Andy Field: [00:00:00]Hello, everybody. I’m Andy Field. It’s great to be back hosting the crowdfunding Chronicles, the podcast series from GECA. I was recently attending CrowdCon in Brussels. This was a really interesting event for the industry. It was jointly hosted this year by EuroCrowd and Fintics. But while I was there, I couldn’t help to be impressed by the knowledge and enthusiasm of our special guest today.

He was speaking and he was presenting at the event, and he was talking to a whole room of equity crowdfunding stakeholders, And he had the audience totally captivated by what he had to say. And I kind of knew straight away that it would be great for him to come along and speak to our community here at GECA.

So I’m delighted to welcome Claudio Grimoldi. I hope I’ve pronounced that correctly, Claudio, from Turbocrowd.

Claudio Grimoldi:That’s perfect. Thank you very much. Yeah, better than the average Italian one, eh? Better than the average Italian one.

Andy Field:So Claudio is based in Milan in Italy. Um, Turbocrowd are a specialist marketing company. focusing on helping startups and crowdfunding platforms with their their overall [00:01:00] marketing strategies. And what we’re going to do today is we’re hopefully going to provide some, some insights and practical advice on how businesses can use their marketing tactics to succeed in the equity crowdfunding space.

So we’re going to touch on how a startup business can effectively prepare for an equity crowdfunding campaign. And how crowdfunding platforms can start to understand a little bit about how to market themselves so that they can attract the really high quality startups that they love to have on their platform.

So effectively offering some tips on how both startups and platforms can position themselves for long term success in what is, let’s be honest, a never increasingly competitive crowdfunding landscape. So welcome again, Claudio, and thanks for joining me today. I just wanted to start off by asking you to tell us a little bit about you, your background. How you came to start TurboCrowd.

Claudio Grimoldi:Andy, thank you very much. I will try to follow your hype, the hype you created before. And so trying to do my best. So I came here and it was like a roller coaster, I [00:02:00] would say, because, uh, I had, um, physical education degree. And before it, every time I’m, uh, I starting with a new work every time from scratch, never had a single day as an employee somewhere else.

So I was, a ticket seller, an, event promoter starting as a kid that was 18 years old, more or less. And then I was organizing, transports for, uh, the biggest, uh, international events and festivals in Europe. And, uh, a lot of people from Italy were coming from. So I starting the company, uh, which was, uh, ticketing one.

And at the moment we need, it was 2018. Uh, I was 21 or 22 at the moment when I started. And then some, some years later, We were like, okay, we need to boost it. So we need to raise money and how we can do it. And then, um, I saw completely randomly something about equity crowdfunding. And that was like, yeah, maybe crowdfunding at the beginning.

Sorry, because we saw about the reward. And then another guy told us, uh, you can run an equity crowdfunding, uh, instead of a reward [00:03:00] one, because, uh, you, you guys are offering a service and reward crowdfunding is more for, uh, products. Uh, so you, you need to think about equity. So I started to contact every platform in Italy and it was, uh, middle, , 2018.

And then we started it and we raised the 250, 000 euros. Uh, and I did it by myself and everyone was like, wow, that’s impressive. Because at the moment, Uh, like no one was raising, uh, lots of money, just, uh, just one startup, which was a startup Italia, which raises something like 1 million, but nothing more.

And they, everyone was like, how was it possible before starting an equity crowdfunding campaign? My only work was, uh, uh, uh, calling other people who already run one and asking her what was working and what wasn’t. And, uh, I learned something from it. And I was like, Hey guys, I’m from the marketing side [00:04:00] for events.

I was talking about before, um, and we, I recreated the same idea because if you think about it, crowdfunding, it’s a sort of event because, uh, it, it, it lasts, uh, two months for less and, uh, an event, uh, as a predeterminate, uh, duration. And then, uh, the, the event can host, uh, uh, a maximum of, um, attendees. And in the crowdfunding, you can see the same because it’s not about 18 days.

It’s about the capital you can raise, but it’s the same idea. So it’s something it’s limited by the offer and the time. And if you use the same ideas, you can recreate the same leverages. You can use it even in the events for marketing. And, uh, we started like this. And I was like, it’s pretty simple because it’s called crowdfunding.

