The Crowdfunding Revolution: How to Raise Venture Capital Using Social Media

Introduction
Part | I The Road Here
Chapter | 1 The Rise of the Crowd
The Dynamic Duo: Social and Physical Technologies
Affinity Groups
Participation and the New Pro-sumer Class
The Response to the Loss of Social Capital
The New Crowd-ployment Paradigm
The Crowd-poration
Chapter | 2 The Decline of Established Financing
The Rate of Change
The Durability of Expertise
A Multidisciplinary World
Market Time Compression
Capital Efficiency and the Rolling Close
Macroeconomic Sensitivity
The Start-Ups’ Response
The Venture Capital Industry’s Response
The Market Sizing Fallacy
The Base of the Funding Pyramid
Chapter | 3 The Decline of Outlier Identification
Curation: The New Leadership
Chapter | 4 The Emergence of Early Financing
Chapter | 5 The Rise of Crowdfunding
At the Edge of Chaos
Do It With Others (DIWO)
Critical Mass
The New Ritual, the New Status
Rivers Without Cascades
Valuations
Long Tails and Shrinking Heads
Gender Equalization
Part | II The Crowdfunding Campaign
Chapter | 6 Benefits
Money
Marketing
Participation and Emotional Attachment
Currying Serendipity
Returns, Rewards, and Perks
Chapter | 7 The Artful Ask
Authenticity: Keeping It Real
Impact and Appeal
The Team
Clear Goals
Starting Fires with Influencers and Core Fans
Rewards and Perks
Chapter | 8 The Journey
Follow Inspiration with Massive Action
Drive Traffic with Social Networking
Motivate Your Network: Keep Them Involved
Part | III The Road Ahead
Chapter | 9 Infrastructure and Ecosystems
The Power of Virtual Infrastructure
The Ecosystem
The Power of Tags
Integration and Evolution in the Ecosystem
When Dartboards Are Better Than Groupthink
Funding the Way the Market Wants It
Solving the Hoarding Dilemma
Kicking It Downstream
Intellectual Property Entanglements
Chapter | 10 Prediction Markets and Mining the Collective IQ
Diversity Matters
The Performance-tocracy
What’s an Expert?
Trendspotting
The Market Is the New Seniority
Prediction Markets Commoditized
Chapter | 11 The Intersection with Crowdsourcing
No Network, No Funding
Crowdfunding Crowdsourced Ideas
The Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing Nexus
Chapter | 12 The New Investment Models
Venture Capital Meets Crowd Capital
Incubators and the Crowd
Crowd Capital Meets Crowd Capital
Donations First, Investments Later
Here Comes Wall Street
A New Capital Allocation Mechanism
At the Community Level
Grants and the Arts
Reinvigorating the Community
The Virtual Tech Hub
Chapter | 13 Regulation and Policy Status
The Current State of Affairs
United States
The Crowdfund Intermediary Regulatory Advocates (CFIRA)
Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA)
National Crowdfunding Association (NLCFA)
Europe
International
Chapter | 14 Regulation and Policy Directions
Pray for Much Failure
Taxes, Taxes, Taxes
Patents and Crowdfunding Platforms
The IP Landscape
The Velocity of Innovation and the Effects of the IP System
A Perpetual Motion Machine of Innovation
Epilogue
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Index

THE GROUNDBREAKING NEW METHOD FOR RAISING VENTURE CAPITAL THROUGH SOCIAL NETWORKS

“The declaration of independence for our industry!”
—MAT DELLORSO, WealthForge Inc.

“The Crowdfunding Revolution should be on the mandatory reading list for everybody active in the industry or for everyone who’s planning to be.”
—CROWDFUND NEWS

“Kevin Lawton and Dan Marom have done a great job. . . . A must-read for everybody entering the field of crowdfunding!”—GIJSBERT KOREN, Smarter Money

“We recommend this book highly to anyone who is fascinated by this new methodology for funding projects and endeavors. . . . A wonderful read.”
—BRIAN MEECE, RocketHub

“Read this book if you want to catch the next wave!”
—FRED BRYANT, WealthForge Inc.

“A must-read for anyone interested in the early stage funding process.”
—MANDAR KULKARNI, pluggd.in

“The Crowdfunding Revolution offers fundraising inspiration for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.”
—BUSINESS2COMMUNITY

“The Crowdfunding Revolution offers fundraising inspiration for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.”
—SMALL BUSINESS TRENDS

YOUR POOL OF INVESTORS JUST INCREASED BY 2 BILLION . . .

Since the day the first human being approached a prospective investor, the province of capital allocation has been controlled by a small and entrenched minority.

All this has changed. Now, the power of the Internet—particularly social media—enables anyone to connect with more investors in less time than it used to take to connect with one. The investing pool is open, everyone is in—and The Crowdfunding Revolution shows how to get to the forefront of the new world of venture financing.

This groundbreaking guide explains how the explosive growth of connectivity is obviating human-to-human networks and centralized planning of capital allocation—and describes how crowdfunding can be used to tap into a “collective intelligence” for far superior results.

Providing a wealth of information that will make your crowdfunding efforts more efficient and productive, the book is organized into three thematic sections:

THE ROAD HERE: A thorough overview of what crowdfunding is—and how and why this radical new approach is replacing traditional means of venture financing
THE CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN: Proven methods for marketing to the crowd, setting clear objectives, building a crowdfunding team, and communicating in a way that inspires action
THE ROAD AHEAD: The crowdfunding ecosystem, intellectual property issues, mining collective IQ, new investment models, and regulations

More than 2 billion people globally are now active online—and that number is guaranteed to grow at an extraordinary rate. The Crowdfunding Revolution explains all the ins and outs of raising investment capital by using social media and new technologies to draw small sums of money from an almost countless number of sources.

Organic. Transparent. Decentralized. This is crowdfunding. This is the future. Read The Crowdfunding Revolution and become the first expert in your crowd on this radical new approach poised to supplant age-old venture financing methods.