Manchester Calling

My last post was more than 1 month ago but just keep reading, you’ll find out why I’ve been so busy.

When we started all this – the MACE, Designing a Business module, the business with flI. – we would’ve never imagined what we ended up with. And I am not talking about the academic prizes.
Yes, we won the Bright Ideas competition at the Kingston University in February and it has been a very exciting moment for all of us.

Then, last Thursday we pitched to compete as representative of the Kingston University at the National Young Enterprise Competition 2015 in Manchester.
Our preparation was unconventional as usual: we met in the morning to prepare – the pitching session was at 6pm – with nothing but a bunch of tired (sleeping is a luxury these days) and crazy minds to work with. Obviously, we could’ve kept the presentation as it was for Bright Ideas just adding details of the work we’ve done in the meanwhile… but this is not us. We want to have fun and, after brainstorming, we came up with a pilot / stewardess performance to present our product. We already had ‘Safety Instructions’ to complete the scene.

Long story short: we won, we are going to Manchester on the 13th May. Well, a product called ‘flybee’ won, so at the beginning we were not sure whether it was us or not – suspense! – , but the correction came promptly. And then everyone in our course was hugging us and screaming, a surreal and joyful moment.

DEtour will be lead through an intense preparation during the next month. We will have to polish our presentation and our figures and honestly I can’t wait. The curiosity is eating me alive and I will take full advantage of all this for my personal growth, but there is also an half spoon of fear and half spoon of determination to be added to the mix.

We will always be true to ourselves, no matter what. This is not about winning a prize, this is not about flI. or about a company. This is about Us. And about unicorns, of course…

Are we hunting Dragons?

Here we go. Dragon’s Den came and passed, it was not that bad.

On the contrary, it was quite exciting. After working that hard on our idea and on how to handle the team work, then our product and prototype, materials and costs, the brand and experience, finance and price strategy – from stitching to Excel let’s say – we have been given the opportunity to speak in public about our vision. The purest and simplest thing ever if you believe in your product.

A Pitch is made of a mix of good objective arguments, like marketing  strategy and figures, and an emotional story; and to be honest my biggest fear was not to be able to connect with the audience, that the Dragons wouldn’t get how we feel and how we believe people would feel about flI. (this is the name of our “resting device”, you’ll have a whole post introducing our creature in a while).

“I don’t have kids but I would never spend money on something like that!”, this was the feedback from one of the Dragons as regards the LITTLE STEPS team‘s product “Ella”. A mattress for kids, targeting – obviously – concerned mothers traditionally willing to pay crazy amounts of money on their children well-being.

The question  – and it’s a pretty scary one – is: What if your investors are not your target?

You can still persuade them with great figures, a team with an untouchable reputation and an accurate market research, but where is the Magic then? And moreover, it would be much simpler to convince them if they could perceive the experience, the added value, behind the actual object.

As creatives we don’t do what we do just for money, there are things we value sometimes more then that, such as reputation, recognition  and attention. The Psychic Money is what makes our business OUR, it’s our motivation.

Probably, in the current scenario, we should look for investors that can appreciate and understand what we are doing, that are willing to be part of the team, not just part of the business. I guess it’s one of the main motivation to choose crowd funding on a traditional investor, but then you could miss the opportunity to have a mentor or just someone with a different background and expertise that can help your product and idea grow.

This is just one more question to add to the crowd of questions we already have about starting a creative business and I’m more and more sure every day that there is no right answer. We are living in the world of Today trying to follow the rules of Yesterday. How Money and Creativity can coexist is the biggest challenge and finding at least a path to follow – not a magic formula – will leads us closer to a Brand New Economy.

Today is as close to Yesterday as it is to Tomorrow. Just choose a side.

Would you give me some money? I’ll make my unicorn dance for you.

Almost two weeks ago we had an interesting panel discussion with two fundraising experts. My impression was (and may be more than just an impression) that one of them was there to embody the capitalist side, the banker, while his counterpart was the start upper, one of those went through the fundraising mechanism – crowdfunding, Angel investors, Venture capitalists etc. – happily surviving at the end. But still looking for £ 2,000,000 I’m afraid.