So without the crowd, you cannot get any type of funding. So I was not waiting for any type of help from the crowdfunding platform. And I was pushing so much, [00:05:00] even without the crowdfunding platform. And I was the only one. I remember, I clearly remember when, uh, in that period we had some, you know, the startups, uh, competitions, startups, events, uh, something like that.

And lots of them were running, uh, equity crowdfunding, uh, operation, but I was the only one keep pushing and selling stuff. I was, I remember I was. I came from the streets for real. So for me, it was, I was like, if you don’t sell, you cannot eat. So it’s very easy for me. It’s a average day at work, but for others, they were like more into the fashionable stuff, startups, something like, I need my money because my startup will be the best one on a standard and poor 500, something like, and I was like, no, no, no guys.

That’s, that’s not the topic. We did it. And then after, after it, the, uh, crowdfunding platform told me, I think you have the skills, uh, to help others in order to raise money, uh, as you already did. So we started Turbo crowd. I started Turbo Crown in 2019. [00:06:00] So like I, I will not say one year later, some months later.

And it was a smart and clever idea because after we had a problem with the ticketing project, so we closed it. But then I will, I was already in with the crowdfunding, um, marketing. And we started from the equity because just to share with you in the South of Europe, we are more into equity crowdfunding, uh, compared to the North.

Where people are more into the lending crowdfunding and the UK, it’s completely another level when I say about the north, I’m talking about Finland, uh, uh, Oh, um, Netherland, uh, in the looks, the minor looks in general and something like, and, uh, right now we already followed something like 70, uh, campaigns.

Uh, who raised more than 50 million by equity crowdfunding. And I think we are the only one doing this with this track record. And, uh, also I’m very glad and happy to share with you that our success rate is 96 percent [00:07:00] just because equity crowdfunding is not the And do you think, uh, any, any different between just a process?

I would say it’s just a process. And if you can handle the process, you can get money. It’s something, uh, uh, which demand, um, it’s super demanding for you. But you can get a very big results if you put a lot of, a very good execution on it.

Andy Field:And really interesting, uh, actually how you make the analogy between the crowdfunding campaign and, um, an event, you know, and I, and I find myself, um, I have a marketing background too.

And I found a lot of the, the skills and strategies are very transferable between industries. There’s a lot of alignment between different industries and the tactics you employ. And, and that’s a really interesting one. I hadn’t thought of that before. So yeah, thank you for that. So, so that’s, that’s brilliant.

So in a nutshell, What, what does your business do? I mean, you’re a marketing company, right? I get that. But how, how do you position yourself as, as a specialist that helps startups prepare for, for crowdfunding? [00:08:00] Do you use a storytelling yourself? Do you explain your background and, and how you did it yourself, actually?

And, and, Yeah. How does that work?

Claudio Grimoldi:Yeah. At the beginning it was like this because they were like, uh, how can I raise money? And I was like, yeah, I already did it. So you can trust me. But right now they don’t care. And I’m not talking about this. It’s not about any, anything about storytelling. It’s just about the track record.

Because equity crowdfunding is, uh, especially it’s very, it’s something super impacting for your company just because you need to share your company with someone else. So you need to raise money. Every time I’m saying, You will be naked in the middle of the square because everyone can see what you’re raising, how much your data, everything.

Um, and it’s pretty difficult for someone else. So they need to trust you, uh, so much and more than furthermore, um, it’s very important to underline how usually when people are thinking about crowdfunding, they are going directly to, uh, obviously to a crowdfunding platform. Because they were like, I need to do a, uh, to raise a money with [00:09:00] crowdfunding.

So we contact the crowdfunding platform. So in order to get people before they went to a crowdfunding platform, we need to be very skilled and very, and very, um, well organized, uh, to convince them, uh, how can marketing can help them. So for us, it’s just about, uh, showing the track record. Still improving it and furthermore, um, giving for free a lot of advices.

Because every time I’m saying, well, just starting from the first meeting, I will never talk about TurboCrowd. At the end, if you want, I will send you the offer. Yeah, because it’s just but I don’t want to talk about this every time, because you need to understand how crowdfunding works. And when you start understanding how it works, you can see the pattern and the process.

And then you will understand by yourself that you can use [00:10:00] turbo crowd or not, but if it doesn’t start like this, just giving a lot of advices. And also you can see our website, it’s full of material free one.

And, uh, you can, we have almost 200 articles about crowdfunding. Uh, we have the 20 percent of our total. Our traffic from, uh, USA, because we already starting because we started one year ago, directly writing in English. And then we are translating everything in French, German, Dutch, and Spanish, uh, because we are promoting a lot of information on how to do it correctly and how you can raise money for your company.

