Pledgecamp is a decentralized platform, based on blockchain-powered, which aims to solve the problems that currently exist in crowdfunding.

1. A sector that needs to evolve

Crowdfunding has been a booming sector for many years. In 2018, funds raised by crowdfunding reached $ 9.3 billion. According to several projections, the funds raised in 2022 will be over $ 25 billion.

France is not an exception to this strong growth. Since 2013, funds raised through crowdfunding have multiplied by 11, rising from 36 million euros in 2013 to 402 million in 2018. Another significant figure in this growth concerns the number of projects financed, which has increased from 24,126 projects in 2017 to 33,381 in 2018 (+ 38%). (Source: KPMG Barometer 2018 & Participatory Financing France)

Another highlight, the World Bank estimates that 344 million households in (only) developing countries could contribute up to 96 billion dollars a year to crowdfunding from 2025.

Many crowdufunding campaigns have exceeded the millions of dollars. The two most famous crowdfunded projects are:

Oculus Rift, pioneer of virtual reality, who raised $ 2.5 million from 9500 backers before being bought a few years later by Facebook for $ 2 billion.
Pebble Smartwatch, the forerunner of the smart watch industry that raised more than $ 33 million and was eventually bought by Fitbit.

However, there are many problems in the crowdfunding sector which affects its total development:

A lack of confidence of the Backers: The current platforms doesn’t protect the backers in any way and doesn’t force the projects to respect any commitment. This hurts the trust of backers towards crowdfunding. According to a study by a professor at the University of Wharton, 85% of crowdfunded projects (on the Kickstarter platform) are delayed and 14% never deliver anything. As a result, more than $ 500 million went up in failed projects and less than a third of Kickstarters backers participated in a second campaign.
A lack of protection for backers: The contributors become “hostages” with current systems and can only wait in the hope that the funds invested will lead to the promised delivery by the project. If the project fails, backers will simply have lost their investments.
A lack of responsibility for projects and lack of milestone: when a crowdfunding campaign comes to an end, the entire amount raised is paid to the project team who can dispose of it as it sees fit. No “control” based on milestones concerning the project is put in place to encourage projects to keep their commitment and thus protect backers to a minimum.
The positioning of the current platforms: Crowdfunding platforms are paid with registration fees which amount to 5% of the amount of the crowdfunding campaign. Their business model is therefore based on the number of campaigns listed on the platform which do not encourage them to be very selective. Moreover, the success or not of the crowdfunded project is not the problem of these platforms.
Centralized systems: the current centralized systems impose a number of limitations that prevent a real deployment of crowdfunding on a global scale. If we take the example of Kickstarter, the platform requires project creators to have a bank account and a credit card; while 38% of adults in the world remain excluded from the financial system and 63% of Millennials haven’t credit card. In addition, Kickstarter has decided to exclude from its platform a number of legal projects such as energy drinks.

In this context, Pledgecamp decided to launch its decentralized crowdfunding platform, Blockchain based. The aim is to solve the current problems of the sector while allowing the Crowdfunding to finally become “global”.

2. A decentralized solution

Pledgecamp is a crowdfunding platform based on the Blockchain which aims to bring trust, transparency and some form of responsibility to the crowdfunding sector.

Building on Blockchain technology, Pledgecamp wants to offer a completely decentralized and collaborative solution that allows contributors to support a project with the confidence that creators will fulfill their commitments.

The Pledgecamp ecosystem is organized around three key features: crowdfunding 2.0, the market network and the knowledge center.

3. The campaign deposit & the Backer insurance

Among Pledgecamp’s many innovative services, two of them represent a real advance in obtaining greater transparency for projects raising funds and increasing backers’ confidence in the system. These are the Backer insurance and the mechanism of the campaign deposit.

Backer Insurance: Pledgecamp’s goal is to accountable projects that use crowdfunding campaigns and to protect backers to the platform. With this in mind, the platform compels the project to set up an insurance (ndlr Backer insurance) which corresponds to a certain percentage of the funds raised. These funds will be blocked and governed by a smart contract that will also contain the milestones of the project. At each milestone validated, part of the sum blocked in the smart contract will be delivered to the project. If the milestone isn’ validated, backers may vote their lack of trust in the project and will receive a partial refund based on the amount of insurance defined by the project.

Campaign deposit: Any creation of a campaign on the platform begins with a deposit from the creators. This deposit is considered like a protection against spam and aims to encourage the creators of the campaign to greater transparency. This deposit is fully refundable if the creator is sufficiently transprent through a set of actions such as the provision of commercial registration documents, intellectual property registrations, personal references or even Q/A sessions in live video.

4. Market network & Knowledge center

The Pledgecamp ecosystem also offers two other services:

Market Network: This is a decentralized service market that allows creators to hire professionals to work on their projects. Project creators have access to all the supplier history (review, history, …) that is stored on the Blockchain. The contract between the two parties is governed by a smart contract which offers complete transparency and certainty for the supplier to be paid once the funds have been raised. In addition, potential backers will also have access to this information which can increase their level of trust in the project.

Knowledge Center: currently, no market player offers a forum or knowledge base about crowdfunding. Pledgecamp proposes to correct this lack through a forum of questions/answers and a knowledge base. All of this information will be populated by the community (project creators, contributors or service providers).

5. Great team and Advisor

The core team of Pledgecamp consists of eight members. Most of them are crowdfunding experts or have strong expertise in technology and Blockchain. Some members of the team have participated in many crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter and have collected millions of dollars.

Jae Choi (CEO) is a serial entrepreneur who studied at Berkeley and Stanford. A former banker and IT technician, he has raised millions of dollars in venture capital and government grants. He is an active investor in the Blockchain sector and is also advisor of many projects.

Eddie Lee (president) is an expert in crowdfunding. He has collected millions of dollars on Kickstarter and helped other projects to do the same. He is also one of the advisors of SkyDeck, Berkeley’s startup accelerator.

Sam Pullman (CTO) is a full-stack developer who has already been CTO of many projects. In his career, he has developed numerous mobile applications as well as firmware. On the project, he developed the PLG smart contract and the sales platform. He is also a Blockchain expert and currency miner.

The team also includes three developers (one specialized in frontend, one in Blockchain and another in the development of smart contract), an UX / UI designer and a head of Operations.

On the advisors’ side, there are Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook’s boss and the founder of Zuckerberg Media, Matt Currcio, Ripple’s VP of Data, Jinen Kamdar, VP of Buzzfeed and a founder of TechCrunch and a member of the royal family of Saudi Arabia.