I have to say something strong: I hate money and talking about money. I’ve never been that good at maths – It could be related to that – , but I think that when money is involved everything become stricter and unclear. Everyone starts worrying about profits, deadlines and how to make the investors happy. There is no more space for Creativity and it’s easy for your Idea to get lost in the effort to make it come true.

Yes, in my dreamlike vision ideas are unicorns.

I may should have said that I hate the money environment as I experienced it, not the money itself. It pays for broadband internet and this Masters after all. And raising some money in a creative way it’s one of the better chance we have to pursue the career we dreamt about, to think about our job smiling.  As young entrepreneurs that dream could be manage our own successful business for the most of us.

In a seeding phase, when it’s too soon to take the risk and establish a company, the best way to gain some weight and confidence, without getting lost (or ruined) I believe it’s crowdfunding.

First of all because It’s about relationships (again) and real people. It’s not just about getting your idea out there and wait but introducing your self and your idea with a story – a good one – to the right community. Secondly, It helps to research your market and discover whether or not there is a consistent market for your product.

There are different types of crowdfunding:

– Reward: your are giving rewards (little object, wallpapers, handwritten cards etc) in exchange for small/medium amount of money, or even pre-sell your product.

– Donation: this works for no-profit and social cause only.

– Equity: you are giving away shares of your business.

– Crowdlending (peer-to-peer lending or debt crowdfunding): many people lending you some money. It’s like a loan that you’ll have to pay back to people that invested on your business.

You can find a detailed explanation on the UK CROWDFUNDING website.

Reward crowdfunding is my favourite for two reasons:  1) You can feel less pressure from the stakeholders and have more freedom; 2) People are investing in your idea because they really love it and because you convinced them with your passion. This is an investment that could last longer then money: it’s pure motivation that will fuel your business.

As regards crowdfunding platforms, we all know Kickstarter, but there are many others less popular but effective. Sometimes you have to think smaller, let’s say locally (you local virtual community) , to have a bigger impact. The are some of my favourite:

KAPIPAL (Capital + Pal)

This is one of my favourite: “You friends are your Capital”. You can raise money for basically everything, from birthday present to business projects. They are not charging anything for this service, you can keep whatever amount you’ll raise and you can even not give any reward. Sounds crazy? Just try.

CROWDFUNDER

This is based on rewards and it’s one of the most popular after Kickstarter. They explicitly wrote on the website that “Crowdfunder loves projects that benefit the community, not just yourself”, which I believe is truly creative-economy-oriented. They also have a well-written guide on ISSUU about how to create the perfect crowdfundable project. There is a 5%+VAT fee though, and they also have a small charge on transactions.

CROWDCUBE

It’s Crowfunder’s younger and – let’s say – more ambitious brother. Our guests mentioned it, Crowdcube it’s based on equity  and lending funding. You’ll have to measure carefully the value of your business to sell shares (has to be a running business or have a detailed business plan) which – in my opinion – is difficult in an early stage. I used EQUIDAM for this purpose sometimes, it’s nice to play with that.

Funding Tree

Pretty similar to Crowdcube. Did I mentioned that they both have a pretty nice blog and events section? If your business is listed on one of this websites book your place, grab a glass of wine and go to meet some investors.

FundedByMe

This is a swedish platform (I love swedish people, could you believe that?) that offers both reward, equity and loan funding models. They are incredibly transparent and you can find the explanation of nearly everything about how their service works and what crowdfunding is on the website.

Our Friday lecturers mentioned also Funding Circle as loan-based platform and, even though I don’t know much about their service and I’m pretty scared about loans and banking stuff in general, I couldn’t help myself from being moved by the first sentence on their website: “Funding Circle was created with a big idea: to revolutionise the outdated banking system and secure a better deal for everyone”.

All this makes me think that we may have a new era in front of us; talking about money could be more human… so, maybe I’ll keep gathering information and start a conversation instead of running away.