420FundMe.com Launches Equity Crowdfunding Site to Tap $100 Billion Marijuana, Weed & Cannabis Industry

Aimed at cannabis related ancillary companies, which are not directly involved in the actual growing or selling of cannabis, 420fundme focuses on individuals that are bringing unique new products to the industry

By Robert Hoskins

San Francisco, California – The IPAmediagroup announced the official launch date of www.420fundme.com, a highly anticipated crowdfunding platform to crowdfunding for cannabis, marijuana and weed related projects. The site launch is set for September 15^th and will enable individuals, groups and businesses to fund a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from individuals online.

420FundMe.com Launched a highly anticipated platform for crowdfunding cannabis, marijuana, and weed-related projects, startups and business expansion

Aimed at cannabis related ancillary companies, which are not directly involved in the actual growing or selling of cannabis, 420fundme focuses on individuals that are bringing unique new products to the industry. Working within a potential $100 billion industry, according to Economist.com, since August 1^st the site prelaunch has allowed registration for new projects to be listed on launch day.

“We have beat all expectations and are already seeing a large influx of highly exceptional new products that are simply going to change the industry,” Jon Greene, 420FundMe’s Chief Operating Officer confirms.  “From lighting, security, paraphernalia, and grow products to research, genetics, publications and even real estate services as well as a number of artists, websites, glassblowers, and even filmmakers we can already see we created a necessary platform that is going to be well used.”

Centered on making certain each and every campaign is a success, 420fundme has implemented a number of unique solutions that are not only new to the cannabis industry but also new to crowdfunding and alternative financing. This includes facilitating inline promotional abilities and applying third-party partnerships directly through the platform.

With uninterrupted connections from the project page any campaign has direct access to high quality third-party marketing, publicity, advertising, and media services as well as packaging and branding services and solutions.

“It is a seamless partnership that will enable every campaign to create success at the same time providing our partners and advertisers a huge new market,” Greene added.

Visit 420FundMe.com to pre-register your project and to find out more about how to utilize crowdfunding to raise money to launch your cannabis, marijuana or weed related business or how to sponsor a campaign, become a partner, and explore advertising opportunities.

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Crowdfunding Industry Rolls Out the Red Carpet to Hollywood and Indies with First Crowdfunding Film Festival in California

Crowdfunding Film Festival Set to Roll Out the Red Carpet to Hollywood and Independent Filmmakers to Promote Revolutionary New Public Equity Crowdfunding Finance Tool

By Robert Hoskins

The First Annual International CrowdFunding Film Festival will be held October 2-6, 2013 in San Francisco. The film fest will bring together artists, filmmakers, entertainment and video game creators to showcase their craft, network and  raise money through the new crowdfunding finance tool. The film festival has plans to collaborate with film schools in New York, London and Paris.

Crowdfunding Film Festival Set to Roll Out the Red Carpet to Hollywood and Independent Filmmakers to Promote Revolutionary New Public Equity Crowdfunding Finance Tool

Film students from universities all around the country are increasingly looking to crowdfunding to find backing for their projects. With over countless films successfully funded through crowdfunding portals such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, Hollywood is now paying close attention to all this movement.

Director/Writer Rob Thomas has raised over $5.7 million for his movie “Veronica Mars” while Zach Braff’s feature “Wish I Was Here” has raised $2.6 million in donations. San Francisco State Student Sterling Cook keen on exploring crowdfunding of finance for production projects.

“I see in these directors, writers, and cinematographers, the same core passion for innovation. They are not only artists but more importantly, entrepreneurs – they are seeking to touch the world and make a difference through their films. We know of their struggle to find financial backing and I believe crowdfunding will be the answer,” stated the ICFFF’s organizer Sydney Armani.

A film production involves collaboration between dozens of creative groups and getting all the individual pieces to fit together is similar to managing a business. Crowdfunding is changing the production landscape and the movie industry is currently experiencing a real game changer

Ted Hope, advocate of America’s Independent Cinema Movement and Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society, provides deeper insight into the current state of the film industry in his blog post “Why I Left New York for the San Francisco Film Festival.”

He said, “Our entertainment economy and the art it supports, was built upon the concepts of scarcity and control, but today’s reality is one of super-abundance and access – the exact opposite. To survive and flourish, today’s artists/entrepreneurs–and those who support them–must all embrace practices that extend beyond the core skills of development, production, and post-production of their art and reach beyond the attention and practice of marketing and distribution.” The meaning behind Hope’s words echoes the exact spirit and foundation that is the core of Silicon Valley’s passion for entrepreneurship and reflects the same spirit represented by the film festival.

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Zomblogalypse Turns to Indiegogo Crowdfunding to Finance Feature Length Film Pre-Production Costs

By Robert Hoskins

Launched as a piece of zero-budget, webcam-shot fun in 2008, the series is set in the months after a worldwide zombie apocalypse, applying a healthy dose of wry British humour to the adventures of three incompetent survivors more interested in video blogging than survival techniques.

Blogging and Brains and Beans: How 3 idiots survived a Zombie Apocalypse.

Over four years it picked up hundreds of thousands of views online and a dedicated fan base including genre legends like effects guru Tom Savini, Walking Dead comics artists Charlie Adlard, SFX Magazine and zombie film directors Marc Price (Colin) and Dominic Brunt (Before Dawn).

Original creators Hannah Bungard, Tony Hipwell and Miles Watts, fresh from micro budget features Crimefighters and Whoops! that were highlighted by reviewers at Empire, Time Out and Sight & Sound, have now teamed up with producer Steve Piper at British indie mainstay Coffee Films to reboot the series in a feature length format.

