Your journey to Equity Crowdfunding

This article outlines your Equity Crowdfunding Journey.

Equity Crowdfunding enables your business to get investment from multiple backers via online platforms.

How to pick an Equity Crowdfunding platform that suits your business

1. Fees - What are you willing to pay?
2. Investors - Have similar businesses been successful?
3. Your crowd - Does the platform manage your stakeholders post-campaign?
4. The details - Can you overfund? What happens if you don't hit your target?
5. Sell yourself - Can you promote your business the way you want to?

How to list your business on an Equity Crowdfunding platform

Equity Crowdfunding is a public affair. Your business and all its gory details are there for anyone to read, scrutinise and criticise.

Stage One - Get your documentation in order

Crowdfunding platforms carry out due diligence on your paperwork, so whip the following into shape:

• Your business plan
• Your financials

Stage Two - Build your campaign page

Businesses use videos, images, and tell a compelling story to sell themselves to investors.

1. Explain who you are
2. Describe your business
3. Outline why you're Crowdfunding 
4. Sell your business, your product and the opportunity
5. Reveal how much funding you want
6. Be clear how you'll use the funding
7. Make it easy to invest with an obvious call to action

Stage Three - Generate interest

• Go social - Use company and personal channels to push your campaign
• Think about Press - Contact relevant journalists, bloggers, and websites about your campaign
• Send updates to the crowd - Don't be static. Respond to queries and post updates.

Stage Four - Complete your campaign

Once your campaign has finished there are a few things for you to be aware of.

• Overfunding - Some platforms allow you to continue to receive investments once you've reached 100% of your target.
• If you haven't hit your target - Platforms operate on either a 'keep what you raise' or an 'all or nothing' approach
• Due dilligence - When successful campaigns close, your platform will perform due diligence and prepare legal documentation
• Getting your funding - After due diligence you'll be transferred your money, less the platform fee.

Stage Five - You and your investors

You'll need to keep your investors updated post-funding.

• On platform - On some platforms you can continue to update your investors through the platform post-funding.
• Off platform - Some platforms pass investor responsibility on to your company which means you're responsible for updating your shareholders.