Funding "Outside the Box"

It took me forever and a day to find these resources, but I found them finally! One of the hardest things to do when starting a business is finding capital. I haven't even started yet and that's the number question on everybody's mind. Where are getting your financing from? This simple question keeps a lot of people in the beginning stages of starting their businesses. It can separate the men from the boys. 

But as my history professors taught me, you dig until you find the truth. Or the money in this case. There is a new form of lending called, crowd funding. It allows entrepreneurs to use social networking to gain capital for their ideas. The best part of this idea is that NONE of the money has to be paid back. Doesn't that sound great? It's just people donating money to an idea that they believe in. Here are just a few of the more interesting sites I found that can help me and you get our ideas off the ground:

www.sellaband.com A European-based company started by Michael Bogatzki, uses social networking to allow fans fund their favorite independent artists. The site let's the artists maintain complete ownership of their work and choose the incentives for the fans that contribute. They have the freedom to enter deals with different entities without having to pay the advances back. Musicians this one is for you.

www.kickstarter.com This is an "all or nothing" funding resource. That means that entrepreneurs set a financial goal and if it isn't met then no money gets exchanged. The concept behind their philosophy is that it creates less risk for both parties (investor and entrepreneur), motivation on the entrepreneur's part, and satisfaction of seeing a good idea spread.

www.indiegogo.com Democratizing lending was the foundation of IndieGoGo.com. On this site, you can keep 100% ownership of your idea, while sourcing funds for the project. And even if you don't raise all of the money, you still get to keep what was raised (after fees). It's international too!

invested.in Invested.in uses your established social networking presence to help finance any idea that you want. Once you raise the money, you can either withdraw it or move it to another project before you hit the set goal.

There are plenty more resources that we can use to fund our projects. The goal is to BE CREATIVE!! The more innovative we are, the more options we will have. Hope this helps because I will definitely be doing my research! Keep grinding!