Innovative ideas and a team able to carry out their execution are the starting point for a startup to define the shape of an innovative project.
However, it’s essential the support of those who believe in the project and for this reason decide to invest their own resources.
One year after the launch of our fundraising campaign on Mamacrowd platform, we can say that the support of our investors has proven to be fundamental for the evolution of Adam’s Hand®, and it convinced us how is important to share, not only information strictly related to the proposed innovation, but also motivations that lead us to innovate. The sharing of the Vision and the Mission of the company is always a great opportunity to involve new stakeholders in our project.
What is crowdfunding? How does it work?
The crowdfunding is a “bottom-up” financing method and it’s the result of a collective participation, which occurs when people decide to invest their money to support work and innovative ideas of business projects.
The change of crowdfunding comes from the use of an IT channel, in this case a web platform, which spreads and promotes the project, the market in which it intends to enter and the details of the team, the business model, the presence and analysis of competitors, the company’s financial projections and in general all that is important to determine the potential of a business project.
The web diffusion has allowed to gradually make more “democratic” this activity, once available only for investment institutions or professional investors. In this way, in fact, information circulates freely online and this allows to gather a huge “crowd of funding”.
There are many startups that use this form of financing to support the growth of their company, with the aim of transforming nascent activities into consolidated businesses.
Crowdfunding data in Italy and in the world
This microfinance facility has grown exponentially in recent years, duplicating lately its results.
In 2017, $ 5.5 billion was generated through crowdfunding of prizes and donations worldwide.
In 2018, the global crowdfunding market was valued at $ 10.2 billion and is expected to triple by 2025.
Around 111 million raised in Italy in 2018, which have become around 160,000,000 in 2019, thanks also to a streamlining of procedures and an improvement in the regulatory issues. (Crowdfunding Report 2019)
The types of crowdfunding
There are different types of crowdfunding and the main distinctions concern the reward that investors get in exchange for the money given:
- Donation crowdfunding: investors donates money without receiving anything in return.
- Reward crowdfunding: a reward is provided for investors who makes the donation.
- Lending crowdfunding (or social lending) investors receive a return on capital in the form of interest.
- Equity crowdfunding: investors obtain shares in S.r.l. or shares of S.p.a. and rights of different kind.
The crowdfunding experience of BionIT Labs®
We chose an equity crowdfunding campaign in order to make investors full partners and basic part of the company.
The preparation period of the campaign was fundamental and it involved the whole team, committed in the submission of documents that could better describe the work we have done and what we will do.
As Dario Pianese, the current CFO explains, “the most interesting challenge of the crowdfunding campaign was to translate all the qualitative elements of an until then early stage project into numbers and metrics. The maximum expression of this process was the calculation of the company valuation which allowed us to obtain a large consensus among the audience of investors.”
Our campaign started at the end of June 2019, and immediately it obtained excellent results, reaching the minimum collection target (100,000 € ) in a couple of weeks.
The interest aroused has led us to have continuous interaction with investors throughout the summer period, often receiving extremely interesting questions, which in many cases were the starting points for further analysis for the team.
In fact, the whole team, invested its energies, involved in the promotion, with the aim of describing the company in the best way, and setting up a communication campaign that would leave its mark.
As the current Head of Product Design Dpt., Duilio Madaro, says “during a crowdfunding campaign, communication has a central role in the business strategy: it is in fact important to describe in a clear, accurate and complete way the different aspects that make up the proposal of the company value“.
Duilio also explains that “investors have a strong decision-making value: they want to know more about the market, the product, the team, the strategies that the company intends to adopt to perform better and better. For this reason, during the two and a half months of the campaign we produced infographics, videos and social posts that aimed to clarify all doubts and to answer all the curiosities presented.”
In order to enhance our action, we received the support of SCAI Communication agency and its general director Michele Franzese. He has been specialized for years in communicative support to startups engaged in crowdfunding campaigns, and together with his agency he provided us with very important suggestions to better communicate our message, using the most efficient tools for an excellent digital communication.
Our skills together with the convincing proposal of our project, have given us back a stunning result, because we closed campaign in mid-September 2019 with the overfunding, counting over 290,000 € of investments raised.
Our resolution to increase, set at € 200,000, led us to collect around € 200,000 from approximately 120 new members at the end of the campaign, selling 11.15% of the company’s equity.
As the CEO states “the organization of this campaign meant a huge professional and human growth for us: dealing with so many people in such a short time has led us to reconsider, update and improve many aspects of our business, and it also helps to demonstrate once again that a job carried out with competence and dedication often meets the favor of the market”.
The interaction with investors today
The feedback and the trust that this campaign has allowed us to acquire, make us feel more than satisfied and proud of the result achieved.
Today there are over 120 members who support us and continue to support us and invest time, energies and expectations in BionIT Labs® and Adam’s Hand® project.
Our shareholders represent a fundamental part of the company and for this reason we are keen to maintain open and continuous communication with them, updating them with quarterly reports on the objectives achieved, on our progress and on future projects, making them protagonists of the company’s general evolution.
We will shortly provide our shareholders and the public with important news regarding the future of BionIT Labs® and Adam’s Hand®: keep following us to find out more!
