Crowdfunding: An Interview with Vladimir Vukicevic. Vladimir Vukicevic, Co-Founder, RocketHub.com, speaks with Growthink University s Dave Lavinsky

Transcription

1 Crowdfunding: An Interview with Vladimir Vukicevic Vladimir Vukicevic, Co-Founder, RocketHub.com, speaks with Growthink University s Dave Lavinsky

2 Dave Lavinsky: Hello, everyone. This is Dave Lavinsky from Growthink, and today, I m really excited to interview Vladimir. Vlad, I m going to butcher your last name Vukicevic. Is it pronounced that way? Is that close enough? Vladimir Vukicevic: Yes, sir. Dave Lavinsky: Okay, great. Vlad is the co-founder of RocketHub, and typically when I do an interview, I explain what the company is, but this is such a cool company and a cool concept that I m going to let Vlad do it himself. So to begin, Vlad, thank you so much for taking time to speak with me today. Vladimir Vukicevic: Thank you very much, Dave. RocketHub is an open grassroots crowdfunding platform. What that means is that we help creatives, as we collectively define them so anyone from a musician, to a filmmaker to an entrepreneur we help these individuals or groups of individuals raise funds from the crowd. And the crowd being mainly friends, family and also beyond that, fans, acquaintances, and the general internet crowd that might be interested in what you are doing. The concept is not based on an investment; it s not a charity. It s somewhere in between, actually. It s what we re calling kind of the new creative economy, where creatives as they are broadly defined offer rewards in return for financial contributions. So the reward levels can typically start at a $5 level, or they can go all the way up to $100, $200, or even thousands of dollars per reward level. So it s kind of somewhere in between a barter system, if you will, where companies or individuals could raise funds from the people they know or people that they don t know. Dave Lavinsky: Excellent. That s a great summary. I appreciate that. Now, I want to get into the nitty gritty of how it works. So let s say I m an entrepreneur, and I want to start whatever business it is that I want to start. What is, you know, how do I get started? Let s say I m an entrepreneur. How much money would be realistic to raise you talk about sort of pre-angel but how much money would be realistic to raise via RocketHub and crowdfunding? Vladimir Vukicevic: Sure yeah, we ve seen kind of the sweet spot to be somewhere around two to three thousand to start with. But we ve seen people succeed relatively quickly and relatively easily for even larger amounts such as $10,000, $15,000, or even

3 $20,000 to start with. And it s a tricky question because what we found is that the funding amount or the goal depends so much in a lot of variables that have to do with the company itself or the individual trying to raise the fund. Dave Lavinsky: Can you clarify that a little bit more, give some an example, maybe? Vladimir Vukicevic: Sure, definitely. What we found is that the funding is very much based or should be based on the network or the amount the people that the entrepreneur, the company, or the individual raising the fund already has established. We found that the average contribution per person is about $50 to $60. So if you know about 500 to 600 people and you think that a fair amount of them will be able to contribute to your idea or to your venture, then it's kind of a good starting point to multiply that by 50 to 60 dollars. That s actually kind of a really, really basic way of guesstimating what you might be able to get. Dave Lavinsky: Got it. Now, let s talk about the offer. You call that the reward. You mentioned that before. What is it that people are getting as the reward? What is the mindset of the giver? It s stated as a donation, but not exactly the same as a donation, is that correct? Vladimir Vukicevic: Correct. It s not really a charitable donation, although there is definitely a kind of a gift-giving component to it. And it s not an investment yet, since the laws in the United States and pretty much around the world make this type of process not an investment vehicle. At least not yet. There are some campaigns to try to build that, but not yet. The rewards typically to be one of three things. Either they re some sort of product - so if your company is opening up a bakery, offering cupcakes, or offering a cake or something like that. It could be a service - so if you re a consulting firm, or a web development firm, or any sort of service, you can offer classes, you could offer instructions, you could offer workshops. And then there are also experiences which are kind of a little bit more into the creative side, and that s why a lot of musicians and filmmakers use this. It could work for businesses as well in terms of providing an experience. It s sort of a ticket to an event or a meeting of some sort, or kind of an inspirational moment, or even a lunch or a dinner things like that that provide kind of a little bit more of an intimate experience for those who contribute.

