Traditional methods of capital investment are making way for crowdfunding to help startup companies and ideas grow.

In the world of start-ups, there’s no hotter topic right now than crowdfunding. This relatively new concept has taken off with the passage of the 2012 JOBS Act and has opened the floodgates for companies to quickly raise money for their projects and businesses.

The JOBS Act dictates that those benefitting from crowdfunding must
offer equity in their company. However, crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have found ways around these rules by offering contributors rewards instead. The entrepreneurs who launch a crowdfunding campaign offer a variety of tiers which contributors can choose to receive a specific reward. For example, a contributor who gives X dollars will get a discount on the campaign’s finished product whereas someone who contributes Y dollars will receive the campaign’s finished product when it’s released.

If you’ve spent any time at all looking into the concept, you’ve seen countless examples of people that have raised funding far and above their original goal. (For a list of highly successful crowdfunding campaigns go here.)

But crowdfunding is still the new guy on the block and no one is entirely certain what the final model will look like.

Angel investors, on the other hand, have been around for a long time and are a tried and true means of acquiring financial backing.  But with the advent of crowdfunding, are angel investors about to lose their halos? And ultimately,  which is better?

Angel Funding

Pros – An angel investor is an individual or small group that takes on the financial risk to get a new idea off the ground. In return, they typically expect a piece of equity in the company. Angels are entrepreneurs themselves and can offer a wealth of advice and an extensive network of contacts to the company they invest in. They can contribute any amount of money a start-up may need and typically offer funding from $500,000 up to several million dollars.

Cons – As a budding entrepreneur, you have to hit the pavement and develop a network to find an angel investor interested enough in your product to put his money on the line. Making such business contacts is not a bad thing, but it can be a time-consuming process. Angels may not be interested in supporting your project if you are only looking for a smaller investment of a few thousand dollars. By accepting financial backing from an investor you are handing over a measure of control in your company.

Success Stories – When we think of large companies like Google, Facebook,  Twitter, and Zappos, it’s easy to forget that they received a large portion of their initial funding through angel investors.

The driving goal behind an angel investor is earning a good monetary return on his or her investment. Although they would have to believe in the product or start up they’re funding, making money is their primary focus.

Crowdfunding

Pros – Crowdfunding allows entrepreneurs to collect relatively small amounts of money from a large pool of contributors. Ownership of the company stays with the owner, although perks are provided to contributors that reach certain tiers. Crowdfunding is generally an easier and quicker way to generate money as opposed to finding angel investors.

Cons – Under the current law, an entrepreneur can only raise $1 million in a 12 month period. If you are not blessed with marketing savvy, your efforts to woo the general population from your Kickstarter page may fail. On the other hand, an experienced angel investor may see the potential for a product that others may pass over. To protect  contributors from fraud, they must funnel their money through crowd funding websites such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo, which take a percentage of the contributions.

Although some people choose to crowdfund projects because they want a particular reward, the average backer in a crowdfunding campaign believes in the project, and the entrepreneur behind it. Unlike angel investors, the goal of a crowdfunding backer is to be a part of something, not necessarily to profit.

Interested in launching a campaign?  Click here for a list of crowdfunding sites and resources.

iCurious Travel: A Cultural Guide to China started as an idea and became Anthony Paglino’s passion project made possible through crowdfunding.

One reason that crowdfunded projects can be game changers for young creatives is that your project can become a stepping stone to more opportunities. The people you connect with along your journey, and the audience you find from getting your creative project into the world will all support you in the future.

An extreme example of this is the overwhelming response that street performer and musician Amanda Palmer received when she pulled in more than a million dollars to crowdfund her next CD by engaging her fan base directly. The unprecedented support and exposure led her all the way onto the TED stage where she gave one of the most moving and inspirational talks of the year gaining her global exposure.

Remember, opportunities and money flow through people so engage, connect, and follow through with your contacts to open many unseen doors.

Here is an incomplete list of invaluable life lessons from my crowdfunding endeavor that I hope to apply to bigger and more challenging adventures:

Project planning: Start with the end goal in mind, and work backward to find a realistic progression of steps to turn intangible ideas into real results. For example, my end goal was to self-publish my experiences and knowledge about travel in China on the iPad. What’s the best way to get there?

Community Engagement: Who are the family, friends, neighbors, and digital cohorts of your broader community? How can you rally support around your cause and get your crew involved and contributing to your project?

Trouble Shooting and Adaptability: Things are going to go wrong. What is up for debate is how you respond and turn your weaknesses into strengths. One of the best chapters in my book was about a long distance bike trip hampered by rainy weather, roads washed away by landslides, and dammed rivers. I was not expecting that experience, but the story plays out much more dramatically because of it.

Fundraising: Effectively attracting investment is a vital skill to successful entrepreneurs. Starting small with a simple crowdfunding project will better prepare you for when you are launching a bigger company or product years down the road.

Creative Writing: You need to accurately and persuasively convey your message and narrative to a broader audience. Find your authentic and original voice early.

Shameless Self Promotion: Constantly telling people what you are doing, how you are going to do it, and why they should get involved is not only useful in networking but also pays large dividends in future opportunities. You are not promoting yourself but rather building trust around your brand by following up on promises you make to other people.

