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Come off it - Crowdfunders look like George Clooney or Ann Hathaway?!

10th Sep 2013
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I recently summarised the findings of Seedrs, the UK’s fastest growing crowdfunding portal, on the types of people who invested in crowdfunding.

To recap it appears:

  • The average age is 40 (youngest 18, oldest 80)
  • 87% are male
  • And they mostly hail from London, Cambridge, Manchester, Oxford and Bristol

I liked the last stat because it plays into the impression (mine that is) of crowdfunders being sophisticated, wealthy and wise.

I would have liked to add that they are also highly attractive (87% look like George Clooney and 13% like Ann Hathaway), great at sport, stylish dressers and brilliantly considerate …

Sadly the Seedrs analysis does not go quite this far...

HOWEVER;

After one week’s Seedrs ‘live’ funding experience I have now collected a set of data on crowdfunding participants that would excite even Nate Silver (he’s the ‘big data’ man who correctly predicted the 2012 Obama election in all 50 states and wrote; ‘The Signal and the Noise’)

The data I collected has been garnered from people either:

1. Investing in The Amano Tongue Cleanser on the Seedrs portal

2. Asking me questions on the Seedrs site

3. Asking me questions following my Wall blog and Accounting Web blog (on the site or ‘privately’ via email)

Soon as I get an enquiry I tend to do a quick social media trawl to get some idea of whom I am corresponding with (don’t we all?).

So following detailed and thorough analysis, with a statistical sample that would make Andrew Wakefield blush, I can excitedly reveal the following about crowdfunders:

Amazingly they really are ALL highly educated, sophisticated, have a great sense of humour and are wonderfully open to new ideas – particularly superbly commercial ones

(bet you saw that coming!)

But seriously, my personal patron saint of business Luke Johnson, writing in the FT, perhaps identified for me the salient factor in this crowdfunding phenomenon when he says;  “damn the cynics and embrace the positive”.

He went onto say: “Things happen to those individuals who are in motion, as opposed to people who are static. I favour busy personalities rather than those who don’t do much, or simply observe rather than participate in the fray. Even if some of their activity might appear irrelevant or misguided, such experiences might prove useful at a later date”.

That about sums up my observation, about the people who are participating in crowdfunding – both Entrepreneurs AND Investors.

Crowdfunding is a new, exciting - and yes risky activity.

But ALL these crowdfunding participants appear to be proactively embracing a business, with a rational optimistic zeal, that is wonderful to observe – and of course also benefit from.

Whether the Investors look quite like George or Ann I will leave for another day.

(PS: scores on the doors… 16% of equity target achieved with 83 days to go…)

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