4 Dave Lavinsky: Got it. Now looking at these examples - let s say the bakery. I want to open a bakery and I m going to, as my reward, I m going to say, I m need $10,000 to open my bakery, or maybe a bake stand or a kiosk. I need $10,000 to do it. One of my rewards is going to be, if you give me $50 dollars now, I ll give you a cake. Is that a good example? Vladimir Vukicevic: Exactly. That s a good example. And typically, we like to tell our creatives or those who post projects to have different levels of rewards to think of it them in small, medium, and large. So small would be $5 to $50, medium is about $50 to $200 or $300 dollars, then large is above $400 or $500 dollars. We found that this is a really great way to monetize very efficiently your whole network. Some people within your network or people that you know don t have the means to give $50 or $100, but if you offer a $5 dollar reward or $10 dollar reward, they ll gladly give that. And then, there s some people within your network who have always wanted to contribute to what you are doing and really feel inspired about what you re doing that might have wanted always to give a little bit more. They might have wanted to give $500 dollars or $1,000 dollars. So, it s a great way of leveraging those different types of people that you know that want to contribute in different ways. So for instance, your bakery, for example. Maybe for $5, you would offer a cupcake or something like that, or for $20, you would offer a dozen cookies and a thank you letter or some sort of a personal component, or for $50, a cake. But for $500 dollars, this is where it gets really interesting. This is where you can offer to name a treat after them. So whenever they come to the bakery, there will be a treat named after this person who gave you $500. Something like that where you give the power to these contributors to have a little bit of an impact to your business, to have a little bit of an impact to what you are trying to accomplish. Really, we ve seen this work really well. That a little bit of intimacy gives a lot of stimulation to give a little bit more. Dave Lavinsky: Very, very cool. Now with this bakery example, it would be, let s say you give $5 dollars to get the cupcake. When can you get that cupcake? When the project is fully funded, or when the bakery actually launches? When are those rewards given out? Vladimir Vukicevic: That s a great question. It s kind of, it plays on our model as well. So our model is an all or nothing model; that means a person sets a goal, whatever that may be

5 Dave Lavinsky: A funding amount goal, correct? Vladimir Vukicevic: Right - a funding amount goal in a particular time frame. And the concept is that the creative or the entrepreneur who is launching this project needs to raise this amount of money at minimum, within this specific time frame, or all the funds are returned back to the contributors. It creates a very interesting and dynamic mechanism to stimulate activity and to really drive momentum. Because it s an all-or-nothing model, like you mentioned, the rewards aren t due until after the full time frame elapses. So either if the goal is met, that s when the rewards are expected at the end, or after the end, but otherwise, if the goal amount is not met, none of the rewards have to be given out. So it s kind of a risk-free endeavor for those who are trying to launch projects. Dave Lavinsky: Got it. Also what I m hearing, which is really cool, to an extent, you are pre-selling products or services, correct? Vladimir Vukicevic: Exactly. And you re kind of yeah, it s a risk free-way of preselling products and services. Dave Lavinsky: And in doing so, you are actually gauging the demand, because if you can t get people to pre-order, then there may not be demanding for what you are doing. Any thoughts on that? Vladimir Vukicevic: Absolutely - it is a great way to test the market and to test the viability of your product. We ve seen this work really well with musicians. So if someone wants to make kind of a more avant-garde CD, this is a way to test whether this CD will be successful, or whether there s an audience for it. And this of course, can work very well with, like you said, restaurants, bakeries, theaters, any kind of goods or services products that may be a little bit out of the norm; this can be a great process for the entrepreneurs to test the market. Dave Lavinsky: What about the motivation of the people that fund the deal? So there could be my thoughts are they could be doing it out of good will. They could be doing it because essentially they are just buying a product, to an extent. They re saying say,