Time management: Set a strict timeline and stick to it. The only person holding you to your deadlines is you.

Leadership: Lead, follow, or get out of the way. In this case you better be out in front because this is new territory you are exploring with your passion project and if you don’t get it done, no one else will.

Budgeting: Smart budgeting will ensure a smoother workflow. Run out of money, and the whole operation could collapse.

Human Resources/Logistics: If you have a team working with you, their time and energy needs to be properly allocated. The most important aspect of building a team is getting the right people in the door.

Learn these skills when the stakes are small. The reason is that later down the line when when you are running larger projects or product teams, the skills you learned now will be the skills that define your later success.

Follow Through

Now that you have your money and your passion project underway, you have a real case that you can present to people that shows real value.

Forget the resume, you have an operational project running! Use this as a way to get your foot in the door potential employers.

You have a captive audience, you have a successful idea that you plucked out of thin air and turned into a phenomenon. Showcase your experience with concrete examples that will hopefully lead to more work opportunities.

Right now I am wading deep into unchartered territory.The first edition of my travel guide published on March 27th after a full year of research and development. With the book out for all of the world to see, I am excited about the reaction from readers as well as sharing this part of my life with more people through speaking engagements and guest blog posts.

I hope that the success from this first book will allow me more opportunities to produce more digital guides to reach and engage more people enacting the real change that is needed not just in the travel guide industry, but in the global tourism industry overall. It would be fantastic if I could make a decent living writing digital travel guides around the world. For now I will have very fond memories of my time in China in a fun way to relive the memories.

What I hope that you all got from reading this series is a path forward in making your dreams become a reality through crowdfunding. Start with an end goal, an idea, a piece of work or art that derives from your unique passion and personality. Once you have that, it is just a matter of working your way backward in steps you need to take to accomplish that goal. And that is where the fun begins: The process and journey of living life the way you see fit.

#Fix Young America is a non-partisan advocacy group that published numerous methods and solutions on how to get Millennials back to work.

The last three months have kept me incredibly busy with my new job at the State Department which has left me little time to tend to this blog.

In my stead, my friend Anthony Paglino has used this platform to share his experiences with crowdfunding and social entrepreneurism that can hopefully inspire Millennials to climb out of this economic hole.

A fellow Millennial, Anthony serves as a wonderful example of someone undeterred from this economy who set out and accomplished his goal of publishing a digital travel guide on the iPad called iCurious Travel: A Cultural Guide to China, which is now available on iTunes. If you haven’t already, check out his posts.

Back to business

Even though I’ve taken a break from this blog, the unemployment issues that Millennials face every day is still a very real problem that must be talked about and brought to our policy makers’ collective attention.

Right now the current unemployment rate in the U.S. is 7.7 percent, according to a February 2013 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

About 5.5 million young people ages 18 to 34 are currently unemployed, but this number only tells one side of the tape. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and later reported by PolicyMic, there are 12.1 million job-seekers who are counted in the BLS’s official unemployment figure, but this figure does not include the 8.6 million part-time workers who can’t get a full-time job or the 2.5 million “marginally attached” people who gave up looking for work.

So that leaves America with more than 23.2 million young people in this country who want full-time work but can’t find it at accounting for 16 percent of the youth population.

If these numbers sound crushing, they are.

But there are numerous things that colleges and the government can do to make sure that this generation’s adult life isn’t thwarted before it begins.

What should be done?

Now’s the time to focus on solutions. It’s incredibly easy to contextualize all of these unemployment and underemployment figures and say, “here’s the problem, the sky is falling” and not offer any solutions.

Here are a few examples in no particular order on how we can help Millennials from Venture for America, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Fix Young America.  

1.) Encourage graduates to work at and create start-up companies.

Jeff Seligno of The Chronicle of Higher Education writes that we need more avenues to get college graduates placed in rising companies through programs like Venture for America. Modeled after Teach for America, Venture for America places graduates in start-up companies for two years in smaller cities like Las Vegas and Cincinnati across the country.

Andrew Yang, Venture for America’s founder, says that the program’s goal is to create 100,000 jobs by 2025, he told the New York Times. “If you send a Brown University graduate to Goldman Sachs, is that person going to create jobs?” Yang asked.

College graduates should also be encouraged to create startup companies without defaulting on their student loan payments, via student loan forgiveness through income-based repayment programs. The JOBS Act of 2012  is a step in the right direction as it allows entrepreneurs to use crowdfunding to raise early-stage capital that most wouldn’t get through a regular bank loan that requires collateral and credit history.

Right now only a handful of states have the Self-Employment Assistance Program that allows laid-off workers to collect unemployment benefits while they start a business.

In Portland, Oregon, the founders of Urban Airship took advantage of SEA after they were laid off from their software engineer jobs and each received around $10,000 over six months after submitting their business plan. 

2.) Colleges must improve career information given to students.

Colleges must provide better and more transparent employment and salary data of its recent graduates like St. Olaf College in Minnesota.

3.) Colleges must provide more co-ops and immersive experiences.

Northeastern University, Drexel University, George Washington University, and Georgia Tech are leaders in the co-op movement, which places students in real, paying jobs during college.

Co-ops not only pay students, but they also ensure students get real-world work experience related to their chosen field.

4.) Expand apprenticeship training to create more and better post high-school pathways.

