Filippo Yacob e Matteo Loglio di Primo.io
It is called crowdfunding and for those who do not know it is the most innovative way to raise money for a project or idea. Do not banks finance you? No fear, start an online campaign and ask the crowd, friends or perfect strangers, to offer you financial support to realize your business dream. Many are the Italians who have been able to exploit the instrument perfectly by collecting millions of dollars on Kickstarter and Indiegogo (the best platforms in the industry).
Here's how they did three Italian projects to get millions of dollars with crowdfunding and some advice to imitate their success.
1. Jolla – $2.571.312 milioni
Stefano Mosconi is a Roman engineer moving to Finland to work in Nokia. Stefano participates in Nokia Bridge, which is a fund that helps employees to carry out personal projects. His idea is called MeeGo, then called SealfishOS, an open source operating system for smartphones. Nokia does not believe in the project, are the years of merger with Microsoft. Stefano does not deny and after winning the Nokia Grant, he launches a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to fund the first tablet that uses the new operating system. Result? Over 2 million dollars collected. Today its startup has raised more than 24 million (Crunchbase source).
2. OLO – $2.321.811 milioni
They were the first to use a 3D printer in Italy when they did not know what it was. Filippo Moroni and Piero Gabriele are the founders of Digital Foundries, a laboratory and incubator of innovative ideas within the Internet of Things. Last April they kicked off a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to fund their innovative project. It is called OLO and is the smallest 3D printer in the world. It is made up of 7 pieces and consists of a small, powered battery. The whole system is activated via smartphones. Their campaign starts with a $ 80,000 request, then closed with a record high of over $ 2 million.
3. Primo.io – $1,777 milioni
Filippo Yacob and Matteo Loglio are two guys who move to London for studies. After completing the university, they are interested in design and programming. The idea is to create a game to teach children coding. Their idea is called Cubetto. The game consists of three elements, a wooden robot, a console, and a set of colored blocks that imitate code sequences. The kids combine the blocks and make the robot move. Filippo and Matteo launch two crowdfunding campaigns, the first with $ 81,000 collected and a second record of over 1 million. Among the enthusiasts and investors in the project, Randy Zuckerberg, the sister of Mark, the founder of Facebook.
5 tips for a successful campaign
What do these three stories teach? Here are five lessons we can draw for anyone who wants to raise money in crowdfunding:
- Study Successful Campaigns - It's the first step to understanding what to do and do not do in your campaign.
- Choose the platform well: in addition to the American ones, there are also successful platforms in Italy, such as Eppela, Productions from Basso and Derev.
- Activated on social and investing: crowdfunding is not free. To achieve your goal, you have to think of it as a marketing campaign. Activated first on social and web, invested in communication and in realizing a quality video.
- Go offline too: Events with friends and acquaintances are a way to let the project know and get memberships.
- Point to emotions: a successful campaign can focus on people's hearts. Emotional, enthusiastic, and you will win them.