Jeff Wenzel warns founders they waste $50,000 on legal fees and polished landing pages before raising money. Build your community first, he says: talk to friends, family, and LinkedIn contacts. Only then spend on lawyers and platform work.
The $50K mistake founders make before raising $1. This is what most people make a mistake on, is that they don't build a community. They spend all their time on legal, platforms, um, building out the perfect looking page. They negotiate portal fees. They're just in the weeds of everything that is the opposite of actually crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is about building a crowd or a community. So before you go out and raise a dollar, before you start spending any money on legal, before you start doing any of that sort of stuff, you have to look at your data, your inner network, your friends, your family, your first-degree contacts on LinkedIn that you think will support your deal, and you need to connect with them and build a solid relationship. Then start moving into the other chapters, 'cause if the first part doesn't exist, there is no second part in this equation. So that's the biggest mistake that we see founders make all the time. They spend all this money on things that are not community building. That's the first step in this whole journey. Build that crowd, build that community, then go to fundraising. Hey, if you're thinking about doing a raise Q3, Q4 of this year, go to preipohype.com. We got a lot of different options and I'd love to connect with you and put you on the right path. Later.
