In this presentation Alisa Cordesius walks the audience through the essential components of a high‑performing Indiegogo campaign and shows how crowdfunding can serve as both a fundraising engine and a market‑validation platform. She outlines the "anatomy" of a campaign – funding model (fixed vs. flexible), tagline, perks, and trust signals such as team bios, social‑media following, and credibility cues. Using a series of real‑world case studies (Gravity Light, LuminAID, KitePatch, Lava Mae, Solar Roadways, Bombas, Kuli Kuli) she demonstrates how campaigns can uncover demand, attract nonprofit or corporate partners, iterate product branding, and secure follow‑on investment or retail distribution. Cordesius stresses that while a fully‑built product is not required, more mature ideas tend to perform better because backers can see a clearer path to impact. She also explains how to leverage perk tiers and early‑bird pricing to test pricing, gather feedback, and make data‑driven business decisions. Throughout, she highlights the social‑impact dimension of many campaigns, showing how a portion of revenue can be earmarked for charitable causes, thereby strengthening community support.
Chapters
Snapshot of some entrepreneurial partners. Obviously, you guys are up there. I am so thrilled to be able to work with folks like you. You make my job a better place to go to every single day. There are other folks of me that specifically work with film or specifically work with campaigns in music and creative and whatever the like, but the expertise is just across the board, which is awesome. For those of you that don't know, this is the anatomy of a campaign. This is where the badge of whether you are fixed funding or flex funding comes into play. These are your perks. This is your tagline. Now another piece about trust and thinking about credibility and accountability and you as educated contributors, we have our campaign owners featured here and the team. And also the amount of Facebook and social media followers that they have. Because that clearly is some social capital that people actually really care about, which we found is really important. Oh my God. So what is crowdfunding really? What is this thing? Basically, yes, you raise funds, right? And you are able to utilize it as a marketing vehicle. It's like an awareness platform. At the same time, you're able to think about market risk and execution risk, right? Which are 2 things that if you're building out a business or a venture, you absolutely have to take into consideration. What do I mean by this? Gravity Light. These fellows came from UK. They decided they had this idea of creating a light that actually was pulled by gravity. No electricity was needed. They wanted to be able to implement this across sub-Saharan Africa with nonprofit partners. But then they were like, I don't even know if there's a need for this. Let's figure that out. They launched an Indiegogo campaign. They raised over almost $400,000. They definitely found that there was a need for this. Not only that, they were able to validate it. They were also able to gain 2 nonprofit partners, and now it's implemented, I believe, in Ethiopia. So that is a proof point from an Indiegogo campaign. It's awesome. Similar product from actually the Global Social Venture Competition over at Berkeley. These grads— I studied in that. You did? Amazing. Do you know LuminAID?
Uh, no. Okay, LuminAID—
2 years ago.
Oh, wow.
Awesome. Great. So you know exactly what I'm talking about. These guys, they won GSBC. They raised $50K on Indiegogo, and it's an inflatable solar light. It's supposed to be sort of like a pillow, I guess. You just blow into it. They were just on Shark Tank last week, and they got $250,000 from Mark Cuban. And Mark Cuban straight up asked them, hey, did you run a crowdfunding campaign? And they were like, yeah. And then they could show. their demand. They could show their validated need. He used it as a proof point in order to decide. He actually had all 5 sharks go in, which is great, and just happened.
I'm sorry, can I— No, go for it. Do you need to have something built, like a product or stuff like that, to run this or to make a video?
That's a great question. Or can we only—
just like right now, I have a vision.
An idea, a vision. I have a vision, more or less like wireframes of what I want to build, but I know that people will relate to it because of my social media marketing and all that.
So how do you think I should approach this crowdfunding campaign?