Americans tend to romanticize an education as a four-year college degree, but the truth is college isn’t for everyone.

“By 2020, two out of every three jobs will require some sort of education after high school,” Seligno says. “What’s needed? More apprenticeships, public service, and other structured work environments.”

There are many post-graduate apprenticeship programs from culinary arts to technical trades that train people by combining work-based learning with classroom instruction in a unified program that leads to a recognized and valued occupational credential, Economist Robert Lehrman says.

Trainees earn money and produce a product while they learn and later graduate with a sense of pride and identity as a member of a craft.

In Austria, Germany, and Switzerland — countries with long histories of guilds and craft work — apprenticeships are so commonplace, they cover 55-70 percent of all young people, which can help explain why youth unemployment rates are lower in those countries compared with the rest of Europe and the U.S., Lehrman says.

5.) Teach people how to learn programming languages and coding

Zach Sims, founder of website Codecademy, which teaches programming and coding for free, advocates for teaching computer programming languages nationally and creating partnerships with high schools, colleges, and local governments.

“There are a limited number of things you can do with an English degree,” Sims said. “Coding skills are such a clear path to employment, regardless of your background.”

Among other things…

A short list of other solutions to help get Millennials to work include:

• Supporting franchise ownership for veterans & youth
• Ways to create new “Silicon Valleys” throughout the U.S.
• Best practices for colleges to graduate more entrepreneurs
• Expanding Self-Employment Assistance (SEA)
• Increasing young founders’ access to capital
• Teaching entrepreneurship to ALL young Americans, including at-risk youth

Last year, the Youth Entrepreneurship Council (YEC) published the book #Fix Young America: How to rebuild our economy and put young Americans back to work (for good) that covers several other proven solutions written by notable entrepreneurs, business people, and politicians that have helped young people find jobs.

This is just a start but hopefully a step in the right direction that ensures when we are in our 40s and 50s we can effectively lead this country and live a fruitful, prosperous life.

Launching your crowdfunding campaign will hold you accountable to following through with your project.

The catalyst that brought this travel guide project to fruition, and made me cross a point of no return, was producing and executing a crowdfunding campaign online. Before I announced my project to the world, I first needed to find the initial inspiration, brainstorm the project idea with family and friends, build a timeline and budget, and finally write the content and produce the promotional video that I published on a crowdfunding platform.

Prior to launching my crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, I spent two months quietly preparing and planning this project.

The amount of time I spent organizing my campaign raises the question why didn’t I just stick to designing and writing my digital travel guide? All that time I spent working for free to get contributions could have been used to work at a job that could pay me.

But one of the reasons why I chose to do a crowdfunding campaign is not for the money. Rather, I did it to announce to the world that this is what I am going to do, and everyone including myself should hold me to it. In his latest book Abundance, Peter Diamandis talks about establishing a line of super credibility to help people take notice of your project and to give it a sense of authority. Similar to when JFK announced in 1961 that America would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade, you can make a similar proclamation in your campaign saying, “Within the next year, I will have my project finished and distributed to so and so!”

One of the aspects to launching this campaign was the video trailer for the travel guide. Once again like the T-shirts idea, making videos has been dream of mine since high school. But much like the T-shirts debacle, the video turned into a tedious side project of its own. I hired a friend to do the shooting and partial editing and contracted another friend to interview me. I then re-edited it and uploaded the video to different media channels. All in all, it took two months, several meetings, a handful of shoots on different locations, and around 20 hours of editing in post production to finally get the video out. But, hey, it was a fun process and the end product was something I felt confident about.

What you should look for when producing a video is the most concise way to share your narrative and funnel people to your Indiegogo page. It doesn’t have to be a Hollywood production, just something that gets your face in front of the camera to let people know you are an honest person trying to follow your dreams.

Indiegogo offers its suggestions on how to make a successful pitch video. One of the first considerations is which type of camera to use.

This all depends on what you have at your disposal.

Shooting with a handheld camcorder will do a satisfactory job, but shooting with a DSLR camera, however, provides more depth and clarity to the shot and will make it stand out.

Here is my advice for non-film oriented passion projects:

Keep the video to 90 seconds or less, something that you can shoot in its entirety in an afternoon and edit in the evening. If you don’t know how to edit videos, you have two options:

1) Find someone who can or 2) Learn how to edit videos yourself.

Option 1) Unless you can find a friend to do it for free, it will cost you money. Even if someone offers to do it for free, pay them regardless. Video editing is a time consuming process, and it is hard to get the style and feel of the video if you aren’t the one sitting at the computer.

Option 2) This is probably the more fun route. Editing video on a MacBook Pro with iMovie is very intuitive, and with a simple storyline it should not be that difficult to slap together some clips, toss in a nice fade transition, and some epic movie scores you can download from Wikimedia Commons to give it more heft.

Once you have polished your video, lined up your perks, and written your pitch, it is time to press the launch button on your crowdfunding campaign.

Proudly say to the world, “This is what I want to accomplish. If you believe in me and this idea, then join me on the journey!”

Stay tuned for the conclusion to the crowdfunding your passion series.

Sending perks to your campaign’s donors is one of the best ways to reciprocate and attract additional funding.

Perks are an important part of your crowdfunding strategy. How to attract potential cash and manage your time with limited resources will determine the overall success of your campaign.

