Is raising money to Crowd funding platforms an alternative for starting an independent business for someone from the ICT industry

One of the new ways of financing new ideas, products and services, which appeared a few years ago and quickly achieved very great popularity are Crowd funding platform. Although this method of financing primarily favors the funding of projects such as the publication of books, music or making a film, there are also successful campaigns which raised funds to finance the start of production or service business in the areas of traditional ICT industry. Reviewing the history of successful fundraising campaigns, we can see that these are mostly projects in the field of film, music, design, 3D printing technology, artificial intelligence or Management implementation and providing new types of services based on standard ICT technologies.

If you look on the other hand, most of the new companies in the ICT sector is formed not on the high side not yet adopted and validated technology, but rather on the way to the existing technology are finding new solutions, primarily service, on how existing technology can be better and more efficient use . Also, it is easy to notice and that the average profile of the founders of such a company by someone who has worked for years in the sector, has an enviable and proven technological skills and finally decided to become independent and has no idea how to use their technical knowledge within the new company established by . What is in such cases it is evident that most of these companies do not have a long lifespan. This comes primarily because, despite substantial technical knowledge most of the founders and has no adequate knowledge and skills in the field marketnig, standardization, operational management, or simply does not have enough money to independently long enough to finance his entrepreneurial attempts.

There is a possibility that the two completely different ways of mobilizing capital necessary for further operations:
• The ability to obtain capital from potential investors
• The ability to collect money from the huge number of small investors using Crowd funding platform

Both the ability to have their comparative advantages in the field of variable business environment and the rapid alternation technology expert knowledge on which it is based first model become very suspicious and cloudy but impossible when it comes to brand new products or services. For such projects this is almost exclusive way of raising capital rather than latter. Also, one-off projects, particularly in the field of artistic endeavor more likely is another method. But there are opportunities for the application of this fundraising does not end, it is in fact applicable in all other cases, and sometimes less expensive and closer to someone for the first time lucky with investment management.

Somewhere in the nature of modern man has become to rely on the internet. So how Crowd funding platform direct consequence of the existence of the Internet does not need to wonder immense popularity they receive for years. The total amount of funds collected from 452 Crowd funding platform according to the Massoluti report in 2015 amounted to 1.47 billion dollars in total 1.2 million campaign. Growth trends predict that by the end of this year the total amount of collected funds exceed 2.1 billion dollars in the world. The biggest users of these platforms are Americans and for them immediately following the Europeans.

Below is a simplified can say that:

Innovation + Communication = Crowd Funding

The advantages of these platforms are multiple:

• Provide free marketing, marketing products is faster and easier
• Testing a business idea in real market environment (using campaigns and tools that you provide during the same support that they can get a clear answer to the question of how much and how your idea or product is validated on the market and whether the market has passed or not)
• The ability to collect more funds than you hope (more than you need at any given moment and for a given product or service)
• You begin to realize their ideas with little or no money of their own
• Possibility of advanced sales with less risk
• The control remains in your hands, do not exceed the capital owners and investors as to the most common case with investment funds
• The ability to "return from the dead" (the possibility that an idea that has failed on other platforms try to introduce different, optimize, tweak and relive in order to become successful not only in raising money has already achieved success in the market), the ability to easily pick up after the fall
• You can in the real world and the real environment to test their ideas and projects

On the other hand these platforms have a number of its shortcomings, of which the most important are:

• The possibility that the idea or the operation fails
• Project with which you come to be a complete and workable especially if you are coming to the platform with a huge idea (not enough to have worked out a concept to something or have performed in practice or on a proven model concept)
• The competition is huge, especially if you find yourself in a niche in which a large number of ideas competing for the same resources
• The audience you are addressing is different and inhomogeneous so closely to create a unified communications strategy
• You need to present your ideas to different audiences in different ways
• Do not forget these platforms are public and represent a large social network connected by common interests essentially a competition of ideas and projects on a platform before it can be described as tender in popularity than in competence
• You publicly express your ideas, nothing prevents someone to use your idea, so it is necessary to protect your patent ideas before communicating them. Here there is a clear fences ideas for products and brands it is possible to protect the patent rights but not for services because most of the services does not fall nor can it be patented and about to be taken into account before the release of the platform because there is no "undo button"

It is also important to note that financers should offer some kind of compensation such as a discount on the purchase of the product (the most common form of compensation), early information on product launches, information about product design, various discounts and advice related to the product or service you offer.

You also need to keep expectations within reason, because statistics show that in the majority of cases of successful campaigns between 1000 and collected $ 10,000 and that the success of technology oriented projects in terms of raising funds on these platforms significantly below one-third, respectively, to something a little more than a quarter of projects that attempted to raise funds from these platforms that can be subsumed under the category of technology was successful. On the other hand, there is the fact that a large number of projects in the sector of software industry in this manner was funded at some point.

Those who would choose to try for their own project in this way collect Necessary financial resources of be more alert that this way of raising funds rather time-consuming and not at all simple, because in addition to the obligation to clearly present their ideas not only attract attention audience but also keep it all the time the campaign is necessary to take account of tax and accounting obligations because potential investors are entitled to know where they went to their funds, and the state of course has the right to tax income and financial inputs from these platforms. They certainly will be useful and information that the average campaign on these platforms is not more than 35 days and not be disappointed if you do not collect the funds they need to more processing and improve your idea and try it on another Crowd funding platform.

This tipe of collecting money could be particularly interesting to those in the ICT industry engaged in creative occupations and jobs as designers. So if you have an idea for a new advanced site for the game, for multimedia content or simply use IT technology to tell a new story interesting and attractive, these platforms represent a good option for realization of your dreams.