6 Listen. I m going to donate $25 dollars, and I m going to get a cake out of it. So it s sort of awash anyway. So talk about what do you think is the motivation is to fuel that fund? Vladimir Vukicevic: Sure. I think it goes to what we call the holy grail of crowdfunding, so there are three components to it, and all three components drive the motivation. The first component is the project itself. It needs to be somewhat inspiring; it needs to have some sort of a positive impact to the world. I don t think that a cigarette company would have success in that; the model doesn t work for that. Within that first piece is also the person behind the scene. Who is this person trying raise these funds? The funders want to know who you are. They want to see what you re about and they want to see and kind of want to be inspired by your story. So the first piece is the project and the person who is behind the project. The second part is the network. Typically, friends and family is the first kind of immediate network or the first followers. They ll give you no matter what. Their inspiration or motivation is to help you - help the entrepreneur. The second degree network to friends, family, kind of broader acquaintances they re a little bit more interested on the product, like you said. They re a little bit more interested in what you have to offer and how you are going about in selling it. And then, the third degree networks are the complete strangers. They are the most interested in the rewards themselves and kind of the concept, overall. And then the third pillar is the reward itself, like I said before. They need to be a little bit different. They need to be a bit outside the box and they need to have an intimate component to them, to some degree, because in a way, what you are selling on RocketHub is trust. You re selling trust in you, and trust in your ability to fulfill your goal - to fulfill what you re trying to raise these funds for, and to fulfill the need of your business and your customers. Dave Lavinsky: Very, very interesting. With the rewards, should they be at a discount? Meaning... it s very interesting. I was interviewed by CNN not too long ago, and we were talking about creative financing sources and the journalist was talking about the restaurant owners that were actually selling, to they say, I m going to give you $1500 worth of meals in the future if you give me a thousand dollar financing now, which is pretty similar, and they did it because it was sort of a discount. Do you think that is the same thing as crowdfunding and RocketHub?

7 Vladimir Vukicevic: I don t think it needs to be that clear cut; it needs to be... the perceived value of something needs to be equal to what you are asking for. So for instance, I gave the $500 dollar example before that you ll name a treat after this person. What is the real value of that? It s probably, to some degree, worth it. The perceived value of that is very cool; it s kind of on an emotional level. So I think... you don t want it to be absurd, like a cupcake for a hundred dollars, but it needs to fit within some kind of a schema that people have in terms of value. It doesn t need to incorporate these discounts, especially when these kinds of intimate things are incorporated. So for instance, a cake with a personal thank you letter handwritten by the grand master baker of your bakery for 50 bucks has a very high perceived value because it incorporates the real thing - the cake - but also this kind of interesting emotional thing- the letter or the thank you letter, or whatever - something close to that. Dave Lavinsky: Got it, got it. I love also that the creativity of the entrepreneur one thing that always bothers me that entrepreneurs are so creative but when it comes to raising capital, they are generally not creative and would go to a bank. First of all, what I love so much about RocketHub and crowdfunding is that it s so creative. And then I also like what you were just saying, like that $500 example of naming a treat after that person. I think the entrepreneur really has to be creative and come up with those ideas to get more funding, is that correct? Vladimir Vukicevic: Exactly. It s not an investment vehicle. Creativity starts playing an even more important role. Being able to offer, for instance, for a thousand bucks, you ll give them a full day workshop in the bakery or how to make these treats - that s something that s really cool. Or if you re kind of an events planner, you could offer parties for people planning parties. There are all kinds of services and experiences that these entrepreneurs or any entrepreneur can offer, that might not be kind of the first thing that comes to mind, but as you sit down and you think about it a little bit, what is it that you can offer, that others can t offer? Like planning a great party, or like a workshop, or kind of a behind the scenes look. Everyone likes to see or go behind the scenes, especially if it s a restaurant, or even if it s a bar or something like that. It gives you or it gives the entrepreneur the ability to leverage things that they are not able to leverage before.

