Crowdfunding to raise money for a startup
Earlier this week, my cofounder Gagan and I launched a crowdfunding campaign for anyone to apply to invest in our startup. This is a pretty new way to raise money and there isn’t much precedent for it, but I’ve been excited about it since we got the idea over the summer.
Why? Because angel investing can be intimidating and elitist. I never considered angel investing until this year when I wrote my first small check for a space company called Hypernova. It's still new to me and I've only ever made one investment. But one thing I know is this:
We don't need more of the same investors in every room.
I believe it’s time to democratize who gets to participate in investing. Our mission is to democratize online course creation. Anyone should be able to create an engaging, live, cohort-based course--not just people with huge budget and teams.
And in that spirit, folks should be able to find out about deals and feel like you belong in the room. This is our small way of inviting new faces into the mix.
This isn’t really about angel investing. Investing might not be financially feasible or may not be a priority for you at the moment. You might not have the bandwidth or interest to dive into learning about it. That's all completely okay. But I hope you give yourself permission to be curious.
When I look back at my career, there were times when I took myself out of the running before I even had a chance. On Facebook recently, my friend Jessie asked “What makes people change?” And my friend Mike replied “When you change the story about yourself.”
If (like me) you've felt like angel investing is for "other people" who are more successful or know more than you do... I hope you take a moment to consider changing that story about yourself.
The main thing I hope to get across is don’t assume you aren’t the *type of person* to angel invest. Because maybe you are, and maybe this gets you thinking about being open to it. So later down the line, you can look into doing it if/when it’s right for you.
Of course, please keep in mind that investing is inherently risky so you need to be okay losing all the money you put in. If this is your first time thinking about angel investing, know that we are considered a very risky investment.
In terms of details, we closed an oversubscribed seed round led by First Round with a bunch of angels investing over $4M at a $20M cap. More info here: http://bit.ly/wk-gb
We're prioritizing prospective investors using this criteria:
1. Diversity: 25% of the round should be underrepresented minorities
2. Mission-aligned: You are a potential student or instructor of a cohort-based course
3. Value-add: You've got an edge that can help us achieve our mission
So far, we have 773 applications. As of earlier today, here was the breakdown:
12.5% women or non-binary
14.7% underrepresented
52.7% non-accredited
77.9% willing to invest now (no add'l info needed)
We gave the option to do minimum and maximum investment amounts. Based on only those who said "willing to invest now,” we have $2.5M minimum and $8.4M maximum. It’s kind of insane because this is way more interest than we ever expected. I’m grateful and slightly terrified at the task of how we’ll narrow down this list. There are definitely way more amazing people than we will be able to move forward with right now.
One more thing! We would love to have even more women, people of color, and underrepresented minorities in the round. So if you know of great folks, please forward this email to them or feel free to share our form in any communities you’re part of.
If you're interested and think we could be a good addition to your portfolio, here’s the form. Many of you have DMed about investing and I had to keep this under wraps until now, so I'm honored to share this with you. 💜