Crowdfunding History and Stories

Details: Category: Crowdfunding; Published: Lunedì, 19 Maggio 2014 19:05

Crowdfunding in Italy has always existed and it is called "colletta", but, with Internet and Social Network advent and grow, now it lives in a completely new way.

As in the Renaissance age a new world was born on the basis of antiquity forms, in the same way "colletta" reborns with a new name thanks to the Web 2.0.

There is a new, democratic, way to think about business funding, advertising, project development, products test, research or charity.

Crowdfunding today will be the key of success for many people.

But how did all of this begin? Let's see …

1997, Marillion, an English rock band, collects $ 60,000 through an online fundraising campaign and in this way it manages to finance the "Tour Fund" in the United States.

2000, JustGiving was born, an online charity site. In 11 years it raises more than £ 700 million for 12,000 British charitable associations.

2005, Kiva is the first website for investors who lend money to businessmen in the developing Countries. So far he has raised over $ 165 million.

2005, Zopa was born, an English company that deals with peer-to-peer loan, for online money exchange.

2005, Produzioni dal Basso was born in Italy.

2006, Prosper was born in the USA, another peer-to-peer loan service website.

2006, Michael Sullivan coined the term "crowdfunding", an incubator for projects and events with the ability to make online donations.

2006, on SellaBand anyone can raise money to record a music album.

2007, on LendingClub, like Kiva, you can ask for funding simply publishing a project with credit risk analisys.

2008, IndieGoGo was born with the mission to "democratize the fundraising" and "give power to creative businessmen".

2008, Barack Obama finances a part of his political campaign for the presidency of the United States with money donated by his constituents via crowdfunding.

2008, Smartika was born in Italy (It is the successor of Zopa Italia)

2009, Kickstarter was born in USA with the motto "new way to fund creativity."

2009, Kapipal was born in Italy, a generalist website widely used for personal projects.

2009, BrewDog, the Scottish microbrewery, is the first European airline company to make an on-line initial public offering (IPO), collecting £ 750,000 in 5 months.

2010, GrowVC starts the equity-based crowdfunding, based on the collective financial participation. It reaches over 4500 startups in more than 190 countries.

2010 November, Louvre Museum in Paris starts a Crowdfunding campaign with € 1 million goal, called "Tous Mecenes" to buy the Renaissance masterpiece "The Three Graces" of Cranach from a private collector.

2010, the TikTok + LunaTik Multi-Touch Watch, in less than a month, between November and December, collects $ 942,578 from 13,512 donors. The project funding goal was only $ 15,000!

2010, Prestiamoci, YouCapital and IODono were born in Italy.

2011, Crowdcube, in England, is the first crowdfunding website in the corporate finance world.

2011, Eppela, ReteDelDono, ShinyNote, Cineama, BoomStarter, SiamoSoci were born in Italy.

2011 July, BrewDog starts a new IPO collecting £ 500,000 in 2 days and over 1 million in 4 weeks.

2011 November, in 4 weeks 143 investors reach $ 1 million and the group Rushmore finances a business venture in London.

2011, 191 websites in USA have collected $ 857 million (approximately € 656 million), 181 European websites have collected € 458 million ($ 584 million). Overall, 452 websites all around the world have raised more than € 1 billion.

2012, 11 February, the "Elevation Dock for iPhone" project collects $ 1,464,706.

2012, 18 May, in a month Eric Migicovski's project "Pebble" collects $ 10,266,845 from about 69,000 donors.

2012, 5 April, the President of the United States of America Barack Obama ratifies the JOBS ACT (Jumpstart Our Business Startups Acts), which regulates the Crowdfunding (effective operation for mid-2013)

2012, May, Massolution, a research agency, publishes the Crowdfunding Industry Report. The report identifies four types of crowdfunding.

2012, Musicraiser, Starteed, CrowdfundingItalia were born in Italy.

In 2012, through Crowdfunding, it was collected $ 1.5 billion and it was financed more than 1 million projects.

2012, 18 October, the Italian Government introduces the crowdfunding legislation with Decree n. 179 called "Decree Growth 2.0".

2013 PROPOSIZIONE.COM was born in Italy. PROPOSIZIONE.COM integrates together existing forms of crowdfunding and communication methods typical of social networks. A leap towards a new financing paradigm!