1. Wybierz projekt i kliknij w wybraną nagrodę

2. Potwierdź wybór nagrody, zapoznaj się z informacjami dotyczącymi bezpieczeństwa transakcji

3. Przejdź do płatności amazonu

4.Zaloguj się do konta Amazonu lub załóż je (prosty proces, jak to na amazonie)

5. Potwierdź adres, dane płatności i zleć jej wykonanie

5. Voila! Jesteś wspierającym i możesz mówić “Bitch, I’m crowdfunding” (ekran potwierdzenia płatności)

 Bitch, I’m crowdfunding!

Cool video from crowdsourcing.org, which explains what crowdsourcing and it’s beloved child – crowdfounding – are.

Although there are some services and financial products available for banks only (as credits and deposits), there are more and more examples of virtual communities taking advantage of financial institiutions.

At first there is a huge market of social lending, estimated by Gartner for 5 000 000 000 USD in 2013. Since a few years everyone can become a small business angel or a philantropist like W. Buffent and B. Gates. While using crowdfunding platforms it is easy to donate (donation based crowdfunding) or invest (equity or debt based crowdfunding), becoming not only a supporter of creative business idea, but also a shareholder of one. There are also virtual platforms, in which everyone can exchange currencies avoiding brokers (eg. banks and cantors) and sharing one another commission. This examples of microfinance becoming the important part of global economy, can be also supported by crowdsourcing sites, in which wisdom of crowd can serve as a source of financial and investment advisor.

Allowing everyone access the finance market currently isn’t dangerous for „to big to fail” institutions. Though, I suggest you observe, put some efforts to prepare and take part in social finance as an investor or enterpreneur. It really makes sense!

Originally posted on fundcrowd.eu

Social lending is a financial mechanism which responses to individuals’ and business’ need for capital. Loans are one of most popular financial products, which is offered by banks and financial institutions. Social lending platforms give every individual possibility to earn on loans without having big capital.

How social lending works for borrower?

Social lending is one of best usages of virtual communities and social life in the internet. Everyone, including you, can lend money to people in need and gain interests from that. You need as little money as few euro or dollars to feel like a bank.

In comparison to bank loans the cost of capital is smaller, due to its division between borrower and a community of lenders. Just a small provision goes to the platform provider.

For example if someone wants to borrow 5000 EUR, he or she will have to pay about 15% yearly interest rates. At Zopa.com, one of the eldest and well-known social lending platform the interest rate will be charged at 7,9% (36 months), most of which will be given to the lenders. As an oppiste site you can earn on such platforms, borrowing let say 50 euro. If there will be 100 social loans, 50 EUR each, the loan will be given to the borrower on the fixed interest rate.

Social lending platforms

You can use many websites to get a loan from lenders’ society. Just a few of best known are:

• Prosper
• LendingClub
• Zopa
• Kiva
• FundingCircle
• Smava

You can read a full list of SocLen platforms on emergentbydesign.

Social lending tips for borrowers

While preparing to use social lending platforms obey social lending tips, unless you want to lose your time.

•  show your cards - tell what you need your money for
• be transparent and honest - social investor are aware that it is difficult to get money back, when someones don’t want to pay back, so don’t lose their trust
• pay back as scheduled
• build the image of a great partner, you might need it in the future

Read about maximising your chances for getting a loan.

If you’re interested in social lending, these sources are worth reading:

• sociallending.net
• financialhighway
• financehype
• SL.org.uk
• TechCrunch

Kickstarter got $10 million private market from such well-known investor as Union Square Ventures, who’s portfolio contain Twitter, Zynga, Tumblr,  Soundcloud, LendingClub, Disqus, Etsy or Foursquare. Today, IndieGoGo released a statement on $1,5 million private investment from VC funds and Zynga’s cofounder – Steve Schoettler.

In the times of stock markets decline, innovative privately held start-ups attract investors. Thanks to kickstarter’s popularity, there are clones all over the world. However, this mechanism of community financing is needed, wanted and attractive to both sides of transaction. Show me more business models like this. I am really happy to see crowdfunding platforms on serious investor’s desks, but on the other hand, it is possible to lose the transparency, communities trust and friend-alike atmosphere. Crowdfunding platforms have been seen (maybe still are?) more as “little profit – big ideas” companies, which is going to change with million dollars high valuations.

Are we loosing the best of crowdfunding or are platform founders just in the middle of the next internet bubble?

Subscribe to crowdfunding.pl’s english version category RSS here.