8 Dave Lavinsky: Got it. What s really interesting it just popped in my head, is a lot of actually everything that you are talking about is all the elements of a great business. You said what can you offer that others can t? You talked about the $5 to $50 dollar, or the $200 and the $400 dollar reward. It s really the ability to upsell to have different levels of products and services. These are all like classic things that every business owner... and also, predetermining demand is actually everything that any business should actually be doing regardless of whether they need funding or not. It s really, really cool. Vladimir Vukicevic: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It s a novel way of making a lot of these things that have existed for tens or maybe even hundreds of years come together into kind of a cool mechanism that allows both building a new audience and leveraging the network that you have already. Dave Lavinsky: Excellent. A couple of non-creative questions for you before we get back to creatives. Legally, this is not a debt transaction. Are there any tax consequences that entrepreneurs or creatives that use RocketHub need to be aware of? Vladimir Vukicevic: That s a good question. I think our primary advice is to speak with your tax professional especially before hand, and especially if you re raising amounts that are over kind of the golden $10,000 level. It really depends how you re treating it or how you re accounting for it. It s good to sit down with a tax professional, just for half an hour to talk about it, but otherwise, we hadn t seen major issues with it yet. Dave Lavinsky: Okay, great. Now, talk about your 8% fee. I look at it as totally fair, but I just want people to understand why there is an 8% fee when you raise capital through RocketHub. Vladimir Vukicevic: Yeah, I think, the 8% fee is only, like I said, it s an all-ornothing model, so the 8% only comes into play if you do end up raising the goal or above the goal that you stated. So our motivation is very much in line with the people who use our website. We want them to succeed and we want them to reach their goal, and that s when we receive the 8%.

9 The 8% actually is broken down into two parts - one part is to pay for the transaction fee, to pay for PayPal, to pay for the credit card transactions, stuff like that, and that ends up being about 3% to 4%. The rest is for RocketHub to sustain itself as a business. We do provide kind of like an integrated platform that leverages Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and all the other social networks, as well as we make it very easy for PayPal transactions to occur through PayPal accounts and through credit cards. And then also the community value that we provide I think goes a long way, especially in creating and reaching a new audience and building a new level of clientele. Dave Lavinsky: I totally agree - the 8% fee is nothing compared to the value that you bring to the table and how much easier you re making it for somebody to raise the capital. Vladimir Vukicevic: Yeah, and it only takes 10 minutes to put up a project and lock it up. It takes thought beforehand, but it s a very easy process after the thought has been put in place. Dave Lavinsky: Let s actually talk about the posting and the thought process. I really want to go through sort of the best practices and the anatomy of a great funding request. So, we already talked about how much funding they should seek, actually you want to reiterate that. It s based on the project, correct? Vladimir Vukicevic: Correct it s based on the project and it s based on kind of the person s or the entrepreneur s preliminary network that they have. The amount of people they know, the amount of people they can reach, and the amount of followers they already have. Dave Lavinsky: Okay, what about, let s say, the example I take a lot of notes so, I wrote down, before, you said, 500 to 600 people, $50 to $60 each. So let s say, that 500 people at $50 each would be $25,000. Let s say my math, I figured out that I felt my network could contribute $10,000. Would it be smarter for me to go because it is all or nothing, so if I get to $9,999 dollars I don t get anything, projects can be overfunded can they not? So should I go... if I think I can get $10,000, should I set the bar lower at $6,000 so I d definitely get that, then hopefully they overfund it? How does that work?

