While discussing the stock market over dinner recently, John Mackey, the Founder and CEO of Whole Foods said unequivocally: "I wish crowdfunding had been around when I started Whole Foods." (full article here)

As I have not been living (sadly) on a desert island for the past few years, I have heard and read many stories about crowdfunding, but what is it in actual facts and could it be something worth trying for the many future entrepreneurs out there? Could it work for a small start up? An online shop? How do I go about it?

The clinical definition given by Wikipedia is the following:

`Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people, typically via the internet. One early-stage equity expert described it as “the practice of raising funds from two or more people over the internet towards a common Service, Project, Product, Investment, Cause, and Experience, or SPPICE.”

The crowdfunding model is fueled by three types of actors: the project initiator who proposes the idea and/or project to be funded; individuals or groups who support the idea; and a moderating organization (the "platform") that brings the parties together to launch the idea. In 2013, the crowdfunding industry grew to be over $5.1 billion worldwide.`

So in other words, anyone with an interesting idea and a good business plan could raise funds via one of the many online platforms. There are dozens of crowdfunding websites that have been popping up recently so it takes a little bit of research to understand which are the real communities that have funding successes under their belt.

ChanceBarnett, CEO of Crowdfunder, shares his advice:

There are 2 main models or types of crowdfunding. The first is what’s called donation-based funding. The birth of crowdfunding has come through this model, where funders donate via a collaborative goal based process in return for products, perks or rewards.

The second and more recent model is investment crowdfunding, where businesses seeking capital sell ownership stakes online in the form of equity or debt. In this model, individuals who fund become owners or shareholders and have a potential for financial return, unlike in the donation model.

Crowdfunding sites to choose from

Below is a list of crowdfunding sites that have different models and focuses. This list can help you find the right place for your crowdfunding goals and needs.

1. Kickstarter
Kickstarter is a site where creative projects raise donation-based funding. These projects can range from new creative products, like an art installation, to a cool watch, to pre-selling a music album. It’s not for businesses, causes, charities, or personal financing needs. Kickstarter is one of the earlier platforms, and has experienced strong growth and many break-out large campaigns in the last few years.

2. Indiegogo
While Kickstarter maintains a tighter focus and curates the creative projects approved on its site, Indiegogo approves donation-based fundraising campaigns for most anything — music, hobbyists, personal finance needs, charities and whatever else you could think of (except investment).

3. Crowdfunder
Crowdfunder.com is the platform for raising investment (not rewards), and has a one of the largest and fastest growing network of investors. It was recently featured on Fox News as the new breed of crowdfunding due to the story about a $2 Billion exit of a crowdfunded company.

4. RocketHub
Rockethub powers donation-based funding for a wide variety of creative projects.

What’s unique about RocketHub is their FuelPad and LaunchPad programs that help campaign owners and potential promotion and marketing partners connect and collaborate for the success of a campaign.

5. Crowdrise
Crowdrise is a place for donation-based funding for Causes and Charity. They’ve attracted a community of do-gooders and and fund all kinds of inspiring causes and needs.

A unique Points System on Crowdrise helps track and reveal how much charitable impact members and organizations are making.

6. Tilt
Tilt (formerly CrowdTilt) is the rewards-based crowdfunding solution for groups and communities to pool their dollars and raise money together. As the company explains, a key differentiator of Tilt is the leaned-down or ”simplified” experience relative to other rewards-based platforms. The average campaign size on Tilt was $1,650 as of July 2014 – smaller than that of other rewards-based platforms.

7. appbackr
If you want to build the next new mobile app and are seeking donation-based funding to get things off the ground or growing, then check out appbackr and their niche community for mobile app development.

8. AngelList
If you’re a tech startup with a shiny lead investor already signed on, or looking for Silicon Valley momentum, then there are angels and institutions finding investments through AngelList.

9. Invested.in
You might want to create your own crowdfunding community to support donation-based fundraising for a specific group or niche in the market.

10. Quirky
If you’re an inventor, maker, or tinkerer of some kind then Quirky is a place to collaborate and crowdfund for donation-based funding with a community of other like-minded folks.

These 10 crowdfunding sites cover most campaign types or funding goals you might have. Whether you’re looking to fundraise or not, go check out the sites here that grab your attention and get involved in this collaborative community.

(source: forbes.com)

For more names and the latest updated list of communities, take a look at: crowdfunding.com

`Sibylle Stoeckli, a young industrial designer from Lausanne, successfully financed her Global Design Research field project thanks to wemakeit.ch. Her target of CHF10,000 was reached within 30 days and she is currently on a mission to compare the criteria of design sustainability from five continents.

“I would never have been able to finance this project otherwise,” she told swissinfo.ch in a phone call from Asia where she is completing the first leg of her research.`

Learn the full article and more about crowdfunding in Switzerland, `Swiss join the crowdfunding craze`

More success stories? `10 Crowdfunding success stories to love`

So is your business plan ready yet?

The title of this post might be misleading. I am not inviting you to get rid of all the unnecessary items that clutter our lives (although that might require some attention too...) rather, I am often looking for ways to simplify and make our days more efficient (endless to do lists I have you in mind as I write this!) and I'd like to share some latest tips I have come across.

Have you already happend to hear of the `The 4 hour week` one of the New York Times best sellers? If you haven`t, I suggest to start by checking out its blog.

I found it an interesting read and while of course not everyone will be lucky enough to make millions while reducing their 40 plus hour week into a 4 hour week, there are certainly some good tips and useful suggestions in here that we could consider.

For example, how many hours a month do we spend to de-clutter our desks, at home and at work? We will talk about the physical clutter in a separate post, but what about all those emails, reservations, bills, planning that needs to be dealt with? For private home administration or for those of you who are their own boss, how much could we do with the help of an assistant?

What about trying to`outsource life` and use that extra bit of time in our hands for anything more pleasurable than dealing with paperwork and admin?

The good news is, there is a lot of help at hand for a lot less than you might think. The not so good news is, where do I start from? The positive experience of the author was not enough for me so I did a little bit of digging around, asked for feedback on some of these companies that offer online assistants and the likes, and finally contacted a few and chose one.

`Brickwork` was my choice and can I say so far I can only agree with the positive feedback shared here.

What did I choose to outsource? I made a list of tasks that fill my to do lists, split them in two, those that it would be a lot more of a hassle to outsource, and those that, after a proper introduction via a Skype call and detailed instructions via mail, could be monthly outsourced. Research for a few personal projects, holidays, updating files, sorting pictures, recurrent updating of websites, etc.

Another name on my list is Guru, freeing up some time is appealing enough to give these companies a try!