The history of voluntary donations is as long as the history of all mankind. Both the skald in the X century and the street musician in the XXI pursue one goal - to get an assessment of his talent in the form of voluntary remuneration. People donate to cultural and historical monuments, public libraries, theaters, and the states of the “golden billion” donate help to poor third world countries.
Today, a person is no longer limited to his community, village, city or country. The Internet blurs the boundaries, and voluntary donations have also evolved. People can donate not only their money, but also another, no less valuable resource - time.

At Ackuna, we decided to get closer to modern crowd-based technologies and see how they can be useful for IT entrepreneurs.
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A bit of history

It is difficult to say what started the modern round of crowd-based technologies - perhaps if you search, it turns out that Sir Tim Berners-Lee himself was collecting money on the World Wide Web, which he just sketched. However, it is generally accepted that one of the first crowdfunding events was a fundraiser, organized by fans of the Marillion group in 1997. Money was needed to finance the band's musical tour throughout the United States. Then managed to collect 60,000 dollars.
The first of the massive crowdfunding sites is ArtistSahare. This platform for financing and supporting creative projects has been operating since 2003. In fact, it was her creators who opened the world to groundbreaking. During the existence of the platform, 9 projects from those launched on it received a Grammy, and another 18 were nominees.

The success of ArtistSahare has spawned many investigators: SliceThePie, IndieGoGo, Pledge Music ... Today, the biggest player in the crowdfunding market is Kickstarter. Appeared in 2009, it began to gain popularity due to the fact that it covered a huge variety of projects, from creative to technological and frankly insanely futuristic. Perhaps it was bright projects that brought Kickstarter to the market leaders.
The history of this landmark project for the whole world began in the distant 2002. One of the founders, Perry Chen, lived in New Orleans, and dreamed of musical glory. When he decided to organize a concert, he realized that he had no money for that. Even if he invests all his savings, he will not return them, and may say goodbye to the dream of returning to the city of his childhood New York. It was then that he came up with the idea of ​​“Kickstarter”, which he shared three years later with Yancy Stickler. Then the project's plot looked like this: if a person wants to organize something, but he does not have the means to do it, he can tell about his idea on the Internet. And those who share this idea will help him to realize it. For this, they receive bonuses in the form of books, tickets, etc.
Yancy was an unknown music critic who published his reviews online. He immediately reacted to the project rather skeptically. In his opinion, where we give a person the opportunity to choose, “great art” will not work. But Chen noticed that no one unknown sculptor from a small town could not get into the famous gallery. And this means that no one will appreciate his work either, and the Network will help him become famous. This argument was convincing. Four years later, together with the third partner, Charles Adler, they launch a working version of the Kickstarter service. Interestingly, they raised money for launching the project, in fact, also with the help of crowdfunding among friends and acquaintances.
After the boom of crowdfunding services in the United States, the emergence of domestic counterparts was a matter of time. One of the first sites of this kind was Planeta.ru, a Boomstarter appeared a bit later.

How does crowdfunding work?

Of course, it should be understood that crowdfunding organizations do not work for free. Usually they take a percentage of the funds raised, which varies depending on whether the platform will have ownership rights to the object of the crowdfunding company.
Today, online criticism of crowdfunding platforms has begun to grow. It is known that each project is moderated, and recently there has been a tendency that it is potentially the most successful projects from the point of view of the site itself.
The motives of the site in this case are extremely clear: if the project does not collect the required amount in the allotted time, then all funds are returned to users. But this, unfortunately, deprives the means for development of many interesting projects aimed at a niche audience.

Crowdinvesting

But what if your idea or startup requires really big investments? Maybe you want to build cars and not record new songs? For this, there is another tool - crowning investing.
The fundamental difference between crowdfunding and crowdfunding is that investors get a share in the company's share capital, with all the unpleasant bonuses in the form of risks of losing investments. Crowding investing is an excellent solution for those enterprises or startups that do not have a sufficient credit history or a convincing business plan for banks and venture capital investors. These are, first of all, small enterprises that need small investments to expand their business. Due to the specificity of their market, there is no reason to hope for the exponential growth of their business, and therefore, for venture capital investments.
The world knows successful crowning investment projects. For example, a Touchpico pico projector with a touch image. This gadget, the size of an external hard drive, can display an image with a diagonal up to 80 inches. The projector is equipped with a stylus, the movements of which are tracked by an infrared camera integrated into the TouchPico. In addition, there is an audio jack, an HDMI port and a Wi-Fi module that allows you to project any image from mobile devices and PCs onto any surface.



Another example is the world's first social robot, Jibo. A kind of domestic helper who can become a full-fledged pet. You can see it in the video on YouTube .

Crowdlanding

Another form of crowdfunding can be called P2P lending, or crowundling. This alternative to banks and microfinance organizations allows individuals to receive loans from individuals. With the help of Internet services, the lender and the borrower can find each other and agree on all the intricacies of the financing contract.
It is quite easy to get money with the help of Crane management. All you need to do is leave a request on the site and wait for its confirmation. The service can confirm it automatically if your parameters and the lender's parameters are the same. Either the lender himself finds you and confirms the application manually.

Despite the simplicity of design, no one promises that the money will be given to everyone at once. The service always requests the applicant's data to the credit bureaus. On its basis, the applicant will receive a credit rating, based on which the loan rate will be assigned. The range of rates usually ranges from 8 to 35 percent per year, and the term of provision does not exceed two years.
The peculiarity of the crowdfunding is that the creditor is not a financial institution, but an individual or a group of individuals. But the loan agreement is concluded with the system, for a percentage of the loan amount. By the way, lenders who receive income from P2P services are required to pay personal income tax.
But even taking into account all the above, kraundlending - a profitable investment, as interest rates compared with bank deposits significantly higher.
Compared with microcredits, in which interest rates are infinitely high, crowundling is more beneficial for the borrower.

Crowdsourcing

The last “crowding” term most fully reflects the whole philosophy of gratuitous assistance. Crowdsourcing is the joint creation of projects by scattered people, or the transfer of certain production functions to an indefinite number of volunteers. Do not confuse this way of working with outsourcing, when tasks are given outside the company, to professional performers for piecework. In crownsourcing, paying with money is usually not practiced, or other methods of promotion are used.
Crowdsourcing services attract amateur specialists, or those who want to practice in certain areas, coordinating them via the Internet. This gives customers access to talented people around the world.
By the way, we are doing this at Ackuna .
What is crowdsourcing in translation? This is, first of all, asynchronous provision of translation work to a number of people, where they all work simultaneously on the same project.
People come to us to improve another language. The language will improve if you do it. And in order to deal with them, you need to try to translate something. Learning through assignments - translating small parts of the text, while other “translators” can vote for the best translation. A good translation is a plus! Bad - well, you understand. The translation with the most pluses is used in the final version.


So, in the modern world, crowd-based technologies have become a powerful accumulator of resources that entrepreneurs can use for the benefit of their projects. With their help, anyone can start their own startup, and this is really wonderful. Who knows - maybe it was at this time that a new Uber was “poured” in one of the Russian hostels on Boomstarter? ..

Have you used crowd technology in your projects? Share your experiences in the comments!