Raising capital is tough, while the Silicon Valley legend of a smart group of geeks finding wealth through fairy godfathers – aka VCs – throwing money at them may be true for a small number of outliers it isn’t the reality for most businesses.
For most businesses, even if they are lucky to find a VC or angel investor, raising that money is usually the start of the next phase of building a venture which can be even tougher.
With the recent rise of crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Pozible which are a lot easier to raise capital through than finding VC or angel investors, there’s been a lot more commentary on how these services are a pot of gold for artists and entrepreneurs.
Mark Pesce discussed some the challenges of Kickstarter campaigns in an interview on the Decoding the New Economy YouTube channel about funding Moore’s Cloud.
Backing Mark’s views is a post on Fast Company’s design blog discussing what happens after a successful campaign.
In Life after Kickstarter, Jon Fawcett describes what happened after raising over $200,000 for his project Une Bobine.
Having more than met his targets, Fawcett found raising the money was only the start of the business challenges with logistics, taxes and fulfilment being hurdles his team had to overcome.
Fawcett actually had an advantage in had tied manufacturers up before launching the funding campaign; for those who haven’t, the process would be even more fraught.
As the Fast Company story concludes, the successful fund raising was only a small, albeit critical, part of getting the products to market.
Fawcett’s story is a reminder that a product’s journey doesn’t end with funding. While Kickstarter has democratized and decentralized the process of raising capital, concerns of manufacturing, shipping, and storage still retain the unglamorous grit of the real world. There’s no flashy website for setting up your supply chain. Perhaps that’s the next part of this grand process prime for disruption.
While raising capital is tough, it’s only part of the story of a successful business. Jon Fawcett story is a reminder of that.