10 Vladimir Vukicevic: That s a good question. Actually that s a great question that we get very often. So the price point or the goal is sticky. If you do set it for $6,000 for instance, once you do reach that $6,000, the motivation for people to give drastically goes down. Because it s either you re going to make it or you re not going to make it. Let s help make this happen, and so on and so forth. And after the $6,000 is reached or that goal is reached, we found that it can go over, but not many projects go over more than 10% or 20%. So if you need $10,000 to make it happen, then we recommend to go for $10,000. But if there is some flexibility, if you can do it for less, then we say go for kind of the safer option and try to overshoot by offering really stellar rewards and by really engaging your network fully. Dave Lavinsky: Got it, excellent. Now, what about the time to allot? Another thing I love is how you determine how much time the capital has to be raised, and I like that because in any Marketing 101, you want to have that offer you want to have some sort of scarcity to the offer in order to get people to act now. So what is sort of the right or wrong amount of time that you have found works the best or the worst? Vladimir Vukicevic: Sure. We found kind of the optimal timeframe to be about 2 to 3 months - so 60 to 90 days. Anything less and it gets a little dicey. We found that most of our users, this is a learning experience for them, so it takes a week or two to really kind of get used to it to see how it works, to figure out what kind of message works with their network. So going anywhere below 2 months unless you really hit the ground running is tough. And then over 90 days, or over 3 months, it starts to drag on and you lose the value of that pre-set time frame. You lose, kind of the sense of urgency. So about 60 to 90 days is kind of optimal. Dave Lavinsky: Excellent. So you mentioned what words should go in your message. So I guess you re talking about If I m the creative, if I m the entrepreneur, I set up my profile, I set up my funding request, I m working it up, and now I m ing, and I saw in your system, you have some great mechanisms to spread the word, the , Facebook, Twitter and so on, Myspace, etc. What about that text? How do you. what is it about messaging that you should do to send to your friends and network to try to get them to fund the deal? Any thoughts on that?

11 Vladimir Vukicevic: Yeah. That s great. I think the messages that we see work most successfully are the ones where the entrepreneurs or the creatives will highlight the journey. So, it s essentially bringing your network along through the journey with you, to help build this something, whatever that is. And we found that kind of begging and asking for money or mentioning even the word donation is oftentimes off-putting and less successful than saying - this is an exchange. It s a fair kind of barter system, but it s also a way to get involved and go on the journey with you to make this - whatever it is - into a reality. And it s also important to highlight the concepts which most people probably won t know before land on your page, and that is this is an all-or-nothing mechanism, so you do need to reach the goal before the time runs out, otherwise, all the money is returned to the contributors. So that means you want your - especially your first followers - to take ownership themselves in your project and to start spreading it to their friends and their families. And that s when it really gets powerful - when you have more than one owner of your project when you have multiple owners of your project who want to see you succeed. Dave Lavinsky: Awesome. Any tips on getting your followers to message it out to their followers or is that already done on Facebook or Twitter? How does that work? Vladimir Vukicevic: Well, we make it easy. We make it easy to share any comments - to share them on Facebook, and so on and so forth. The most successful campaigns we ve seen are based on kind of on a very reciprocal exchange. So when someone fuels or contributes to your project, we tell the creatives to thank them, thank them publicly, or thank them on RocketHub or wherever they are as well. Thank them on Twitter if they re on Twitter, and thank them on Facebook if they re on Facebook, making sure that you tag them. This way, it s kind of a very interesting and very smart way of letting their network know that this person is a great person - that they contributed to your project, but also, making their network aware that this project exists. So it s all about the public display of gratitude and public communication. You want to be accessible as an entrepreneur throughout this entire journey. Dave Lavinsky: Excellent. I keep writing down just amazing regular business lessons here. Thanking your customers is a novel concept, but it works. When someone buys one of our products, we actually call them and thank them. It s just a great business policy to thank your customers. The second thing is you talked about messaging your friends and what messages work and how begging doesn t work, but what works is sort of getting them involved and showing them the bigger picture - really having a corporate story and a vision, which is something that s critical to any new company - to say, listen,

