I spent the last 3 weeks in LA on a ‘workation‘ – it’s a new word, a hybrid between vacation and working. I went to LA to recharge my batteries, enjoy the warm weather and most importantly visit 2 great friends. One of whom, Tracy, I met when studying in Turkey in 2012 and the other, Carolyn, who I met whilst working in Bangladesh in 2014. But both of whom are originally from LA.
Other than client meetings and laptop work I also did a few other things to help out my clients.
- I talked to whoever I could about all the campaigns at every possible opportunity. This even turned into 2 sales on Thanksgiving day for Airlabs.
- I printed flyers and stapled them to the local cycling scheme in LA for Swytch Bikes.
- I also made a nice tour of LA bike shops to pitch the Swytch product to local bike businesses.
One of these, was a bit different to all the others. Peddler’s Creamery is an ice cream shop, where each batch of ice cream is churned using pedal power. Half an hour of peddling later, my friends and I had made a delicious batch of ice cream and the employees were knowledgeable about the Swytch system! Staff at Peddlers creamery pedal every night to make new batches of ice cream so let’s just say they were very interested in getting a Swytch to help with the peddling!
Other than the working, I also relaxed and enjoyed LA for its sights, scenery, nature, yoga and food!
Here are my top 7 things I learnt about crowdfunding in LA.
- Everyone does it! Everyone knows someone with a Go Fund Me page and everyone has supported one. A guy I met, an aspiring voice actor, even had one because he was on the verge of homelessness.
- People still believe they can put up a page and people will find it and give to it.
- As soon as you mention you are a crowdfunding consultant, people want to talk to you and share their crowdfunding stories.
- Everyone starts off by assuming crowdfunding is Go Fund Me. I had assumed they would think it was all about Kickstarter.
- Startups are interested more in equity crowdfunding than rewards.
- American people seemed to be much better at giving to personal crowdfunding campaigns than British.
- The USA is definitely ahead of the UK in terms of crowdfunding, but not as far ahead as I had assumed.