So it’s just about this. And people will trust you because they were like, okay, I found, I already found, uh, Very good advices and good information from what you told me before. So we can come back to you when we decide to do it. And this is how we get clients.

Andy Field:Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. And so, so a key focus of what you do then is obviously preparing the, the, the startup business for their crowdfunding venture with a crowdfunding platform.

And that [00:11:00] obviously a key part of that is to grow their own crowd. I mean, obviously, um, most crowdfunding platforms will require a business to have their own crowd before they even enter the process of, of listing on their platform. So an integral part. So yeah, that, that’s great. That, that all makes sense.

Um, so do you get involved in helping crowdfunding platforms attract startups as well?

Claudio Grimoldi:At the beginning, some, uh, a couple of, uh, pla crowdfunding platforms asked me about, uh, following their own marketing, but it was not working at all because we are more good into doing crowdfunding operation. So it’s something you can start and something you can close.

But, uh, the crowdfunding platform itself. Can ask for something very specific because we are more tech guys, uh, doing a CRM, marketing automation, data analysis, everything like this. So sometimes they are just asking for something, something in particular, but they created their own marketing team. So just when they started, they are like, can you help [00:12:00] me doing something or better than this, another indirect way, um, to do it, it’s, uh, providing us potential clients as a startups or companies and following them directly.

Because if they. Company at the start of the entrepreneur is doing a very good marketing. The platform itself is getting a lot of good traffic and potential investors. So they are like, I cannot pay, I can just focus on getting the best clients and best companies for raising money in order to get the best potential investors provided by the other company itself, who is already raising.

Uh, here and I want, I want also to underline what you were saying before you’re saying, uh, yeah, cloud funding platforms are looking for someone who already has a crowd or something like, and it’s super important. Remember the, uh, the, the business for a crowdfunding platforms, it’s raising money. It’s not about the launching campaigns.

That’s super important. So if you go to a crowdfunding platform and saying, okay, this is my pitch, this is my boring business plan. This is my boring business. This is everything like this. And what about crowdfunding? [00:13:00] They will reject you 100, not 100, but 90 percent of times. That’s because maybe you just need to prove something about your business and you can execute it in the best way.

But if you came to there saying, okay, I have something like, I’m just sharing with you an example, 50k pre committed, the pre commitment is someone else who already pledged money for your crowdfunding campaign, they will accept you. They are not looking for any type of, they are not looking so much into pre money valuation, something like, because the, the point is not about your, uh, financial stuff.

And so with equity, you’re not finding everyone. It’s misleading. These it’s incredible. Uh, they are someone who is preparing the best pitch or the best business business plan. As you can see, it’s not raising any money. Someone else who is doing it on Excel with a, with a, just a, just a single sheet, you can see, you can see is going to raise a lot of, a lot of million with it.

And trust me, every time I can see it, I can see the pattern.

Andy Field: [00:14:00]Great. Yeah. And I’m sure that happens quite a lot with our, um, I mean, we’ve got several, uh, platforms who are members of GECA or supporters of GECA. And I know from speaking to them that they will, they will reject many applications because there is simply no marketing and no crowd.

Yeah. So in that instance, is that, is that a scenario where, um, platforms could go to you or another specialist marketing company and sort of say, look, these guys have got what looks like a great, a great business. The potential is there, but they need some help in getting ready for, for launching on a crowdfunding platform.

Do you, do you get clients in that way as in almost referrals almost from, from crowdfunding platforms?

Claudio Grimoldi:Yeah, it’s always about this. It’s, uh, I would say 50, 50. So 50 percent are coming from our marketing and 50 percent as a referrals, uh, directly from a business advisors, financial advisors, platform itself, and something like, and, uh, we were, sometimes they are, uh, uh, speaking about us like the pre crowd [00:15:00] guys, because it’s always about doing the marketing before the campaign starts.

That’s the, that’s the real point. That’s the real point. Every time for, uh, For explaining it and the best I’m saying, because you’re from UK. Okay. And what, what, uh, what, what, um, football team do you support?

Andy Field:Oh, you don’t want to know that, but I’ll tell you, uh, Leicester City.