What exactly are perks? Perks are the reciprocations you give to donors in exchange for them contributing to your campaign. Perks can be digital such as a thank you email or the actual physical product you are trying to create such as a DVD of a movie you are filming or a physical copy of a book you are writing.

The best perks create a connection between the audience and your product. They are things that are limited, special, and exclusive.

Indiegogo’s CEO Slava Rubin explains that there are four main reasons people fund campaigns.

1. You care about the person, cause, or campaign.

2. You want the perks.

3. You want to be part of the community.

4. For profit (currently not legal in the US. Contact your local congressman about the JOBS Act).

The best perks will combine the first three desires. The best strategy in designing these perks, however, is to keep things as simple as possible yet engaging.

Unfortunately for me, I did the exact opposite. I complicated things by making T-shirts my $35 perk. Some issues I ran into with the shirts included designing the logo  and then producing and distributing them. If the shirt costs $10 to produce and another $15 to ship it internationally what am I left with? Furthermore, all of these steps took time and money away from the central project, leaving me with a funny looking, ill-fitting stack of shirts.

One perk that was successful was my $10 option of a personalized YouTube video that I tailored to each donor. This reaches them instantly giving them satisfaction and also providing insight into what my actual daily experiences were like.

Here are my suggestions to perking:

- Keep them digital. Unless you are specifically selling a tangible physical product, stick to sending your perks via social media channels. The less time you spend at the post office mailing shirts and postcards, the more time you have to build your product and engage with your supporters and potential customers online and in person.

-Set your fundraising target small. Remove anything unnecessary from your budget like hiring a secretary, which I tried to do. Stick to the basics to keep your goal within reach. One trick to pull is that if you make it past your intended funding goal, have something already set up to help encourage more donations.

-Send the perks out right after you receive donations. Make that video, send that tweet, make the “thank you” phone call, or the adoration email. If you procrastinate on this, the guilt will weigh down on you over time. Best to do it quickly and let the enthusiasm infect both you and your donors!

Some good price points to set your perks at would be $1,$10, $25, and $100. With these smaller donation amounts, you will get more people on board. Donors have the option to anonymously contribute to your campaign and can opt out of receiving any perks.

I set the bar very high for disappointment with a $2,500 perk in which I would guide someone around China for two weeks. Not only would I be physically taking the time to guide them in person, I had to design the tour, make the reservations, and deal with a whole host of other headaches that had nothing to do with my guidebook, but rather a travel agency.

Unfortunately I never did find someone to take me up on the trip offer but I would have enjoyed doing it regardless of the extra work it would have required.

Remember that a small commitment from a lot of people is better than a large commitment from very few people.

When all was said and done, I attracted 21 funders and mailed or delivered in-person 10 T-shirts to funders in both China and the US.

Setting a timeline for your funding campaign

Whatever your project or product is, it is best to start with a short bar for achieving success. Even if your long-term vision is to change the world, this crowd funding project is just the first step in achieving it.

As I mentioned before, I was a little delirious when I set a goal of $10,000 for my initial funding target! In hindsight, my narrative focused too much on the long-term ambitions rather than the immediate creation of the travel guide. I had to remind myself that I wrote the travel guide to have more people experience China.

Although you shouldn’t muzzle the grand idea, it’s crucial to balance the endgame with completing the immediate task at hand.

Peter Diamandis, author of Abundance, has a great short piece on how to balance these two concepts of the grand vision and the current project.

My advice is to keep your campaign’s timeline short and fast paced.  Anywhere between one week and one month is sufficient to raise the money you need. My three-month timeline was far too long because I received most of the contributions within the first month.

The longer it takes you to manage your funding campaign, the less time you can spend working on your tangible product.

The key is to continually push the campaign’s momentum and keep your patrons energized and engaged.

There are many social media tools, but the best tools are the right ones for the job.

In my last post I explained how having a small team of advisers is a great way to gain valuable feedback on your product idea and helps you better articulate your vision and project features. In the long run this better prepares you for when the campaign goes live and you need to be more clear about your project to people you’ve never met. We then explored a handful of different platforms for crowdfunding, and what to keep in mind when deciding which one to use.

Let’s proceed with the next crucial step, where all of these pieces come together: Figuring out the campaign’s logistics.

There’s a lot to consider.

How long will you run your campaign for? How much money you need to raise? Which social media platforms you are going to leverage? What are you going to post on these platforms? What perks are you going to offer to gain financial donations?  And last, how are you going to manage all of these moving parts while connecting with your supporters in a meaningful way?

It’s a heavy to do list, and something I was foolish enough to take on my own.

As Indiegogo says, “Campaigns run by a team raise 80% more money than campaigns that run solo.”

That’s an enormous gap. Looking back, it would have been more prudent to bring on a partner or partners. My remoteness in the rice paddies of China made working with a bigger team more difficult, but not impossible.

After making that first round of feedback from your inner circle of advisers, take a look at who in your network has a special skill set they can contribute to your project. You may not be able to pay them, but the reason why they are in your inner circle is because they believe in you and want you to succeed.

If they’re willing to help out, be upfront with them about the vision, about the product, and what they will help you with.

Creating a team adds to the complexity of the project since you are now operating a small organization, however the risk of expanding your team brings a better chance of raising more money and getting your project more exposure.

