21st Century Livelihoods & Opportunity - Why We Wrote the Book

One or two people have asked me why I'm writing this book. In particular one ‘Crowdfundologist’ left me with the impression that they see it as a threat to their business model and expertise. It isn’t - here’s why.

Five years ago we were looking for a glimmer of light in a very dark place -  the aftermath of the global crash -  when, along with millions of others, we stared aghast at our TV screens at what the corporate world, especially the banks, had brought us to. As the story had developed seeing little real hope of change.

Meanwhile I saw, as they say, a cloud the size of a man's hand in the far distance over America - something called crowdfunding - and wondered could it be a means of creating businesses, jobs and livelihoods independently. Independent of anyone including the vagaries of corporatism, government, policy and incumbent institutions.

So it is has proved.  Our own experience, the massive data we have collected and independence research provide more than enough evidence seed-crowdfunding is creating businesses, jobs and livelihoods, in large numbers, by providing the missing link. The starting point enabling those who would and could create businesses and jobs to get off the ground.

For the last five years my team and I have campaigned day and night in support of this much needed means of greater independence for people everywhere and especially here in the UK and the USA.  

We've worked in Parliament helping create an all party parliamentary group on the subject,  change the UK government's approach to financial innovation - and the innovation unit we first proposed should be created within the financial regulator has now been in place for two years and is being emulated in countries across the globe.

But this is not enough. The job is far from done. The data tells us that crowdfunding is enabling some of the people who would, and could create businesses jobs livelihoods - but  only a limited number of early adopters. Those independently minded souls, pioneers, who tend to plough their own furrow rather than look first to advice or to advisers

The majority, who look to the advice provided, are, to be blunt being misled. In both the UK and the USA government is involved in providing business advice in the hope of creating more businesses.  This advice has yet to embrace seed-crowdfunding (aka a specific application of rewards crowdfunding) as a new source of business finance - often a better source of business finance than debt or equity- especially for early-stage and start up businesses.

With the result that would-be job creators are being needlessly turned away week on week, month on month, year on year.

The answer is not more technology -  it is change. To be frank crowdfunding has become a ghetto, education for the most part a joke, crowdfunding advice and outreach to advisers has not advanced from the earliest days. If any.

We should be far from surprised that business mentors and advisors have been steering clear of crowdfunding - I would if I were them, given that what we've offered them is mostly a diet of promotional marketing from platforms laced with enthusiasm, and the best available beyond this further helpings of hints, tips, anecdotes and inspiration.

What we have not done is to offer a rational basis supported by data and at least some initial and credible theory to account for the differences we claim between crowdfunding and the traditional economy, between crowdfund-marketing and what came before.

Professionals have to account for their advice and the decisions they make. We have not given advisers the means to do so. This cannot come from platforms - and governments and other institutions don’t understand enough of this yet..

So having spent the last three years collecting data on hundreds of thousands of crowdfunds, and having realised that unless we do something we may wait a generation or more for the mass adoption we seek -  and which could do so much to alleviate  some of society's most pressing problems… Having confirmed the need to support business advisors and help them update their advice for the 21st century - we've decided to act.

Last week we held the fourth national (and international) Crowdfunding Deep Impact conference. Specifically engaging with business leaders and especially those who lead on advice: including the founder of the Association of Business Mentors, The head of Enterprise for the Institute of Chartered Accountants, and the head of Access to Finance for  the UK's leading government innovation agency.  At the end of that day we reached strong agreement that it was time for seed-crowdfunding to be embraced within the mainstream -  and that we should collaborate and act in order to make this a reality.

To coincide with this effort we are also readying to publish this new book, New Routes to Funding, as we already understood the need for proper systematic knowledge based on business and marketing principles that advisers would find acceptable.

So if you're a crowdfunding professional I do hope and believe that this book, its data and insights, will be useful to you. Likewise if you're looking for help to understand how crowdfunding works for your own campaign. But fundamentally this book is written not for you but for the mentors and advisers who serve entrepreneurs and business people. To equip and enable them to understand enough about crowdfunding and to have enough confidence to know when it is appropriate and capable of helping a venture or an entrepreneur. To be able to refer clients with confidence to crowdfunding itself and to those who can help them with a strategy, marketing and the support they need. To put crowdfunding, in all it's forms, into it's proper context and who how they can work in concert together (I don't see much of this yet) and with the traditional models.

But in short we're still on the same train we were on on day one. Still seeking more light at the end of the tunnel, and to expand crowdfunding to the benefit of society as a whole.

We don't want to waste a generation -  we don't have to waste generation. So I hope you'll help us in our mission  to provide anyone who wants it with the opportunity to create their own livelihood - likely creating  jobs and livelihoods for others too - by buying - or backing the book if you’re in time (below).

“Greed is good”  though discredited has gone so deep that we cannot wait for banks, the corporate world or even governments to awake and find the will to act. We do not need to, we have the means.

As Buckminster Fuller said “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”.

Let's do this together. Please back the campaign now - or pre-order the book HERE