Claudio Grimoldi:Oh, Leicester. Yeah. Come on. Uh, we know Claudio Ranieri. Someone like, okay. So, uh, think about, um, Leicester. Uh, before going every Sunday, uh, play to play somewhere else, it’s, uh, doing a lot of trainings and that, that people are already, uh, doing a lot of trainings even before that weekend, because the, the, the week, because they are training for years and they are the best doing this and why someone is, wants to do a crowdfunding operation without doing the trainings.

So, and the training for crowdfunding is pre crowd. If you’re skipping the pre crowd is the worst mistake you can ever [00:16:00] do. Don’t skip it. And it’s very simple how to manage it. You need to raise the 90 percent of the minimum goal you set with the equity crowdfunding operation, nothing more. And you got them just using pledges.

So you’re, you’re getting out saying, okay, guys, I will, I will have this business or I already have this type of business. I’m running it and I want to improve it. And when I want to grow and something like want to be my shareholders in this case, and if you want to do it, you can pledge your money here.

And then, then I will share with you how you can, you can doing it a very smart and, um, efficient way. If you want to do it, uh, just let me know how many heroes you want to pledge or something like 100, 500, 1k, whatever you want. The sum of the every from, from, from every pledges must do the 90 percent of the minimum goal.

Then you can start doing campaign.

Andy Field:Yeah.

Claudio Grimoldi:You raise money and then you will come back. That’s the reason why we have the 96 percent of times succeeding that if someone is [00:17:00] complaining about the experience, the crowdfunding experience, it’s not about not getting the point. It’s about, it was too expensive or, and, or it was too slow.

So they thought about it was a cheaper and maybe faster, but it’s about your business and how you, what type of, um, Has assets you already build, uh, what type of, uh, people are you already committed to your businesses? It’s nothing, it’s not related just with the crowdfunding. It’s, it’s with your business because doing marketing means going to the market and you will see what, uh, what type of feed, the feedback the market will give you.

Andy Field:Yeah, that makes sense. Preparation is what you’re saying is, is absolutely key and cannot

Claudio Grimoldi:be missed. 99%.

Andy Field:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Claudio Grimoldi:99%.

Andy Field:So, something else that just springs to mind, our mission at GECA is to ultimately make equity crowdfunding borderless. You know, there’s lots of, there’s lots of things that are, um, that are going to need to be addressed to make that happen.

Um, but we’re, we’re starting to do that by building our community and, and asking people to essentially say that they, they agree to that, um, to that mission. So with that in [00:18:00] mind, how. Are you able to work with businesses? I mean, obviously you’re based in Italy, but I’m assuming you work with businesses outside of Italy and perhaps platforms outside of Italy as well.

Is that correct? Am I right in making that assumption?

Claudio Grimoldi:Yeah, yeah, I’m, I’m fighting against it because usually, um, people from every time I’m saying people from Germany, uh, France, Spain, and Italy as well are too much tied up with their own countries because we have big countries in Italy, uh, 62 million people living here.

And so, And I saw how people from, for example, the Netherlands or maybe someone from Ireland, for example, people from Luxembourg, people from little countries, for them, it’s clearly they need to start cross borders. So even for us, we have a problem more. You can hear my English, it’s stuck. Still something it’s very bad.

And for the Italians, every time it’s a nightmare going outside. And I was in, uh, in the [00:19:00] Netherlands, uh, started since, um, yesterday and three weeks before we, we met in, uh, Brussels in Belgium. So, yeah, we started to do it, uh, even outside of Europe. It’s just about business. Because for us, we don’t have to follow any type of compliance.

That’s super important. When I was, uh, speaking about crowdfunding, even, even, uh, equity crowdfunding before ACS PR. So the, the new regulation, uh, we have in Europe, I was like, I don’t care about compliance because it’s just about crowdfunding, about how to do it in the best way, but we don’t have to follow it.

The company has, so we don’t have any type of, uh, limit about our going, um, cross border. So it’s very important right now with the same, uh, regulation, it’s very easy, easy. Just you need to get in the trust by other companies, but it’s something you need to do. Likewise, it’s very important to underline how it’s forbidden.

So it’s illegal for the platforms to promote [00:20:00] a single crowdfunding operation. It’s very important to underline this one, because it’s a very, it’s a, it’s a gold asset for us, because the ESMA, uh, the regulator in Europe, say, says you cannot promote. a single campaign until they are going to close something like in the, in the, in the, in the last week.