Look at your workflow, including the separate phases of how your plan will play out over time, and how the different parts of the project need to be set up. Once you have a stronger timeline in focus with multiple responsibilities from logo design work to social media management, see which tasks you can and should do, and what you should delegate.

For example, I could have saved time delegating emails and press releases about my project to a publicist instead of doing it all myself in addition to what I was already doing.

The challenges you will face in working within a team will teach you invaluable communication skills including listening, leadership, and management.

During several brief stints, I had a Chinese intern. This proved more troublesome than I first thought because I couldn’t offer a stipend, and the tourist town I was in had such a high turnover rate. Sometimes couchsurfers would come through, and I would have them help with simple tasks such as translation into Chinese and some on-site research. But onboarding and training takes time, getting them up to speed with the entire project sapped my energy and distracted focus. Even though this was not the best use of my time, I did learn how to better manage my expectations in both my personal and professional life.

One success story I have had is working with Lance Fuller, a friend from college and someone I share a lot in common with. We are both passionate about the current economic and social problems young people face in the US. I have this great crowdfunding experience that I want to share, Lance has a platform and a degree in professional journalism. When we work together, we produce a better product to more people than if we worked independently.

So my advice to you would be to find people who share similar passions, and are hungry for change. When you work with those who are motivated by goodwill and passion instead of just money, you’ll be more satisfied with your team and how your product will come out.

Engaging your audience

I spent a lot of time conceptualizing and mapping out a complicated social media strategy that included Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Social Cam, SoundCloud, Blurb, and three different Chinese language social media sites.

I dabbled in too many sites and it left me exhausted and drained. It was too much, too fast and I found myself overwhelmed by the social media spiderweb of not just content but interactivity between them all.

But I wanted to test out all the platforms because this entire travel guide project is one big experiment.

If I’ve learned anything about social media, you have to focus your content.

When I worked for an online education startup, I learned how to write curriculums over the course of a semester and you can organize your content strategy like a class curriculum.

Create a source of content that tells a narrative, and then spread the posts out over time teaching the audience just like how a book would introduce and unfold simple concepts that build up to more advanced material over time.

So here is my narrowed down social media strategy from time in the laboratory: Keep it simple and limit yourself to maybe a couple of sites. I would recommend Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

All these platforms tell the same story, just from different perspectives from posting short statuses to engaging your family and friends to finding common communities. The goal is to enlighten more people on your back story, motivations for doing your project, the ins and outs of the project/product, and perks. 

Finally, all of your social media platforms should funnel your audience to sign up for your online newsletter where all the major updates get pushed, so on get in the habit of giving weekly updates.

And this is where the magic happens. Through all of these social media and email platforms, people who share your passion will find and follow you.

Everytime I send a newsletter, it stirs the pot and people from all over the world reach out to me expressing interest in the book or even suggest other people I should get in touch with regarding travel in China. Most often it is well wishes which is a great motivational boost.

In part 5 we’ll discuss what makes great perks, the incentives you can give to entice people to donate to your campaign, and how I got in over my head with a T-shirt debacle.

Crowdfunding helps bring financial capital to social entrepreneurs looking to advance their passion projects.

In part 2 of this series, I chronicled my roundabout experience of matching my passion to a marketable product. After going around in circles about culture, language, travel, and technology, I finally decided on an interactive guidebook to China for the iPad.

Once I had my idea, many questions remained as to how I was going to pull this off, from financing to content creation. A Skype call with an understanding family member helped point me in the right direction.

My Uncle Steve does web analytics for a website that supplies deals on activities and products based off of your geographical location. An engineer by trade and a certified nerd when it comes to computers, he has always listened and supported my crazy schemes.

When I pitched him the idea of my book, he immediately suggested the concept of crowdfunding or the idea that an extended online network can pitch financial support through a convenient social platform.

This conversation also got me thinking about ways to get more great feedback from family and friends.

And this is the first lesson I want to share with you in this chapter: Organize your own mini board of advisers. Get your product out to as many people in your close network as possible and receive as much feedback as possible. This will make your product stronger because it will be scrutinized and vetted from many angles. More importantly, feedback will help you get the kinks out of your project in the beginning so you won’t have to do damage control later down the line because of an ill conceived plan.

To get my idea out and heard, I created a list out in the middle of nowhere China and contacted the majority of my network through email and Skype calls. For a solid 4 weeks before I launched my crowdfunding campaign, I constantly reached out, set up Skype calls, and got great feedback.

As time went on, the product became much clearer in my head, and I also became much better at articulating what that product was: “A digital cultural guide to China for Western travelers who want to have a more independent and enriched experience.”

Moving forward, the people who I reached out to during the conceptual phase will also help promote my campaign because they are already up to speed with the project and the mission.

Choosing a Platform

Once your product has gone through several iterations, it’s time to pick a crowdfunding platform to bring financial capital to your project.

Not all crowdfunding platforms are equal, and I would suggest taking a look at the entire field before settling on one.

Some important things to consider when choosing a crowdfunding platform are to think about how much money you need to raise, how long you want to run your campaign, and the overall feel and design of the individual crowdfunding site, to name a few.