12 this is where we were, and this is why we are starting this company, and this is what our vision of success is. And that s how you use that to hire a great management team and to get customers, etc. Every great business tactic comes into play here, which is really, really cool. Vladimir Vukicevic: It s exactly what you said. It s about the purpose. They want to agree with your purpose for existence you and your company s purpose for existence. If that clicks, then it s a whole lot easier to have the contributors be owners of your project. Dave Lavinsky: Excellent. What about some of the specifics of how you post your project to fund on RocketHub? So we have like, some of the projects I see had videos, others did not, some have sort of an about me section, there s that project blog. Can you talk about some of those features and what may be some of the most important moments or the best practices to a funding post? Vladimir Vukicevic: I ll kind of go in order of what kind of the key elements are. First is the project creative creative being broadly defined to be anyone from a musician to an entrepreneur, because they are all creative. So the first is the profile. That s kind of a more intimate thing. That s where you should talk about yourself, your accomplishments in life, where you ve been and where you are going. That s kind of the background of every project, and that s in the background of every communication you have on the site. And then we move on to the project page itself. Each project has its own little micro hub on RocketHub, which can be a great landing spot to make the transaction happen - to make the contribution happen. And the key elements of that little RocketHub page that every project gets include a video. Like you said, not all projects have a video, but we found that a video really helps in building credibility and building a sense of trust amongst your fans and amongst your followers and amongst the strangers that come to your RocketHub page. So we typically advise people to make it short two to three minutes. Introduce who you are, introduce what you re doing, and have a clear call to action. It s important to have and to make those who visit your page realize what needs to get done - what needs to happen for it to get done. The next part is images. We typically like to have one to three different images for a project, and it could be an image of you, and most importantly it should probably be an

13 image of what you are trying to do maybe your business location or a logo, or something interesting and something descriptive. And then kind of the most important part of the project is the written project description. And that s where all the components that I mentioned before should come in an introduction of who you are, what you are doing, why- which is always the most important - why should people be interested in what you are doing and why should they contribute. So again, the purpose, the mission, the vision, of what you are trying to do. And then also, have a clear call to action please contribute to my project, or please join me on this journey because this and this will happen. That should be in the core project description, and then there are other parts of the project that we kind of touch upon, like the financial goals, the rewards, and the also the title. The title is usually pretty interesting - how people take it into different directions. But it should be catchy but also descriptive. Those are sort of the core components of any project page. Dave Lavinsky: Got it. The title is the title of the project itself. Vladimir Vukicevic: Exactly - what is this going to be viewed as on RocketHub.com what is going to be the name of your project. Dave Lavinsky: Got it. And what percentage of the funding would you expect would come from one s own network? If I posted my own project my own network versus people on RocketHub that are sort of searching around that are members? Vladimir Vukicevic: Yeah. Typically what we re seeing right now about 60 to 70 percent is going to come from your own network, and the rest will come either from an extended network or from the RocketHub community - so 30-ish or less. It depends. But that s typical. What we ve seen to be really powerful is that that number can be completely inverted. And that s what the beauty of the model is because you can t count on it, but when it happens, it s very powerful. For instance, we had a film maker, Darko. He was a big film maker and he had a kind of a business approach to what he wanted to do. He wanted to distribute this film to the United States, and he needs funds to distribute it. So it was a very business approach to a creative problem. His funding initially was mainly from friends and family, but like I said before, once a few of those friends and family started taking ownership of it, a couple of strangers really liked what he was doing really liked and connected to his story and ended up contributing 60% to 70% of his funding. So that number inverted. It ended up kind of completely stranger-driven project and he went well above, he was looking for $7,500 and he ended up raising almost $10,000. So he ended going up well over his goal.

