Ask the Experts – Brian Meece, co-founder & CEO, RocketHub

For the past week, Brian Meece was lecturing at college campuses across the country about the power of crowdfunding. He also took some time to give Crowdfunding Campuses his thoughts on the importance of crowdfunding within higher education.

Crowdfunding Campuses: If you look at the crowdfunding portals today, you have the “catch-all platforms” and the “niche-platforms” that focus on a specific target audience. Are you more of a niche player or more of a catch-all platform?

BM: We are a very broad and open crowdfunding community. Most fall under one of four categories: arts, science/academic, entrepreneurship/small business, and social good.  Virtually every funding campaign falls into one of those four buckets. The DNA of the company is then built around three things: liberating ideas, how crowdfunding builds community, and teaching the world how to use crowdfunding. So we present opportunities to everyone.

Crowdfunding Campuses:  Will the JOBS Act & the pending legislation that’s anticipated on the equity-side of the industry change Rockethub’s approach at all, and if so, how will your business model be different a year from now when the regulations are anticipated to be concrete?

BM: We’ve been working with the JOBS Act for a while, giving feedback on the legislation. We testified in Congress on the power of crowdfunding. We just recently met last week with the White House on crowdfunding. We’re very excited about the JOBS Act and what it can do for entrepreneurs in the United States. We’re always going to keep our product, but the talks that we’re having with the SEC are very favorable and we believe we’ll be able take advantage of it.

Crowdfunding Campuses: If you could speak to students about crowdfunding and the potential that the industry has in its ability to influence their lives, what would the overall value-added proposition be for the average student to encourage him/her to get involved immediately?

BM:  Think of us in 2002 talking about social media and how big it can be, and now in 2012, we’re talking about social funding. The next 10 years will be dominated by social funding the way the last 10 were by social media. Anyone who has an idea that they want to bring to life, they don’t have to rely on traditional funding modules. They can reach out to communities and bypass traditional mechanism to make things happen.

Crowdfunding Campuses: Given the declining rate in which college graduates are able to land a job that is commiserate with their education, do you think educators should begin teaching students about crowdfunding? If so, what can RocketHub offer educators to help them update their curriculum?

BM: Anyone that’s interested in any entrepreneurial endeavor, either creative or business, needs to know about crowdfunding. It’s becoming a staple in the creative world and will quickly become a staple in the world of entrepreneurship in the next couple of years. What we offer to our users and to folks that show up to our lectures are crowdfunding success patterns based on real data that we have as a platform that has funded millions of dollars of projects. We can show, here’s what you do for success, and here’s what you don’t do. If you follow these patterns you’ll have success and if you don’t you wont. These are thing things that are important to learn.

Crowdfunding Campuses: Colleges are facing tough times now.  Increasing tuition costs, reduced availability of grant money, decreasing alumni donor pools, outdated technology, and under-resourced classrooms are among the many hurdles faced by institutions.  How can RocketHub help institutions lighten the financial burden?

BM: One of the most powerful assets colleges have are their alumni and the community they are in. This whole model is really driven by communities and project leaders making things happen in those communities. You want to put together a project that will be exciting in the community and have the community rally around them. You want to have a way of giving back to that community. There will need to be some type of return, either emotional, a good or service, or a financial return, in the dynamic. But the network is there.

Crowdfunding Campuses: Has RocketHub had any successful funding raises to date that are specific to collegian institutions, alumni groups, fraternities/sororities, or other student-groups?

BM:  We’ve had a fair amount. One that pops to mind, there’s a student that raised $25,000 to fund a scholarship. Kids are raising money to go off to school. This is a very high leveraged way of fundraising now. I don’t see bake sales and carwashes going away completely, but we’re seeing a fusion of that with crowdfunding now.

Crowdfunding Campuses:  What is your personal vision for integrating crowdfunding into higher education?

BM: Crowdfunding is a movement, especially for the next five years. The technology is easy. I’ve been lecturing on campuses all this past week. Within the next week, we’ll be launching a new platform on RocketHub that has a new success school and we’ll be building out that educational part further. A lot of entrepreneurs don’t know about all of the traditional modules like venture capitalists or grants. But crowdfunding is highly accessible, so especially for folks that are at the early stages, like college students are, crowdfunding could be a great entry into that space. They need to know it’s a valid option and will gain more popularity and will have wonderful side effects besides just the funding. It’s very important.

Ask the Experts – Andrew Rachmell, co-founder, peerbackers

Andrew Rachmell, co-founder of peerbackers, sat down to answer some of our questions about crowdfunding, with emphasis on its place in higher education and the role crowdfunding should play at colleges and universities in the future.

Crowdfunding Campuses: If you look at the crowdfunding portals today, you have the “catch-all platforms” and the “niche-platforms” that focus on a specific target audience. Are you more of a niche player or more of a catch-all platform?