From a marketing standpoint it is also important to understand some of the risks and concerns that a potential crowdfunder may feel. Indieogo highlights some of the inherent risks when it comes to contributing to crowdfunded campaigns.

“Contributors are backing an idea, not purchasing a pre-made project. Like anyone contributing to an early-stage project, you accept the risk that the project might not come to fruition. We leave it up to you to make your own judgment about the merit of a campaign before making a contribution.”

Having a larger, more accredited crowdfunding site may deter some of these concerns, but in the end it comes down to how transparent you are with your campaign. Posting more information including photos, videos and links will establish more credibility which we will discuss in part 6 of this series.

As I mentioned in my first post, two of the most popular crowdfunding sites online right now are Kickstarter and Indiegogo. These sites focus more on artsy projects such as film, books, travel, and especially prototyped manufactured goods such as this wildly popular slick watch that raised over $10 million on Kickstarter and LuminAid’s inflatable solar powered LED light that raised more than $50,000 on Indiegogo.

Although both are similar, I would recommend Indiegogo. The reason is simple: on Kickstarter, you receive NOTHING if you do not reach your funding goal.

Time wasted, no thank you.

On Indiegogo, you have the option to select flexible funding in comparison with fixed funding. If you do not raise your stated amount, the percentage that Indiegogo takes from your overall donations jumps from 4 to 9 percent, and there is also a 3 percent credit card processing fee added on top of that. Although not as bad as getting nothing, it is a significant jump in costs.

You may be thinking to yourself how much money do you even need? Here is the next great lesson in how to run a successful crowdfunding campaign; distinguishing how much money you WANT versus how much money you NEED.

I unfortunately made the mistake of estimating a funding goal of $10,000! Why?

I made the mistake of calculating how much I WANTED to start a full fledged travel guide publishing business and not what I NEEDED to produce the first edition of the book.

Starting a business is a whole other ball game including more logistical problems such as hiring staff, legal aspects to incorporation, and other nonsensical things that I did not need to worry about at that stage in the game.

In retrospect I should have significantly lowered my funding goal from $10,000 to $1,000. This would have been plenty of money for me to venture around the backwaters of China for three months having a great time not worrying about the long-term prospects of the company, and investing that money into building a quality website.

Even though this is an obvious mistake looking back, this was a great lesson to learn. Keeping things simple will help you focus on accomplishing a specific goal.

My biggest suggestion for anyone starting their first crowdfunding campaign is to start the project small, and the budget even smaller. Create an idea that you need anywhere between $500 and $1,000. You have a higher chance of reaching that goal within your immediate network and will give you a greater chance of success. And even if you don’t meet your funding goal, it is not the end of the world. You can still have success by generating excitement and buzz around your project.

Peter Diamandis eloquently and insightfully portrays the delicate balance of starting out small by  first playing to the mind, while also building for a grander longer term vision that plays to the heart.

My short-term product was building a prototype digital travel guide. My longer-term vision is to use digital crowdsourced travel guides that can connect the world across language and cultural barriers.

Don’t make the same mistake of confusing the product with the vision like I did.

In the next blog post, now that you have built a mini advisery board, it may be smart to partner with some people to help you build and grow your project before launch.

Harnessing your passion blends all of the above. (http://trinimocha.onsugar.com)

In the introduction of this series, we covered how a perfect storm of liberated financing through crowdfunding, extremely affordable world class education through the Internet, and the desire to do good for the broader world through sustainable business practices are giving opportunity to the passionate and motivated.

But how do you translate your passion into a marketable product? This is the journey of the creative process all its messy glory.

First know this. Projects don’t always have to be the next cure all for poverty, hunger or disease. They should be fun expressions of your personality that can help bring people together in this globalized world.

Roxanne Turpen took her passion for designing and making superhero capes and turned an obscure skill into a funding campaign that raised more than $45,000. However Roxanne’s cape business was years in the making before she pulled the trigger on her Kickstarter campaign.

It’s important to remember when starting your new passion project that success does not happen overnight. While working on your passion project, over time you become more adept at understanding the challenges and possibilities for your product. Roxanne took two years of testing out ideas before she finally felt that the cape manufacturing business was the right fit at the right time.

And here is the second lesson you will learn in your crowd funding endeavor: The best way to become a successful entrepreneur is to fail fast and often.

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, offers a good lesson from his graduate school days at Stanford where he tried to create a way for people to order pizzas online. The concept didn’t take off because he sent the request through fax, and nobody at the restaurant checked their fax machine. Good idea, but wrong timing. Failing fast at online pizza delivery gave Brin more time to create the algorithms that would later be the world’s most powerful online search platform.

Although we can’t all be multi-billionaires, the creative process is similar: Try lots of things and see what works.

My experience was roundabout and mainly on purpose because figuring out where my passion would be economically viable was not a given.

At the beginning of 2012, Apple introduced a new platform for self publishing called iBooks Author. An innovative tool, iBooks Author has an easy to use and master interface, allowing hobbyists and enthusiasts to publish beautiful and cleanly designed interactive textbooks that are published through the iTunes store.

When Apple released iBooks, it provided the market and medium where I could write about my time in China, but I was still unsure about what exactly to write about, which angle to take, and whom exactly was my target audience.

