I’m writing this a week after we — FEAST — raised £185,000 having set a target of £150,000. Two months of endless admin, questions, promotion, stress, more promotion, more admin and further stress - oh and a night in A&E after I suffered anaphylaxis which left me looking similar to Will Smith in Hitch.
But botox lips aside we ultimately succeeded: Over-raising to finish on 123% of what we’d initially hoped for.
So why crowdfunding? We’d already raised half a million pounds from private angel investors and this was a big departure from that painless route to funds.
Our answer was simply: PR. This wasn’t just in the traditional definition but also in spreading the word of Feast. As a result of the hype we met with VCs, food & beverage funds, restaurant parent companies and of course individual investors. Crucially there was also the traditional definition of PR.
Good, organic, google-friendly PR doesn’t come cheap, so combining fundraising with networking and online articles made sense. In spite of our campaign being a relatively modest £150,000 we had a total of 7 articles published about our project by the end of the campaign.
Obviously one of the main benefits to emerge is the 300+ new investors who now back us and our vision for late night food & hotel room service. In a hugely competitive industry where delivery startups regularly struggle to raise funds this could be the most valuable thing we get out of the process - Not just with the money raised to date but also with the potential support in years to come.