“It’s been a great few years and we feel very lucky to have been able to keep progressing making films which edge the budgets and production values up every time, but it’s difficult making the jump from micro-budget tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands an adaptation needed,” comments Watts.

Enter Coffee Films, who were awarded by the European film industry as one of the most exciting emerging fiction talents in the early 2000s before embarking on seven years of critically acclaimed documentary filmmaking, most recently the half-million-dollar Killing Joke documentary The Death and Resurrection Show out this year

“I got to know Miles through a mutual friend and liked a lot of the early experimental comedy shorts he was making,” explains Piper, “when Zomblogalypse came out it was obviously a perfect evolution, a coming together of creative kindred spirits to create a very funny and entertaining world.”

The four filmmakers began developing a feature length screenplay almost a year ago, investing in development time to avoid the back-to-back-episodes feel many series adaptations fall into.

Promising to keep everything fans of the much loved web series delivered, scaled up to a true long-form storyline, the concept has already picked up interest from distributors and turned to crowd-funding to bridge the gap from screenplay to production.

“People tend to think that once you have a script financing just lands in your lap, and that can be true for the big names,” explains Piper, “but for most filmmakers you need a whole package of budget calculations, actors, key technicians and concept artwork to get to the next stage. Crowd funding has emerged as a really great way to get through that process if you don’t have twenty or thirty grand sitting around.”

Bungard continues, “It’s exciting, and a little bit humbling, that people are trusting you to make something that they’ll want to buy and be part of nearly two years in advance. So many people have supported Zomblog over the last five years, whether it’s our friends getting turned into zombies or people on the other side of the world sharing the YouTube videos; we feel very lucky they’ve stuck by us and are supporting us again making a movie version.”

The Zomblogalypse crowd funding campaign runs through April looking to raise £10,000 to meet pre-production costs, and has already pulled 15% of that within a few days of launch. Check it out yourself to reserve a DVD or fulfill a dream to be a screen zombie at http://igg.me/at/zomblogalypse/x/1907888.

Crowdfunding Gathers Business Mentors, Financial Advisors and Investors in India

By Deepti Chaudhary

LiveMint – Crowdfunding, a practice that takes advantage of the collective effort of individuals who pool money mostly through the Internet to support start-ups, appears to be gathering momentum in India with at least four such initiatives being introduced in the past one year.

Crowdfunding platforms gather momentum in India

Referred to as crowdfunding platforms in investment circles, they have created a new asset class with shared risks that promises start-ups not just funding but also mentoring and advisory services.

Take the case of India’s first crowdfunding portal, Pik A Venture, launched by an MBA student at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Ruchi Dana, in July. Besides funding, the portal also provides advice on legal and company registration issues and offers consulting and guidance on campaigns.

Pik A Venture targets creative minds, budding artists, technical brains, student entrepreneurs and innovators, according to Dana. “We are currently mentoring 12 business ideas and are putting their campaigns online. We don’t want start-ups to just come on our website and fail,” she said.

Pik A Venture will not take any equity stake but charge a percentage of the funding. It will do a soft launch of the platform in the middle of May.

In India, these platforms seem to prefer the creative arts such as films and social causes for raising capital from the general public.

For instance, filmmaker Abhay Kumar raised around Rs.5 lakh over the last 20 days for his documentary Placebo; Onir’s I Am raised around Rs.1 crore over six-nine months, while Kannada film Lucia by filmmaker Pawan Kumar raised more than Rs.50 lakh over 30 days.

Starting Blocks Media Ventures Pvt. Ltd is launching its crowdfunding platform, Catapooolt, to focus on creative projects such as films, music, performing arts and books in mid-April.

“In case of crowdfunding for films and music, the copyright of the project lies with the producer or the one who posts the project on the site,” said Satish Kataria, managing director, Catapooolt, adding the site is the first ever official crowd-funding platform for the Hong Kong Film Festival 2013.

Experts say while crowdfunding takes time, as much as 8-10 months for a deal, it increases the pool of available capital.

Start-ups can use crowdfunding to make a pitch that can be accessed by investors subscribing to the service. The investors range from professional ones to business people. The minimum investment could be as low as Rs.1,000 with no upper limit.

The pitch includes details such as the background of the entrepreneurs, the business offering and plans, financials and funding requirements.

Once a pool of investors shows interest in backing the start-up, the funds raised are directed to the company through the platform. The platform could have a member of its team on the board of the venture. Investors will have complete access to the company’s financial plans and performance on a monthly basis. The platform typically takes a percentage of the fund raised through it.

Varun Sheth and film star Kunal Kapoor launched Ketto on 15 August to build an online network focusing on philanthropy in India. It connects non-profits and other companies aiming for social impact with the public.

There is a large opportunity in crowdfunding as it resolves the problem of lack of funding, according to Sheth, who added that at least half a dozen more crowdfunding platforms would start by the year end.

“Crowdfunding is a big disruption for financial services industry, it cuts the middlemen away. Social media and Internet growth has increased the awareness and viability of such platforms,” said Sheth. Ketto is right now raising Rs.1 crore for itself and expects to close the fund raising in about 45 days.

Sheth said facilitating donations is an interesting space for a crowdfunding platform as there is a lot of disposable income in India and increasingly more people are looking at giving back to society.

“The mandatory 2% CSR (corporate social responsibility) would also increase pools for crowdfunding platforms,” he said, referring to the new companies Act that mandates such spending. The Act is yet to be passed by Parliament.

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