Crowd funding gains popularity in the Czech Republic

Have you written a book, and can’t find a publisher? Did you invent a gadget that everyone would surely like, but you’re having problems finding an investor in today’s crisis-stricken economy? Many artists, writers, inventors or just people with good ideas all around the world are discovering a new way to finance their start-up projects –it’s called crowd funding. Essentially, crowd funding is nothing more than asking people who know you and possibly people who they know to invest in your idea by using the most modern online tools and social networks.

Photo: archive of CRo 7 - Radio Prague

A slew of websites have been created in the past couple of years that help streamline and popularize crowdfunding. By providing the basic layout and a simple way of uploading the promotional video and other materials, these websites simplify the process of creating the initial pitch and expose the project to a wider audience for a relatively low percentage of the profits. You set the amount of money you need and the time in which you want to get it, the rest of it is up to how well you let the world know about your project, and, of course, how much the world likes it.

In addition to giving a new, and often yet unrealized, project potential financing, crowd funding websites give the projects’ creators the possibility to test out their ideas, and sometimes to pre-sell their final product.

One of the best-known crowd funding sites is the US-based Kickstarter, which was launched in 2009. A number of others followed suit in a number of countries. This trend also seems to have caught on in the Czech Republic.