Greetings Fastlane Entrepreneurs,
Some friends and I have set out to build a crowdfunding platform for student organizations to facilitate fundraising. Most college organizations fundraise using old-school methods such as bagel sales or hosting events for which tickets have to be sold on campus for an entire week. These methods are time-consuming, and it is difficult to reach friends in different cities, extended family, and alumni. That's why we would like to introduce a community-oriented crowdfunding platform to colleges. Our goal is to do this on a $0 budget for as long as possible which is made possible using the Github Student Developer Pack, opensource code for a crowdfunding platform on github, and social-media driven marketing.
In the past couple of weeks, we finished the MVP (www.funddit.me) and are now focusing on business development to test our assumptions/whether there is a need for this product. So far, we reached out to our personal networks, posted on blogs/reddit, and sent out cold emails to hundreds of student organizations. Even though we received a lot of positive feedback, sign-ups and conversions are really low. Friends in leadership positions like the product, but they seem reluctant to use it. We fear that the status quo is simply to comfortable for our target audience. For many fundraising campaigns, Funddit would be a better tool that increases reach and funding while saving time. However, college organizations seem stubborn and just want to stick to methods they already now.
Thus, I would like to ask you if you have any advice on how to introduce this "new" technology to a customer who likes to stick with what he has always done? In addition, do you have any suggestions on how to acquire customers? Right now, we are cooperating with Spreadshirt, a custom merchandise company, to offer organizations a 20% discount if they raise money through our website. We hope this is an incentive to try something new.
Feel free to shoot me an email with more detailed replies or comments: lasse@funddit.me
Thanks,
Lasse
Some friends and I have set out to build a crowdfunding platform for student organizations to facilitate fundraising. Most college organizations fundraise using old-school methods such as bagel sales or hosting events for which tickets have to be sold on campus for an entire week. These methods are time-consuming, and it is difficult to reach friends in different cities, extended family, and alumni. That's why we would like to introduce a community-oriented crowdfunding platform to colleges. Our goal is to do this on a $0 budget for as long as possible which is made possible using the Github Student Developer Pack, opensource code for a crowdfunding platform on github, and social-media driven marketing.
In the past couple of weeks, we finished the MVP (www.funddit.me) and are now focusing on business development to test our assumptions/whether there is a need for this product. So far, we reached out to our personal networks, posted on blogs/reddit, and sent out cold emails to hundreds of student organizations. Even though we received a lot of positive feedback, sign-ups and conversions are really low. Friends in leadership positions like the product, but they seem reluctant to use it. We fear that the status quo is simply to comfortable for our target audience. For many fundraising campaigns, Funddit would be a better tool that increases reach and funding while saving time. However, college organizations seem stubborn and just want to stick to methods they already now.
Thus, I would like to ask you if you have any advice on how to introduce this "new" technology to a customer who likes to stick with what he has always done? In addition, do you have any suggestions on how to acquire customers? Right now, we are cooperating with Spreadshirt, a custom merchandise company, to offer organizations a 20% discount if they raise money through our website. We hope this is an incentive to try something new.
Feel free to shoot me an email with more detailed replies or comments: lasse@funddit.me
Thanks,
Lasse
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