AR: We focus on the Generation Y audience, which is the 15 to 30 age bracket. We focus a lot on education and that’s why we know about Handshake360° and Crowdfunding Campuses. We’re very much into partnering with universities and teaching students and teens. They are tech savvy and social network savvy. Social networking is a big component in being successful in crowdfunding. That demographic lends itself to being successful there. We’ve had a lot of success with it, and success breeds success, so we stay with what’s working. Especially with high school and junior high school today, there’s not enough educational entrepreneurial stuff going on that we see, so it allows us the opportunity to educate students not just in crowdfunding but in entrepreneurial skill sets.

Crowdfunding Campuses:  Will the JOBS Act & the pending legislation that’s anticipated on the equity-side of the industry change peerbackers’ approach at all, and if so, how will your business model be different a year from now when the regulations are anticipated to be concrete?

AR: We are certainly anticipating embracing the new equity crowdfunding opportunity, but we’re not going to get rid of the traditional crowdfunding model either. It’s been very successful for us and we believe the marketplace could use both models. We certainly anticipate embracing it. We’re looking forward to seeing the guidelines that come about from the SEC Oversight Committee. (peerbackers) has to gear up to offer an equity crowdfunding service. You can’t just take your same platform and expect it to work with the equity crowdfunding model.  We’re optimistic about what it can provide though.

Crowdfunding Campuses: If you could speak to students about crowdfunding and the potential that the industry has in its ability to influence their lives, what would the overall value-added proposition be for the average student to encourage him/her to get involved immediately?

AR: It’s a great way to test market your idea, for starters. If you have a business idea, it’s a superb way to test market that. You have an opportunity to raise money without giving up any equity of your company, so that’s a great advantage. And you get to test market your product. By the very nature of crowdfunding, you have the possibility of attracting media attention and creating buzz, especially if the campaign goes viral. You can do this, and you can raise money in less than 45 days and that’s a wonderful thing. Those reasons would be attractive to anyone, but especially students and younger folks today who may not have the ability to attract a business loan, this is the perfect vehicle to secure funding for your project. If you believe your business will need significant growth capital later on, having success in crowdfunding early on will help in gaining angel investors and venture capitalists later on.  This also is a great way to demonstrate that you have support of the marketplace. You have the opportunity to build customers while crowdfunding through the people that are supporting you.  If they are supporting your project, it shows you have customer interest there. You can convey the idea, raise the money and then build the product, rather than having to build the project first in order to raise the money.

Crowdfunding Campuses: Given the declining rate in which college graduates are able to land a job that is commiserate with their education, do you think educators should begin teaching students about crowdfunding? If so, what can peerbackers offer educators to help them update their curriculum?

AR: I wholeheartedly believe 100 percent that it’s imperative that we teach more entrepreneurial skills to students today. peerbackers is very much committed to doing that. We provide one-on-one coaching, do webinars, and have workshops with schools, and have been doing that for quite a while.  Given the economy and the way corporations operate today, there are fewer and fewer opportunities for students graduating and not as much loyalty between employer and employee today. Knowing you can develop a skillset at an early age to run your own business is invaluable and can provide students with that opportunity to run their own business. Today, I think it should be one of the top priorities for educators to teach this to our youngsters so they don’t have to rely on someone else for their career, and so they can succeed on their own.

Crowdfunding Campuses: Colleges are facing tough times now.  Increasing tuition costs, reduced availability of grant money, decreasing alumni donor pools, outdated technology, and under-resourced classrooms are among the many hurdles faced by institutions.  How can peerbackers help institutions lighten the financial burden?

AR: We have a lot of examples at peerbackers of students raising money for educational journeys and school related initiatives, but not necessarily college tuition. Lots of initiatives are going on for school activities though, like paying for a school trip or paying for things for the band, things of that nature. But I think crowdfunding could help students raise money for tuition and I’m sure it’s happening today.

The way students have raised money and the way they continue to raise money is an antiquated approach, a 100-year old method of going door to door, doing carwashes, etc. It’s a great thing but it requires a lot of people, sometimes start-up capital to do these kinds of things. Crowdfunding is really the most effective way to raise money for any school related activity or initiative. You can raise money from people who don’t live near you, which you can’t do going door to door. No question about it, crowdfunding is going to replace the old model of fundraising.

Crowdfunding Campuses: Has peerbackers had any successful funding raises to date that are specific to collegian institutions, alumni groups, fraternities/sororities, or other student-groups?

peerbackers has had more than 1,000 projects, with three specific to higher education highlighted below.

– Spectrum Experience: Run by two students, one from the University of Arizona. They raised $5,100 for a venture that offers empowerment workshops for students and non-profits.

– Derek Goes Global: A freshman engineering student raised $2,365 to help fund a three-week engineering study abroad program in China.

– Bad Science Watch: A group worked to strengthen consumer protection regulation in Canada and promote good science in public policy, raising $3,500.

For more information on peerbackers, visit http://peerbackers.com/ or follow them on Facebook or Twitter.