Signup & Process

Generating a WeFunder profile was not as time consuming as other technology-team related forms (500 Startups, YC etc.) It did force us to review our business model, vision, and messaging which ultimately was helpful for us. I’d say preparing screenshots, copy, and basic profile set-up took 4-5 hours over a couple of weeks.

Questions

One of my favorite features was the ability for people to propose questions regarding our startup. It was helpful to receive them in public form as the response had a bit more of a requirement to provide something of quality. The questions helped trigger good internal discussion to articulate a valid response.

User Growth & Traffic Stats

• Wefunder.com Generated 45 Unique Visits (…What?)
• 12 of these unique viewers signed-up for the beta.
• 50-60 wefunder followers in first week from our marketing efforts.
• 20-30 beta-signups after we were featured in the discover section.
• 50+ Signups since then (September)

Wait this means that out of our 130 followers not even half of them actually visited the site? Or necessarily signed up? This leads me to believe that a majority of our traffic and signups came through Vimeo, our social media links, or my direct contacts. Or our Google Analytics broke (We saw steady traffic from other sources during this time).

Investor Opportunities

We generated 3 investor leads - What’s this mean? Three different individuals who were interested in speaking with us further, provided slide-deck and more information, and want to talk when we decide to fundraise. 

136+ followers to 3 investors makes a ratio of 1 Investor for ~45 Followers. If you factor in the first 50-60 were part of our marketing efforts and already in our network, we can deduct them from the WeFunder generated relationships.

Now the ratio of what WeFunder helped with sounds more like 3 Investors from 70+ new followers.

Not too bad considering the little time it took to setup and minimal effort.

Downside

Lack of communication features currently is a bummer. I manually contacted all our followers outside of the platform one-by-one. It would have been nice to message my followers.

Its also difficult to keep ANOTHER place updated in regards to your startup’s product, strategy, business plan etc. The rate at which startups iterate can make it a chore to keep WeFunder updated, and we’ve often left it unattended.

It also would have been nice to be able to make changes to our questions, and have the profile creator have admin ability to delete responses. Removing questions should NOT be possible, only reported.

Overall & Summary

WeFunder has helped us create another social signal to show investors & advisors, has helped us generate new user signups and possible customers, and has provided 3 possible investor leads.

We are still not sure if we will actually use it to raise any public funds when the SEC completes their rulemaking for crowd-funding. It ultimately depends on who in the market is able to help us generate the most valuable leads, whether that’s accredited investors or the crowd. Other crowd-funding options are gaining lots of attention and may attract different high profile investors (FundersClub, Crowdfunding.org, etc.)