I first entertained the idea of documenting the production of handicrafts in rural China where I learned how to weave bamboo baskets with an elderly couple in a neighboring village. Based on that experience with bamboo baskets and all the fun I was having, I cooked up an idea to travel around to other parts of rural China and document this rapidly disappearing heritage.

Unfortunately, the idea didn’t stick because the logistics and practicality of handcrafts as a main theme didn’t fit the budget, or the timing, and was just downright obscure. I will say that some day in the future, I would still love to pursue this avenue.

I had to reevaluate what my goals were. And here is where the third great lesson in crowd funding comes in handy: Start with the “Why.”

Why are you building this product? Why will it help other people? Why should I be interested? By starting at the end goal of why your project matters, you can focus on the specific tasks you need to get to that end point. Simon Sinek puts it succinctly that people buy why you do, not what you do.

Unfortunately, I started with the “what,” a book about my experiences in China, which is a broad subject. I needed to take a step back, and refocus on the why.

At the end of the day, I wanted to equip more travelers visiting China with soft language and culture skills to increase interaction person to person and to combat the rampant mass tourism industry that kills spontaneous experiences. Why? Because interactive and thoughtful travel has the potential to make the world a more peaceful and prosperous place through cultural exchange. But to get to that point of meaningful cultural exchange, you need language abilities.

I looked at what would be relevant to travelers in a book form, and the answer was quite clear.

During my senior year of college, I embarked on the biggest adventure of my life up to that point. I enrolled in a summer study abroad course in China through the University of Florida.

To mentally prepare and plan for the trip, I bought a thick, Bible-esque tome from Lonely Planet on Southwest China that, in retrospect, consisted of 500 semi-relevant pages of information on places I would never go to. Because the turnover rate of restaurants and hotels in China is lightning fast, the places listed, and the things to do would certainly be out of date by the time I arrived. I paid close to $40 for a book that ended up being 10 percent useful to me.

This seemed like an economic opportunity to fill the gap in the marketplace where traditional publishers were not embracing new trends and consumption habits.

I also took into account my specific skills and experience. Since that first summer studying abroad, I then spent four subsequent years traveling around China, mainly from the seat of my bike but also by non-airconditioned train, smoke filled overnight buses, shockless minivans, doorless three wheeled trikes, and on occasion by a six-person horse cart with a schizophrenic horse. I racked up a lot of knowledge and know-how from those misadventures on effective and fun ways to get your travel on in China.

From a professional perspective while living in Beijing between 2009 and 2010, I got involved with an online startup teaching Mandarin and produced a bunch of short series about travel and language that eventually landed on YouTube.

Naturally I moved from a comfortable cityscape in the capital to working in tourism and hospitality in the southwest province of Yunnan in a rural town called Dali. It was a unique experience to witness and participate in the agricultural lifestyle up close, an opportunity few Westerners get to see over prolonged periods of time.

Drawn by Yunnan’s natural beauty and ethnic diversity, large flocks of tourists descend into the usual tourist hot spots, gorging on pre-determined itineraries developed for the masses and pushed by generic tour companies. Big money brought by big tour groups breeds more development of once small communities into large hollowed out theme parks. A sad sight. Unfortunately, these once pristine places are for the most part highlighted in Lonely Planet’s and Fodor’s travel books.

Although the Chinese language market for tour books is a whole other ball game, the English language market was approachable. I wanted to help people get past the Disney-kitsch new “old towns” and interact with real people and exchange real ideas in, you know, the “Real China.” Through Apple iBooks I could create an interactive travel guide focused on language and culture to grease the friendship wheels.

This felt right. This felt like I had a chance to make a difference. An opportunity to start a dialogue.

And when it comes to making this work from a business standpoint, which would you rather choose? The $10 digital guide with low overhead and full of relevant information that will last, or the $40 out-of-date brick that is dead on arrival?

Now that I had my idea, my business case, and my why?, I needed to figure out a way to get this project off the ground. At this point in the timeline I was still unfamiliar with crowdfunding.

In part 3, we’ll talk about the importance of sharing your idea with close friends and family first because you never know what great information and feedback they will share with you. For example, my uncle  was the first to introduce the catalytic idea of crowdfunding.

Social entrepreneurism aims to solve social problems through entrepreneurial spirit.

At the beginning of 2012 I found myself running in circles in a job I had outgrown, stifled by unimaginative and indecisive management. Hungry to fulfill my inner potential, I yearned for a path to create a meaningful life that had value not only to myself but also significance to my friends and broader community.

The question remained, “how can I achieve that?”

Looking both inward and outward, I developed a strong understanding of who I am as a person including my interests and skills, as well as the powerful shifts in the basic fabric of human life developing in the 21st century.

It was a few months later that I had my plan in place. I quit my day job and worked tirelessly through peaks and pitfalls to make my dream a reality.

This story is a 7-part series on how I successfully used the principles of social entrepreneurship, crowdfunding, and my passion to build a prototype for the next generation of digital travel guides. My intention for this post is to encourage more and more young people to take their lives and their talents to construct a more hopeful future.

My story is not a unique one. I am just one of nearly 80 million Millenials in the U.S. born between 1980 and 2000. Shifting economic forces and emerging technologies have left a whole generation of talented individuals with an outdated playbook on how to succeed in life. It is now our responsibility and challenge to rewrite the rules for how to lead successful lives in this new economic landscape.

