What we've learned from crowdfunding bidstack #startupreality

Well, as I write bidstack is currently on 115% funded on Crowdcube. Our high risk approach - big on marketing, disrupt the industry, pushing on hype and lining up strategic partnerships, has worked. I've lost even more hair(!) but it's worked.

I learned a few things this time that I think are worth sharing with the startup community.

This is the second Crowdcube round I've gone through personally and having complete control on the process this time, alongside the truly fantastic Francesco Petruzzelli and Simon Mitchell who worked with intelligence and concentrated effort to get us over the line.

This round was slightly different from the last one I went through - we went in via the 'sprint' program, so we had 30 days to raise the funds this time, rather than 60. We are pre-BETA, whilst the last time out we were post-launch. We were pre-funded last time out, this time we went up without pre-backing. Risky.

Elements of the process were exactly how I remembered - a slow start, getting north of ￡2k towards our ￡100k target after the first 48 hours with a number of investors I remember from last time spread-backing most Crowdcube pitches, with ￡10-150 put behind us. An ok start - and in that time period we must have had 25 business plan requests, which was very encouraging.

We then needed to get towards the ￡10k mark as quickly as possible, which we did over the next 48 hours. By the end of the first week we had just hit circa ￡20k - which was keeping our run-rate of ￡25k per week in sight.

After that we had a flurry of further business plans and the questions from individuals started flooding in. No more money, but the enquiries were starting to get a little more detailed and serious from each download.

By the end of week two we'd barely moved, scraping up a few ￡k but short of a quarter funded still. At this point people around us professionally and personally, along with the team at Crowdcube started to worry(!). This is where it's crucial to keep your nerve and follow your own path.  Unless you are taking advice from someone who's been in your field, raising on the same platform and was in the same stage of your business life cycle, the opinions aren't helpful.

We did a big push in week two and three - messaging individuals through Linkedin, with a brief, replicable intro e-mail through Linkedin, along with using Campaign Monitor to e-blast my Linkedin contacts.

We started to form a pipeline, looking for one or two big fish that could go in big on the round and stir the pot, whilst making sure we had enough of the ￡1-5k investors to accelerate us up towards our target. The crowd always react when a big lump of money goes in to the platform.

By the start of week three we had a top up from our first ￡10k investor to ￡25k and we were creeping towards 50% funding by the 3/4 stage. That was leading many to continue panicking, wanting valuation shifts, more promotion etc etc - but we had already met one of two investors who are friends, had exemplary track-records, and they were looking to put in 50k into the crowd.

Over the next week, Simon, Fran, myself and our excellent accountant Barry, worked up the proposition for these individuals and as of yesterday after a good level of negotiations we were delighted to see them both back us - and in time I'm sure we'll be able to reveal who they are, but we're delighted to have them involved.

This has lead us to overfund up to the point of 115% - and through the stress and high risk approach, along with some fantastic support from our partners - inc. Cineworld, Habana Creative, OfferMoments and more, we're now sitting down tomorrow morning to work through our 2016 execution plan - which is fantastically motivational and an amazing Xmas present for the team here.

Thanks for everyone who has backed us, it's appreciated - and I'm happy to share what I've learned over a coffee (or something stronger) with anyone looking to use the Crowdcube platform in 2016.