HKSTP TecONE Investment Series Seminar on Crowdfunding

HKSTP TecONE Investment Series seminar named “Crowdfunding: Launching your brand and product globally” was organized by Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) with strategic partner “Hong Kong Business Angel Network” (HKBAN) on 19th July 2017.  The guest speaker was Mr. Ray Sin (Director of International Markets, Crowdcreate) and he shared on the fundamentals of crowdfunding included the differences between the major platforms, customer acquisition and demographic reach.  

In the beginning, Mr. Ray Sin briefed some benefits of crowdfunding for startups included “attract outside investors (VC, seed, angel)”, “Rewards-based vs Equity-based crowdfunding”, “Collect pre-orders”, “Learn about customers”, “Gauge demand for products”, “Market and product validation”, “Brand awareness” and “Retain 100% equity in your company”. He also briefed the bright future of crowdfunding.

In the beginning, Mr. Ray Sin briefed some benefits of crowdfunding for startups included “attract outside investors (VC, seed, angel)”, “Rewards-based vs Equity-based crowdfunding”, “Collect pre-orders”, “Learn about customers”, “Gauge demand for products”, “Market and product validation”, “Brand awareness” and “Retain 100% equity in your company”. He also briefed the bright future of crowdfunding.

Then Mr. Ray Sin compared two crowdfunding platforms and they were Kickstarter and Indiegogo.  It seems Kickstarter was more restriction than the other.  Indiegogo was not opened to public.  Mr. Sin analyzed their demographics through infographic

After that he introduced Indiegogo to us that its mission was to empower people to unite around ideas that matter to them and together make those ideas come to life.  The process steps were “Make a Plan”, “Find the Right Talent”, “Position Your Product”, “Build Your Materials” and “Drive Traffic”.  Speaker also introduced his company “Crowdcreate” that was building a community of creators and early adapters to engage with crowdfunding on a deeper level than just a purchasing platform.  Four types of services were briefed.

After discussed several cases, he stated the whole process schedule from starting preparations to Ship Product (about 6 to 15 months) as the diagram below.  

Crowdfunding as a sales and marketing channel for hardware companies around the world.  Some things you needed to be done and those works were suggested to be separated for different partners to finish it.  

Finally, you needed to increase traffic to your page before and after launch.  He suggested to use digital advertising such as Facebook ads, Google search ads and Google display ads. He also analyzed each type of ads characteristics in the following table.  

At the end, Mr. Sin gave an overview of the whole campaign process as follows:

1.      Planning your campaign

2.      Finding the right partners

3.      Create marketing materials

4.      Build awareness around your launch

5.      Create your story and perks

Reference:

HKSTP - http://www.hkstp.org

TecONE - http://tecone.hkstp.org/t1_web/

HKBAN - http://hkban.org/

Crowdcreate - https://crowdcreate.us/

Indiegogo - https://www.indiegogo.com/partners/crowdcreate