Crowdfunding your startup - How to hack your way to success!

Have you ever thought about trying, or have already tried crowdfunding for your startup?

While some find success in this method of raising capital, for the most part entrepreneurs fall short of their desired goal when trying to raise funds through crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding comes with many more complexities than just listing your startup on a crowdfunding site and waiting, and that is what we hope to shed some light on with this event!

We have two great speakers for this event who have extensive experience in the startup and crowdfunding space!

Jason Vitug

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Jason Vitug is an author, speaker, and social impact entrepreneur as founder of personal finance website and lifestyle brand ­ Phroogal. He is a self described financial motivator and lifestyle engineer helping thousands of people around the country live their dream lifestyle through financial knowledge.

Jason is the promoter of The Smile Lifestyle movement, a community of over 60,000 millennials who are living purposeful lives and making informed financial decisions to stop wasting time and money, and focus on the things that matter. The movement is based on a belief that experiential and purposeful living can be achieved through sound financial decision making.

In 2012, Jason left his senior executive role and backpacked around the world visiting 20 countries in 12 months. It was in this journey he created his purpose and in 2013 started Phroogal as a personal finance blog. Phroogal became the most successful personal finance related crowd funding campaign raising $78,501 with the support of 541 people.

Jason is the creator of the award winning project The Road to Financial Wellness, a grassroots and social media campaign to break the social taboo about money and empower a generation to live their dreams. In 2015, Jason and his team completed a 10,218 mile road trip across the United States, and participated in 37 events in 30 locations, attended by over 8,000 people in 30 days.

Those who attend this event will also receive a free copy of Jason’s Book:

“Crowdfunding a Bootstrapped Startup: The Story of How We Hacked Our Way To Success”

Rick Colosimo

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Rick J. Colosimo focuses on the representation of companies in all aspects of their business, including corporate governance, transactional, and commercial matters.

Rick’s diverse legal practice ranges from providing complex, “bet-the-company” transactional and corporategovernance advice to independent directors and stakeholders in closely held businesses to structuring new businesses for startup founders positioning themselves to raise capital; from assisting nonprofit organizations undergoing strategic reviews to advising organizers of new nonprofit entities how to obtain state and federal tax exemptions.

As outside general counsel for many clients, Rick connects deeply with their businesses — serving on corporate boards, creating financial models and fundraising presentations for startups, and analyzing strategic problems in transactions and litigation to frame issues properly for better-informed corporate decisions. These business skills have been buttressed by years of merger and acquisition advisory work for clients including deal prospecting, due diligence, negotiation, financial modeling, and deal execution. Rick’s clients come from many industries: software, ecommerce, web and Internet, clothing retailers and fashion designers, financial services, computer hardware, IT consulting, strategy consulting, construction materials, import/export, enterprise software, and contract manufacturing.

Rick has a wide array of legal experience on which to draw: he practiced in both New York City and in Silicon Valley at large national law firms. He has been involved in hundreds of negotiations across a wide variety of disciplines. In New York City, Rick practiced at Holland & Knight LLP, litigating mass torts involving pesticides, asbestos, and the crash of TWA Flight 800. He then practiced corporate and securities law at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP, in the Palo Alto, CA office, where his practice included venture financing, and mergers and acquisitions for startups, venture capital funds, E*Trade, and Cisco Systems.

Here’s what to expect from the event:

• Common misconceptions about crowdfunding

• The legal side of crowdfunding

• Jason’s successful crowdfunding story

• A “roadmap”, or best practices to a successful crowdfunding campaign

Schedule:

We are on a tighter time frame due to timing restrictions at the library, but we will continue our networking afterwards at 54 Main Bar & Grille.

6:30 - 6:45: Event begins. Networking and refreshments.
6:45 - 8:15: Crowdfunding talk kicks off.
8:15 - 8:30: Event wrap up.
8:30 - 9:30: Networking over at 54 Main Bar & Grille.

Where to find us:

Madison Public Library (39 Keep Street, Madison NJ) in the Helen Whitney Chase Auditorium.