you get into crowdfunding?
- I got involved in Crumbs Brewing and, after proving that we had demand for our first beer, we decided to use crowdfunding to scale up.
- We learnt a lot, the hard way!
- I was also involved in Loveworks and to fund one of the projects, the Merstham Mix, we decided to do a crowdfunding campaign short after launching to extend the opening hours and start cookery courses.
- We raised £10k from the crowd and Santander, the bank, match funded it with another £10k.
- I was definitely hooked and starting to get quite a lot of leads to help other people with their campaigns.
- What are the main types of crowdfunding?
- If we classify them by the type of compensation to the people contributing to the project are expecting we have:
- Rewards: people get a product or service.
- Equity: people get shares in a company.
- Lending: people get their money back + interest.
- Donation: people get a warm, fuzzy feeling of helping a good cause.
- What sort of projects or industries tend to do well in crowdfunding?
- Rewards: projects with some sort of innovation (gadgets), board games, cultural projects…
- Equity: scalable companies with an MVP and traction in the market
- Lending: established companies that have a solid record
- Donation: interesting causes with a big community to tap on
- What are the keys to a successful crowdfunding campaign?
- Community
- Preparation: building up an email list, warming up your crowd, video, copy
- What alternatives to crowdfunding are there?
- More traditional ways of funding: loans, grants, business angel investment, VCs
- I have helped a few companies getting more traditional funding
- How do you help entrepreneurs and creators with their crowdfunding campaigns?
- I have a very structured approach – 8 to 12 sessions over Skype or face-to-face in which we go from the fundamental strategy for the campaign to the quite nuanced tactics and actions that will lead to success
- I am quite hands-on and help the client with all of the aspects of their campaign
- What would you tell a younger version of yourself?
- Get out of the rat race earlier. Working for yourself is challenging but much more rewarding
- What’s next for you
- Build up Crowdeasy,
- Writing a book
- Watch this space –
new podcast!
- How can people get in touch with you?
- The easiest way is LinkedIn Adria Tarrida or twitter @adriatarrida
- Also via email adria [at] tarrida.co.uk or on my website tarrida.co.uk
I hope you have enjoyed this podcast on equity crowdfunding. Shall I start a podcast just on the topic? Do let me know in the comments or by filling in the contact form.
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