Hi Eric, I am opening a space in August and will be launching a Kickstarter campaign on June 1. I've studied quite a few Kickstarter campaigns for Coworking space, most of which were successful. It's true, the rewards are different because we don't have much of a product to offer. However, there's lots of room for creativity in rewards. We will offer things like short term memberships, art from members who've already signed up, advertising in our space or in our media, Swag with our logo on it... We made sure to create incentives for both local potential clients and everyone else who likes the idea of promoting the coworking industry.
There aren't many pitfalls to trying to crowd-fund. Of course, you shouldn't abandon other avenues for raising capital, just in case you aren't successfully funded. And then there's the work of it - I've been working on this campaign for over a month and it is still not ready to launch. Doing it right is quite a commitment and takes hours and hours of work. But other than that, I'd say go for it! Time will tell if I'd repeat that advice! Best of Luck, Karen http://www.thewildsbend.com On Tuesday, May 12, 2015 at 8:59:43 AM UTC-7, Eric Lituchy wrote: > > I am new to the Cowork world and find this group to be an amazing > resource. Thanks in advance! > > In July, I am opening a coworking space on Long Island. I am currently > working on building the community and already have 6 people onboard. I > thought of raising some capital from friends and family, but started to > think that crowdfunding (Indiegogo, Plumfund, etc.) might be a better > option. Capital will be used for rent, furniture, technology, etc. > > My questions: > > 1. Does crowdfunding make sense as a way to fund a startup coworking > space? My primary goal of the crowdfunding would be to get new members > to invest in our community. > 2. I expect to offer membership deals(ex. Contribute $1000 and get > 3-months of cowork space), "Hardship" contributions to give out-of-work > individuals free coworking space and media/press mentions for larger > contributions. Any thoughts on this? Other ideas? > 3. Any potential pitfalls of going the crowdsourced route? > > Any additional advice is sincerely appreciated. > > Thank, Eric > Long Island Cowork (Finaly name TBD) > -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
