Crowd funding in Russia: get out of the valley of death
Contrary to many reviews like "crowdfunding? Not in this country! ”, Today at“ From the World ”, we managed to create a working Russian crowdfunding service. For a year and a half, the project “ From the World ” was reborn several times, survived a rift among the founders, thundered several times on the entire RuNet, and almost died several times.
Born "With the world on a thread" completely by accident. At that time (October 2010) we were engaged in a completely different project and were looking for investments for it. The time to search for investment was very tight. So we got to the point that only a bank loan could be found under a very interesting project. We realized that this did not suit us and began to look for alternatives. We stumbled on Kickstarter , but it turned out that it was impossible to launch a project there (it works only for US residents), and there were no similar services in Russia.
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We hoped to “quickly, for 3-4 months, to launch a minimal variant of crowdfunding,” to raise money for our project, and there to see what would happen.
The first version of the site was launched in 3 weeks. Everything looked poor, there were no functions, everything was buggy, but it worked! It worked in the sense that it was possible to register, publish a project and start collecting money for it. Then it seemed to us that the creation of Russian crowdfunding is already very close. One thing surprised: why so far no one did?
During the preparation of the project for launch, we managed to get expert assessments from fairly experienced people. All in one voice said that nothing will come of it, do not even try. The reasons were different: “the mentality is not the same, Russia is not ready”, “there are no financial instruments”, “they will overwhelm the fraudsters”, “will drown in taxes / reporting”.
We started, and the project very quickly received the first positive response: together with people from the communities of Nefigigism and Tuguesa (then “Together”) we made a good starting project, wrote about us, someone told someone somewhere. This gave us a charge of cheerfulness and optimism.
We learned about previous attempts to make such a service in Russia. Some projects can still be viewed (for example, Naparapet ), others sites are no longer available. We looked at them, read their "obituaries" and did not understand - what happened to them? What is this “death valley” where all these projects fall?
Then there was StartupWeekend, where Arkady Moreynis bluntly said that he himself tried to make a Russian Kickstarter, but he and lawyers realized that this was impossible in Russia. There was a RIF where experts from Runa Capital, Almaz Capital and other respected investment funds and companies said they would not talk with us until we show the legal basis for the operation of such a service in Russia (but they still gave the diploma and asked to write about news ). There were many other meetings, conferences, calls from which we learned why crowdfunding is impossible in this country.
We began to realize that our dreams of a quick start were very naive. The experience confirmed all the experts' fears: the mentality is not the same, Russia is not ready, there are no financial instruments, fraudsters come, taxes are very complicated, there are many reports.
Projects such as Time-to-Start , 1-st Cash and others, which were taken to copy an attractive and inaccessible American Kickstarter, clearly show that behind the deceptive simplicity of creating a crowdfunding site (wrote the engine - and went), great difficulties are hidden, first of all , on legal support. If we trace the news, the dynamics of development of such projects, we will see that they are actively starting, then they write that they “have encountered some difficulties,” after which the project quickly fades away.
We continue to work, although, too, at one time “faced with some difficulties.” Despite the fact that we are still in beta, over 200 thousand rubles have already been transferred to projects, including several deposits of more than 10 thousand. More than a dozen projects have been financed with a budget from 3,000 to 20,000 rubles. The project of the monument to Steve Jobs in Novosibirsk, which we launched to show how public funding can and should be collected, has already gained more than 50 thousand rubles.
Born "With the world on a thread" completely by accident. At that time (October 2010) we were engaged in a completely different project and were looking for investments for it. The time to search for investment was very tight. So we got to the point that only a bank loan could be found under a very interesting project. We realized that this did not suit us and began to look for alternatives. We stumbled on Kickstarter , but it turned out that it was impossible to launch a project there (it works only for US residents), and there were no similar services in Russia.
')
And we decided to make our kickstarter.
We hoped to “quickly, for 3-4 months, to launch a minimal variant of crowdfunding,” to raise money for our project, and there to see what would happen.
The first version of the site was launched in 3 weeks. Everything looked poor, there were no functions, everything was buggy, but it worked! It worked in the sense that it was possible to register, publish a project and start collecting money for it. Then it seemed to us that the creation of Russian crowdfunding is already very close. One thing surprised: why so far no one did?
During the preparation of the project for launch, we managed to get expert assessments from fairly experienced people. All in one voice said that nothing will come of it, do not even try. The reasons were different: “the mentality is not the same, Russia is not ready”, “there are no financial instruments”, “they will overwhelm the fraudsters”, “will drown in taxes / reporting”.
We started, and the project very quickly received the first positive response: together with people from the communities of Nefigigism and Tuguesa (then “Together”) we made a good starting project, wrote about us, someone told someone somewhere. This gave us a charge of cheerfulness and optimism.
We learned about previous attempts to make such a service in Russia. Some projects can still be viewed (for example, Naparapet ), others sites are no longer available. We looked at them, read their "obituaries" and did not understand - what happened to them? What is this “death valley” where all these projects fall?
Then there was StartupWeekend, where Arkady Moreynis bluntly said that he himself tried to make a Russian Kickstarter, but he and lawyers realized that this was impossible in Russia. There was a RIF where experts from Runa Capital, Almaz Capital and other respected investment funds and companies said they would not talk with us until we show the legal basis for the operation of such a service in Russia (but they still gave the diploma and asked to write about news ). There were many other meetings, conferences, calls from which we learned why crowdfunding is impossible in this country.
We began to realize that our dreams of a quick start were very naive. The experience confirmed all the experts' fears: the mentality is not the same, Russia is not ready, there are no financial instruments, fraudsters come, taxes are very complicated, there are many reports.
Projects such as Time-to-Start , 1-st Cash and others, which were taken to copy an attractive and inaccessible American Kickstarter, clearly show that behind the deceptive simplicity of creating a crowdfunding site (wrote the engine - and went), great difficulties are hidden, first of all , on legal support. If we trace the news, the dynamics of development of such projects, we will see that they are actively starting, then they write that they “have encountered some difficulties,” after which the project quickly fades away.
We continue to work, although, too, at one time “faced with some difficulties.” Despite the fact that we are still in beta, over 200 thousand rubles have already been transferred to projects, including several deposits of more than 10 thousand. More than a dozen projects have been financed with a budget from 3,000 to 20,000 rubles. The project of the monument to Steve Jobs in Novosibirsk, which we launched to show how public funding can and should be collected, has already gained more than 50 thousand rubles.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/143773/
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