14 Dave Lavinsky: Awesome. Any big mistakes to avoid when posting a project? Vladimir Vukicevic: That s a great question. I think the biggest not mistake, but kind of belief that people have is that if I put it up there, the money will come no matter what. But any crowdfunding project involves work. It s not hard work, but it s smart work. It s communicating with your network, being very clear in what you are doing and what you need from them. It involves checking up on your project on a daily basis, thanking those who contribute, thanking them both privately and publicly through Facebook and or otherwise. The biggest kind of misconception is that put it up there and you come back in three months and the money will be there. It s not like that. There s no such thing as a free lunch, even in crowdfunding. It does take some work. And then the other little things that I ve mentioned before. Think a very positive tone. Don t be begging or cyber growling or anything like that. Be positive, be clear of what this is. It s the ability for your funders to join you on this journey and to become, in a way, part of your business. And that s a very, very powerful way to connect to people and it s surprising how well it works in terms of getting funds from contributors. Dave Lavinsky: Excellent. The other big question I have is the other crowdfunding platforms there s RocketHub and there s also Kickstarter. I just sort of want to know your take on the differences between RocketHub and Kickstarter. Vladimir Vukicevic: Sure. I think the biggest core difference stems from our why. Why do we exist? RocketHub exists to liberate all creatives - to liberate all projects. That means we are a completely open platform. We let everyone take a shot at making their project into reality. And Kickstarter is uses a little bit more of a model so you either need an invite or you need to apply and get accepted and Kickstarter, and they have kind of a certain creative filter that they put upon their projects. Whereas, we believe in RocketHub that anyone can take a shot and we let the crowd decide what s worthwhile and what will rise to the top. We built a mechanism on RocketHub where the best projects that are most complete in terms of video, rewards, photos, and also have the most activity - both funding and traffic - rise to the top, so they will become kind of the front page or the first level projects on the site. That s sort of the core. We re a community for the creatives by creatives, and that means we take a little bit more kind of a grassroots approach to what we do. Another kind of really tangible difference is RocketHub is global. We allow projects from all across the world, and we allow easy funding from all across the world, whereas Kickstarter is US-based.

15 We also have a slightly different e-commerce mechanism. We re based on a virtual currency called Rocket Fuel. That means that when someone contributes to a project, what they re really doing is purchasing Rocket Fuel, and then contributing this rocket fuel to your project. So if a project funds, then this virtual currency is automatically converted to money and we transfer the money to the entrepreneur; otherwise, if the project doesn t really fund, the funders get their money back in the form of the Rocket Fuel so it s kind of an e-wallet sitting as part of their profile. That means that they could either cash it out or it makes it very easy for people to contribute to other projects. It creates a very sticky community. So if someone contributed $20 dollars, most likely, they don t really want to cash that money. It s much easier for them to contribute it automatically to a different project that they like or that they see on RocketHub. And that s how we are really working to increase the cross-pollination between the different projects. If a project does not succeed, those funders typically stick around and contribute to other projects that they like or that inspire them. Dave Lavinsky: One more question. If was to join RocketHub if let s say I wanted to post something, would it be to fund a couple of other ventures and sort of befriend people? Does it have that social networking aspect where I can create like a network of friends on RocketHub? Vladimir Vukicevic: We re getting there. We ve seen that work, actually. We ve seen creatives or entrepreneurs - those who put up projects, who participate in the community, who give a little bit like $5, $10 - it doesn t have to be a big amount - really reap the benefits of that engagement model. There s no friend-ing capability yet on RocketHub, but it s a potential future feature that we re thinking about building. But it becomes obvious, if an entrepreneur or creative who launched a project takes an active role in other projects. It does help. Dave Lavinsky: Excellent. This has been awesome. I believe I ve grilled you as much as I could. My follow up question is - is there s anything that I ve missed that entrepreneurs should know about when going to RocketHub.com? Is there anything that I forgot to ask you that entrepreneurs should know about? Vladimir Vukicevic: I think one of the biggest things one of the biggest differentiators between us and other websites out there is just how accessible I and the founding team are. So if an entrepreneur wants to reach out directly to me or directly to one of my other co-founders, we re here to take your call. We re here to meet with project creatives and creators individually to help them and to consult with them on what they want to do, how they want to do it, and the reward they want to structure. So anyone can me directly.

16 I m sure you can share my in your website. That s one thing - our accessibility in building this community is part of what we are and what we stand for. Dave Lavinsky: Awesome. Everyone, I ve been speaking with Vladimir Vukicevic, one of the co-founders of RocketHub. Vladimir, you have been so helpful. I m so excited right now because I honestly think this is a cool thing, and I m going to be frustrated with any entrepreneur that needs this type of capital and doesn t do it, because if you can t convince your friends and your network to get involved and start funding your company like this, you can t grow as a company. You don t have what it takes. I think this is great, so thank you so much. Vladimir Vukicevic: Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.