Richard Florida, author of  The Rise of the Creative Class and editor of The Atlantic: Cities explains that every person has creative potential; an untapped resource that will be the building blocks of the next economy and a re-imagined global society.

“The tectonic upheavals our economy is enduring are the result not just of financial shenanigans by the global One Percent, but of a deeper and more fundamental shift — the passing of the old industrial order as it gives way to the emerging Creative Economy,” Florida says.

This coming creative economy will rely more and more on the emerging field of social entrepreneurship where performance isn’t measured solely in profits and return, but also a positive return to society.

Social entrepreneurs the world over have come to the realization that it isn’t enough to just make profits anymore: You have to solve a problem that makes yourself, your community, and the world a better place in the process.

What does social entrepreneurship look like in action? It is inherently more out-of-the box, bold, daring, and full of imagination.

A duo of dudes in D.C. asked the question “Can you have a good time and give back to a great cause?” Well yes you can, because Nick Vilelle and Raj Ratwani opened a bar that donates 100 percent of its profits to charity. The bar called Cause is coined a philanthro-pub and has partnered with various charitable organizations and socially minded vendors to combine fun with giving back.

In Trenton, New Jersey, Terracycle takes obscure garbage and upcycles the hard-to-convert materials such as used office supplies, personal products, and candy wrappers into anything from fences, plant potters, and school bags made of Capri sun boxes.

We are moving into a brave new world, and past barriers that have kept young entrepreneurs out of the game are being demolished, paving the way for new opportunities.

Increased access to education is just one fundamental reason pushing this shift toward the creative economy.

Expert instruction is no longer confined to universities and admissions specialists. Anyone with Internet access can teach themselves how to plant a garden or change their oil via YouTube.

Higher education has been flattened and democratized, available at a fraction of the cost of a traditional four-year degree through online programs like the Khan Academy, Coursera, and Udemy where you can learn how to develop mobile apps and view thousands of lectures and hundreds of hours of content for less than $150!

All you need to bring to class is your drive and attention.

With the world literally at our fingertips and with so many smart people to collaborate with and learn from, we now have more tools and opportunities to take necessary action to be the change that large corporations, government bureaucracies, and outdated institutions have not been flexible enough, quick enough, or courageous enough to enact.

However, even with social entrepreneurship and increased access to education as guiding principles, radically different business models won’t be enough to transform the economy from the ground up.

One of the biggest barriers facing young creatives is a lack of financing. With the introduction of online Crowdfunding in recent years, the age of static business proposals have become obsolete, replaced by dynamic online donations that engage wide audiences and raise profiles.

Companies like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have made crowdfunding ubiquitous and have taken a revolutionary and evolutionary step toward gathering people with shared interests and common goals to financially and emotionally support people with the drive and motivation to make change in both small and large ways.

Access to funding and education are a good start, but are not enough. The essential ingredient however to making your dreams real is your passion.

Moving forward into the creative economy, your passion will be your most marketable skill. Your passion is the one quality that you bring to the table that cannot be commoditized, automated, shipped off or outsourced.

I have lived to tell the tale and I want to share my successes and failures using my own misadventures in crowdfunding with you, so that you can have a better chance at being successful.

In part 2 of this series, How do you harness your passion to solve a social need? I will share the inspiration for my passion project, and how I uncovered an opportunity to transform an unsustainable mass tourism industry into a more democratized experience. Based off of my time working in the travel and hospitality industry and passion for languages and long distance cycling, I set out to build a prototype for the next generation of digital travel guides based around facilitating more direct human interaction in one of the most obscure travel environments on the world, rural China!

Posts will be released every Wednesday leading to the release on March 27th of the iCurious Travel: A Cultural Guide to China, available exclusively on itunes. Follow me on Twitter @iCuriousTravel  or on Google + for updates.

I look forward to you joining the conversation. What do you think is the biggest obstacle in facing young entrepreneurs today? Where do you think is the biggest opportunity for young entrepreneurs to succeed?

Anthony Paglino will contribute guest blog posts every Wednesday leading up to the March 27 release of the iCurious Travel: A Cultural Guide to China.

Virtual greetings, everyone!

This week I’m going to do something a little different with this blog.

Since this blog’s inception, I’ve written on numerous topics that range from the overall problem of this economy to who the Millennials are to how they can find a way out of an economic slump.

I figure now would be a good change of pace to bring a fresh mindset and voice to Lost Gen. In addition to my regular blogging, tomorrow I’m going to feature part one of a seven-part series from my friend Anthony Paglino who will focus on crowd funding and how Millennials can make a difference through social entrepreneurship while pursuing their passion.

Anthony’s an interesting guy.

I first met him in college at the University of Florida through a class called People and Cultures of China in Spring 2008.  I had just studied in Beijing the previous summer and Anthony was about to embark on his own study abroad that upcoming summer right up until the Olympics.

During his study abroad, he witnessed the 2008 Chengdu earth quake.

After graduating from the University of Florida in Fall 2008, Anthony lived in China for four years working in the booming hospitality and tourism business and is currently working on a travel eBook through his blog, iCurious Travel.

A fascinating guy with an innovative spirit, Anthony’s post is definitely something to look forward to this week in addition to some other ideas I have ready to expand this blog.

Stay tuned!