science to profits

Category: Crowdfunding

  • Co-creation and aging

    Last month I gave a talk on co-creation and the future of aging at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. You can view the entire talk below. It’s about the intersection of several megatrends: the rapid growth in the elderly in most countries over the coming decades; the sad fact that society is ignoring a…

  • Crowdfunding done right: Scanadu’s tricorder

    I’ve been excited about the potential of crowdfunding for quite a while (here and here). The campaign that launched this morning on Indiegogo by Scanadu (developing a Tricorder) is a good example of a campaign done right, and shows the potential of this approach. The campaign reached its goal of $100K in 2 hours. It’s…

  • How Crowdfunding pushes the bounds of what can be funded

    I just backed a new project on Kickstarter that I consider a fascinating experiment. Who knows how well it will work, but if you are interested in how Crowdfunding is changing the landscape of funding early stage ventures, science projects, and projects at the intersection of art and technology, it is worth checking out the Dragon…

  • Can there really be 452 crowd funding platforms?

    Hard not to be struck by this statistic in this morning’s in-box. According to the report below from crowd sourcing.org, there are now 452 crowd funding platforms, and collectively they were used to raise $1.5Billion in 2011, in over a million successful fund-raising campaigns. I thought I was on top of this space, but if…

  • Crowdfunding: more work needed

    Crowd-funding challenges Nice post yesterday by “Startup Iceland” on the challenges of creating a robust Crowdfunding platform. This concept is certainly resonating way beyond the normal Silicon Valley world! The author acknowledges some of the issues that are scaring various pundits in the blogosphere, and might make crowdfunding “risky”. He mentions: Information asymmetry; Valuation issues; High…

  • Crowdfunding and the Nanny State

    Lots of activity in the blogosphere this week on Crowdfunding, coinciding with debate in the Senate of the so-called JOBS bill (HR3606), which contains various provisions relating to Crowdfunding. I wanted to comment on some of the different perspectives, and in particular, on a series of recent posts in one of my favorite blogs, Baseline Scenario.

  • Fewer IPO’s: the reasons

    Relating to my last post on Crowdfunding and the 99%, yesterday’s Wall St Journal had an excellent summary of the state of the US IPO (Initial Public Offering) market, written by Jack Markell, Governor of Delaware. In my earlier Crowdfunding post, I made the point that the small, early-stage companies that a public investor could…

  • Crowdfunding and the ninety nine percent

    I have been following the idea of “crowd-funding” for several years and am a great fan. A couple of weeks ago I was having lunch with a colleague who is starting a new crowd-funding site. As we discussed it, I realized that crowd-funding represents an antidote to one of the many ways in which today…

  • Can science-based startups learn from Web 2.0?

    For startups developing web-focused businesses, the ecosystem has changed enormously in the last 2-3 years, almost entirely for the better. In contrast, in the world of new ventures based on hardcore science (cleantech, medical devices, biotech, etc.), as far as I can see it is more or less “business as usual”, and in some areas…