Andy Field:Yeah.

Claudio Grimoldi:But before it, you need to promote everyone in the same way. So they cannot sell any type of promote and any type of marketing. They can promote everyone in a very big way, but they cannot promote someone in particular. And it’s very important. And they cannot sell anything like this. And it’s very important because they need to ask to someone else like turbo crowd, for example.

Andy Field:That’s very interesting. And that’s part of the European regulation, the one that’s been established since 2021, I believe.

Claudio Grimoldi:The European, no, no, no. In 2023. In the 10th of November, they started, they started in the 2021. It depends on which country. Uh, starting to, giving out to give out the license. I think the, the first one was in, I, [00:21:00] I can, I can check it out in the meanwhile.

Uh, uh, because you can see it’s, uh, on, uh, asthma, uh, registers do asthma au. Uh, you can see European crowdfunding service provider and the first one who had a, um, legal entity and authorization. Okay. 2021 Lit one. Yeah. The first one was, uh, in lit one. Yeah. The second one was in 2022 was Crowdcube in Spain, but we, we came in, in Italy, for example, was, uh.

It was a pain for real, because, uh, at, at the last day, we were not having sound, uh, anyone, uh, uh, had any type of, uh, license. So no one can, was not able to work.

Andy Field:Yeah.

Claudio Grimoldi:Uh, it was a very, very big problem. So we stopped for something like one month and then we’re starting again. But yeah. Yeah, someone already started.

Yeah, yeah, right now it’s it’s already done. It’s already about last year was a nightmare for everyone.

Andy Field:Yeah, right. Okay. Um, we

Claudio Grimoldi:don’t have any, we don’t, [00:22:00] we don’t need to get it. But you know, if someone else is not getting the license, we cannot work so much. That’s it. You’re working with people who must have the license.

Andy Field:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy Field:Now that makes sense. Brilliant. Okay. So, um, So are there any trends or commonalities that you see on a typical basis without going into sort of specifics, but but just generally when you’re working with startups, anything that the platforms and we’ve got, we’ve got plenty of platforms that that support Gekko will be listening to this, that they should be aware of when they’re working with their clients that comes up time after time after time.

Is there anything that you could maybe pinpoint there?

Claudio Grimoldi:But from the sorry, I don’t get from the startup or company perspective or from the platform one.

Andy Field:So any commonalities and trends that are happening with startups that are very common, that may be mistakes that they’re making, or maybe things that they’re missing?

Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That kind of thing. Yeah, that platform should do well.

Claudio Grimoldi:Yeah, sure. Um, usually platform don’t have to be in a rush for raising money. [00:23:00] Uh, because, or they already get a very good, very good clients. I’m sorry for promoting it indirectly, but for example, Crowdcube, people are talking about, uh, Versailles Collective, but Versailles Collective is already a unicorn.

It’s a very big brand, very famous one and so on. So it clearly can raise money like everywhere because it’s, uh, It’s already an established business, like Revolut when he did it on Cedars was the same. Because Revolut Come on guys. It’s revolution. Uh, it’s like BrewDog at the end. BrewDog was BrewDog. I, this, it’s very simple for the crowdfunding platforms, but, but from the, uh, companies, the biggest problem, it’s thinking about crowdfunding as a standalone operation.

That’s, that’s every time I, and getting angry about this, it’s not about. It’s not about a standalone operation. It’s a part of your marketing investments, because thinking about if you’re, uh, if your business is already running, you can easily, uh, raise money, [00:24:00] maybe you need to think about something bigger, uh, in order to get more money thinking about like, um, uh, a restaurant who want to open a chains.

A chain of restaurants, uh, you need to do something bigger, but you already have people coming there. Maybe it’s a, it’s the best restaurant in the city and you can, you can use it even in others, but you need to think about, okay, I’m already doing it and I need to improve my own marketing. But if you didn’t start with about this, also, you need to, you need to start from the marketing side because otherwise you’re not going to raise any type of money.

But sometimes people are just, um. Showing off, uh, business plans and something like, and 99 percent of times startups are failing and they are dying. So why? People need to trust you because you’re not, others, others, it’s not about you, but others already, uh, did it very, very bad. So you need to think about something else.

And starting from the marketing side means, uh, having, can handling, having the possibility [00:25:00] to handle, uh, investments and potential clients and investors and so on. And just to auto, uh, uh, assist myself, I want to share with you that the best investor as you can get, it’s your client or potential one that’s super important.