Right now, there’s 4-years old social music label MegaTotal.pl, which succeed in helping to record and distribute 70 CD’s of about 50 music artists. Since 2011 I’ve been eyewitnessing starts, collapses and slow development of kickstarter clones, which I’m used to call non-shareholder crowdfunding platforms. One of them is making a progress by having more and more projects financed by the community, but still their worth is about 15 000 USD (12 000 EUR). In general it seems to be meaningless, but it’s not. Don’t forget that a lot of efforts must be given to harvest the crop. The problem is that some crowdfunding platforms ended it’s start-up history after few months and it doesn’t look like they will come back. Nowadays polakpotrafi.pl is the champion with something like 10 projects crowdfunded and next dozens pending.

Considering some similarities to crowdfunding mechanism, just a few words about social lending. In this area there’re some successes in Poland. 3-4 platforms has been working properly within last 4-5 years, having a chance to make a progress, develop and make a revenue on satisfying level. There’s also new social lending platform pozycz.pl (2010), which has been cofinanced with EU structural funds.

What is interesting, there are some attempts to academical reaserches on crowdfunding, although, there are no surprising results yet. This mechanism is relatively popular with the crowd of journalists, which led to many articles and reportages in main newspapers and tv broadcasters.

Poland as a leading CEE market has a great potential to adapt such business models as crowdfunding. Additionally, there is high demand for financing clever, creative and innovative ideas and turn them into great start-ups. Crowdfunding success requires great scale, huge community and acceptance from supporters (or backers). My guess, it will come in near future.

As showed on the picture, crowdfunding in Poland is a newly born baby on the start-up and e-finance scene. It seems like starts are very hard, but like they say – without work, there is no cakes. There’re some serious barriers in developement of crowdfunding in Poland, which I will describe in future posts, as I will see a demand for such posts and articles from my dear foreign readers

Disclaimer: due to some suggestions since now I’ll publish some posts in english for foreigners interested in main topics of crowdfunding.pl. These blogposts will be similar to those written in Polish. You may find english versions in the tag cloud (tag: english version) and in categories list (category: english version). Fell free to contact, comment and share.

First time since I’ve been blogging I’m writing in english. First (2) things first – forgive me my English and remember that what counts is content, not a form.  I’m not a graphic designer, which I actually regret sometimes…

While working on my bachelor composition I made few thoughts on the history of crowdfunding.
Nowadays we observe this financial mechanism rolling really fast. Someone clever called such fast growth the snowball effect and so it respectfully do describe correctly what’s going on. Few days ago kickstarter annouced to exceed 53 000 000 $ collected money to support (“back” as it is called on KS) over 20.000 projects with success rate of 43%. Many others wish to eat at least a piece of kickstarter’s birthday cake. So there are few non-equity crowdfunding platforms in almost every developed country in Europe, not to mention many in the U.S. and Australia. First kickstarter clones are (finally) starting up in Poland, which was my  concern since I’ve been running this blog. What is also important, SEC (Securities and Exchange Comission) answered officially to efforts put in legal fight for crowdfunding. Actually it doesn’t look like we’re going to be spectators of equity crowdfunding boom soon, but the news is important.

I decided to sum up recent history of crowdfunding and possibly start the debate on how will it develop in the future. Additionally enjoy first sketch of blog’s new logo

I put some work in determining the chronological order of next stages. It’s hard to define what crowdfunding exactly is, let alone find a logic, and chronology in it! While statue of RoboCop in Detroit has been crowdfunded recently, how can we call it logic? Though, I really enjoy everything that touches upon the topic, starting with startup’s venture capital, ending on wise crowd that crowdsource.

Few comments on my so-called-but-don’t-call-it-that-way infographic:

• Many crowdfunding campaigns took place long ago, before this term was commonly used, as it is. Mostly by musicians and in the film industry. However, it doesn’t fit the definition, Statue of Liberty was also crowdfunded, what I’ve already described.
• 2006 with SellABand and later with other websites non-equity crowdfunding has been established. With some really successful projects funded on kickstarter the buzz and the boom started. In the near future we might see some M&A’s and/or speculative bubbles in this area (probably I’m just kidding). What is important, it’s a great opportunity for small enterpreneurs and creatives to test and market their business ideas.
• 2009 Trampoline Systems planned to finance its further development by crowdfunding 1 000 000$. First tranche has been collected so quickly, that it seemed to be a great capital source, considering Venture Capital/Private Equity liquidity crisis. And it’s not the only one example of equity crowdfunding successful financing.
• 2010 bring few initiatives that aim at changing securities regulations in the way, that small crowdfunding offerings will be allowed. Current proposition shows something like 100 000USD maximum gap collected from 100$ individual investment’s. It seems, that legally it is possibile to create new asset class, which will be a specially regulated (actually exempted) security which will allow equity crowdfunding to explode.
• What are next stages is a good question, one might say… But, what are they?

As I read in “The crowdfunding revolution” by Marom and Lawton: social networking changed how we allocate time, crowdfunding will change how we allocate money“. That might be true, so keep this in mind, spread the word using your magic social media tools and enjoy sunny days in may!