Great question. Here's the deal. On Indiegogo, you don't have to necessarily have a product in play. You don't have to have your perks be your product. You can have a program. You can have a nascent idea. It could be at any stage. We want to be able to make this open for anyone, anywhere. With that said, I will say matured ideas and those that have kind of already marinated in product development or program development tend to perform better because the crowd can see where you're going and how they fit in that. You still don't have to be a full business. If anything, you're trying to become a full business to jump off with this nascent idea, this proof point of your campaign. But I do see that people want to be a part of something that's been a little bit more fleshed out.
Mm-hmm.
Cool. So KitePatch, these guys came out of UC Riverside. They were out of the biotech transfer office. They created a patch that actually makes you invisible to mosquitoes. So you wear this patch, and then it completely repels everything. They wanted to give 50% of their revenue to a malaria research foundation and center. They raised over $550,000. Their idea was to call it Patch. Then they moved to KitePatch. And then because of the interaction from the crowd and the awareness that they received through their campaign, they actually got comments back to say, hey, you should just call it Kite. It sounds so much better. Just call it Kite. Get the branding ready. And they iterated and used their 60-day campaign in order to get this feedback. And now they're gonna roll out in CVS and Walgreens this year. How does that work? Just curious. Is it just like chemicals or? Yeah, it's like mosquito repellent that's on a patch that's kind of like a nicotine patch.
So it goes in your skin?
Just like plops onto your skin. It's like a sticker.
Oh, I meant like the chemicals go through your skin like a nicotine patch.
I guess it's the same way where if you'd spray DEET on you. Yeah. It would be horrible. But I mean, think about it. If you're going to South Africa and going on some sort of trek or whatever, it would be nice to have. And think about how 50% of their revenue would go to malaria research. That was the whole social piece of it, that they wanted to help alleviate these issues in places that have it.
Boom!
Lava Mae is awesome. If you guys haven't been into the city on a Sunday or on a Friday, Go to the Tenderloin or the Mission and you'll see Denise. Denise created a bus that was revamped into this mobile shower. And she actually goes and gives free showers to the homeless on every Friday morning and Sunday morning. She is able to do it for 2 days because one, she did her first campaign, raised $58,000 for her first bus. Then she realized there was a demand. Everyone in the city was like, you need to make another one of these buses. So she ran a second campaign. She raised $75,000. Now she's got 2. It's really cool to see. Everybody recognizes the bus cruising around the city, and her campaign made that happen. I mentioned Solar Roadways. I won't get too much into this, but this is a clear example of how people were putting a stake in the ground to a movement that they wanted to see happen in the future, right? They understood they're not getting a solar panel to put on their driveway tomorrow, right? But they did get that this was going to R&D, That this couple out of Idaho were legit engineers. They needed to hire a few more. They wanted to test the actual panels in a hot climate in Arizona rather than in a cold climate in Idaho. And in turn, they ended up getting an innovation award from President Obama. He mentioned it during his State of the Union. And they've definitely moved forward with R&D. It's being piloted in the Netherlands from another engineer as well. So So it's just really amazing to see that kind of mass movement behind something. And then Bombas Socks. These guys, they created these socks that apparently you don't sweat in them. It's kind of amazing. They wanted to be able to partner with a nonprofit. They also went onto Shark Tank and received VC funding. And now they have this— I think their names are St. Hannah Socks. Socks that have built out a one-to-one model. So every pair of socks that's bought, a pair is donated. And then forever and always, this is how their relationship and their revenue continues to build. Kuli Kuli. This gal, Lisa, she's great. She came back from the Peace Corps in Ghana, and she wanted to create economic livelihood jobs for the farmers there. Moringa is an amazing, amazing root. That apparently is super healthy for you, and she created these bars that are now in Whole Foods. It's pretty amazing. She could test her pricing for each bar and each bar bundle through her campaign because of perks. So on Indiegogo, you can add perks. You can take away perks that aren't selling well. You can start with early bird special pricing. You can add prices that are higher later on, and you use that data to make sound business decisions. So when Whole Foods came to her, she could say, yeah, I want to sell my pack of 10 at this price because this many people contributed there. I want to sell a pack of 1 at this price, and so on and so forth.