Uh, I don’t know how out of Italy, but I know Italy very well as a, every type of assets here. It’s impressive. Uh, if you look at the Politecnico di Milano. It’s the best university in Italy, probably. And they are doing a report each year and you can see how much the investments are, uh, splitted by one, a single investor, a two time investor, three time investor, and so on till, uh, 10 times or more investor.

Um, the, it’s several investors are the 1. 18 percent of the world population who already done an investment. The 75 percent is, is a one time investor. And the 15 percent it’s a two time investors. So it means the 90 percent of the market it’s [00:26:00] already done. It means technically, if you go on a crowdfunding and more or less, it’s the same in, in the Europe, but these are, these are the number in it, numbers in Italy.

So it means if you’re starting with a crowdfunding operation, you need to think about, okay, technically the 90 percent of investors will came from me. And then we will understand how to interact with the company, with the platform. So from the platform perspective, uh, it means, uh, get someone who is already skilled with marketing or someone who wants to be committed in marketing and we will prove it before the campaign starts from the company perspective.

It means, uh, um, Proof you have a track record with your clients and so on. It means having also digital assets like something like I will send out a lot of marketing, uh, marketing stuff. I will promote myself with the articles. I already did paid advertising. I have a clean and CRM and processes with marketing, with sales and something like, and you will see it will go, it will work very well.

Andy Field: And I guess they’re the things, one of the questions I was going to ask you [00:27:00] actually was, is there anything that startup businesses can do to help themselves before they even engage working with a specialist marketing company like you? And I suppose you’ve just outlined some of the things there that actually they should be doing anyway, the specialist marketing person, you know, the CRM, managing a good CRM, um, that kind of thing.

Is there anything that, that maybe platforms can do to help them in, in, in that sense, or is that, or is kind of the advice then is to say, well, actually you probably do need specialist marketing support and working with a, with a firm like yours.

Claudio Grimoldi:I will, I will be stick with my own idea about, uh, speaking with TurboCrowd means, uh, getting a lot of good advice is more or less, and we will try to, not about how we can do our stuff.

So yeah, I will show you, uh, usually every time I’m speaking about four. biggest mistake, big, big mistakes people are doing when they raise money. So the first one about equity crowdfunding is thinking about the crowdfunding platform will provide you investors.

Andy Field:Yeah.

Claudio Grimoldi:That’s not the point. The crowdfunding platform is a, it’s a platform.

It’s [00:28:00] a software, um, um, able to monetize people. Yep. And it’s, uh, already, um, uh, our, how can we say it’s following the, the, the, the local law we, for you in, uh, in uk in, in Europe, it means they have a license, uh, in order to work in something like, and, uh, why you think about crowdfund, uh, crowdfunding platforms will provide you a lot of investors, uh, compared to YouTube.

Because if you record this video and we will put it is on YouTube, we are not expecting to be millionaire tomorrow, but YouTube beats, come on, it’s YouTube. And with a billion of people, uh, visiting it each year. And there is no, any type of crowdfunding platform who can even think about something like the 1 percent of YouTube, but people are still thinking about, yeah, I will, I will list my crowdfunding operation.

Then they will provide me investors. Why this is not happening. This is not happening. That’s the, that’s one of the biggest mistake. The first one, the second one. [00:29:00] Um, it’s about the thinking about these as a financial operation instead of a marketing one. Remember there is a reason why crowdfunding it’s called crowd breathe.

Again, a lot of and then funding without the crowd, you can, you cannot get any type of funding. So you need to get the crowd in order to get the funding. If you don’t want to do marketing, there is a, there are other ways to raise money. Crowdfunding means marketing. If you don’t want to do marketing, you can go to banks, you can go to VCs, you can do national grants.

There are plenty of other solutions in order to do it, but don’t do crowdfunding without it. That’s super important. Just to be clear and do something more. If you’re running a lending crowdfunding or real estate crowdfunding operation, because of real estate and because in Italy, in Italy, sorry, in Europe, equity and lending are still the same regulation.

And also real estate could be lending or equity as well. Um, It’s, it’s a bit different [00:30:00] because the platform will provide you, uh, the investors, but you need to work with the, uh, um, marketing in order to get, uh, get addressed by that or get accepted by the, the best platforms you’re, uh, you’re doing. But when you’re, when you’re starting a campaign, you’re already doing it.

It’s, it’s a bit different in this case, just for real estate and lending crowdfunding. Yeah. So third, the third error, which is the biggest one, it’s skipping the pre crowd phase where this, uh, spoke about this. So getting the 90 percent is the minimum goal. Yeah. It’s, it’s about pledging. And then there is the biggest, uh, the biggest question, how I can get pledges.

Uh, because if you think about this, uh, Andy will start the pre crowd phase and then we’ll ask Claudio. Hello, Claudio. Yeah. You want to put you, uh, do you want to pledge money for my crowdfunding operation? Um, And I will turn off the phone, probably I will close it. And it was like, yeah, but why? And I will start again.

And it wasn’t working again, again, again. And [00:31:00] people are like, when you will start the campaign, I will decide if I’m well invested or not. Okay. How to do it? How to do it? This is the second biggest mistake. And I want to, I want to be super clear about this. People are investing only because of your rewards.

If you think about, uh, running a equity crowdfunding operation, just giving out shares, you are probably, I would say just crazy. Yeah. Nothing more because everyone is giving out shares.

Andy Field:Yeah.

Claudio Grimoldi:Crowd equity crowdfunding means smart money. It’s not just about raising money. It’s about smart money. So people can provide something more than money.

And what, which one is the best investors as we already did before? Uh, we spoke before it’s the client or the potential one, and how we can interact with the client or potential one. Let’s. Uh, talk about someone who is doing helmets for, uh, you know, the [00:32:00] motorbikes and something like, my grandmother, we will, we will, we’ll be not interested in any type of helmets because she doesn’t have any type of motorbikes, obviously, but someone who is already, uh, in, Could be very interested in buying shares of someone else who is giving out something like the 10 percent lifetime discount of the helmets and a limited edition of their helmet based on how many they are investing, something like.

So every time we are creating the metric scheme for the rewards. Uh, so you need to mix the, Uh, product or service, uh, reward, the experience one and the financial one. When you sum everything like this, you will start promoting them, promoting them with a, uh, pre crowd phase. And you will say, Hey, Andy, we’ll say, uh, Claudio, uh, we’ll say to Claudio, Claudio, don’t turn off the phone, please.

One moment. Just one moment. Uh, if you pledge money, I will give you, when will you, when you will invest later, I will give you a better reward. Okay. Okay. That’s going to be a strategy. So you can get easy. You can get easily, uh, [00:33:00] rewards, uh, sorry. You can get easily, uh, pledges before using rewards and then you will increase the, uh, the speed of your pre crowd phase.

And then you will send to the campaign in very easy way, still using the, uh, the rewards and the metric scheme.

Andy Field:Yeah. Oh, yeah. That that’s really interesting. Really interesting way of looking at it. Thank you. Look, we’ve got about two minutes left. Um, yeah, I’m sure we can go on and talk about these. You’ve kindly agreed to come on and talk to us again in a bit more detail.

Some of the some of the other aspects of my best. Just to show you

Claudio Grimoldi:the last mantra.

Andy Field:Yes, I was just going to say that. The

Claudio Grimoldi:capital gain, yeah, the capital gain is potential, future, and taxed. So if someone else is giving you a capital gain, it will be in the future. Maybe they will give you out, and then you will pay taxes on it.

But the rewards are secure, are immediate, and they are, you don’t have to pay any type of taxes. So thinking about that, you will get, you will get [00:34:00] the 10 percent discount lifetime. It’s after the campaign, it’s secure, and you don’t have to be taxed on it. Just done.

Andy Field:Amazing. Thank you. That was a really, really interesting summary.

Um, and listen, I think those four things actually, which you’ve just ended with there, we could go into each of those in future episodes. It’s so interesting to discuss them. So thank you so much. Um, yeah, it’s been great. Like I said, we’ll go into things in a little bit more detail in future, future episodes.

Thanks everybody for listening today. Um, I’d like to thank everyone for listening, whether you’re streaming, whether you’re downloading, whatever, and We’ll be having more episodes, um, in the near future. We’re recording, uh, three episodes in the next few days, actually. So they’ll be coming out thick and fast.

So thanks everybody for listening to us. And thanks again, Claudio, for joining us today. Thank you.

Claudio Grimoldi:Thank you to us. Thanks everyone who listened to this podcast.

Andy Field:Thanks.