Member Article

Luke Lang on how Crowdcube's partner community could turbocharge the next generation of startups

At the end of June equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube quietly began rolling out a string of partnerships with some of the biggest names across London’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Crowdcube’s community boasts 17 initial partners that includes major coworking brands, accelerators and incubators that will work with the crowdfunding pioneer on various initiatives and programmes aimed at promoting crowd raises and supporting businesses at various stages of their development.

For businesses the benefits are clear: ready access to guidance and expertise from some of the most experienced crowdfunders in the world. For Crowdcube, the initiative allows them to funnel some of their 6+ years of expertise back into the community and bed in with some of the capital’s most promising startups and entrepreneurs in the process.

Speaking to Crowdcube’s Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Luke Lang, said that the new initiative would look to formalise pre-existing relationships and provide a more structured approach to some of its outreach efforts.

In a telephone call, Lang posited the programme as a natural evolution of the work the platform has been doing since 2011, forging links with the startup community and supporting their growth aspirations.

He explained: “Ever since we launched Crowdcube back in 2011 we’ve always been trying to foster relationships with budding entrepreneurs, the startup community, those high growth companies.

“And in doing so we’ve fostered good relationships with various incubators and accelerators and coworking spaces over the years.

“I guess at varying times we’ve seen real success there when we’re able to get in and talk to those businesses; we’re able to help them out with their funding requirements.”

Expounding the benefits of crowdfunding

By getting in with more and more of these businesses in a more ‘formalised’ way through the community, Crowdcube is hoping to improve awareness of crowdfunding as an option for businesses as well as improve general funding literacy amongst the capital’s high growth firms.

“Obviously the finance is a primary goal for a lot of these businesses. But there are some other tangible and intangible benefits in terms of raising the profile and awareness of your business, customer exchange, loyalty and advocacy.”

The thinking being: the better equipped and more informed that founders and business leaders are about their funding and growth, the more buoyant and successful the ecosystem as a whole.

As Lang says, there’s always education to be done, not just about the financial opportunities of crowdfunding but also the branding and engagement advantages that comes with it too.

“Obviously the finance is a primary goal for a lot of these businesses,” says Lang. “But there are some other tangible and intangible benefits in terms of raising the profile and awareness of your business, customer exchange, loyalty and advocacy.

“There’s a huge amount of positivity that can come from a successful crowd raise. We’ve had lots of informal and, at times over the last six years, formal relationships with coworking spaces, we just felt that now was the time to invest a little bit more resource, time, energy into it to try and turn it into the success that we really believe it can be.”

The partners who have signed up for more deeper and formal ties with the crowdfunding platform include a veritable who’s who of the incubator, accelerator and coworking scenes, with the likes of WeWork, Pi Labs, Level39, Campus London and Virgin Startup among the initial ‘cohort’ of 17.

Such a varied and wide-ranging selection of companies and organisations, while expanding the breadth of firms that Crowdcube will be able to reach, will naturally require a rather more bespoke approach when it comes to services and programmes.

“We’ve learnt a huge amount over the past six years. We’ve funded more businesses and raise more capital via equity crowdfunding than any other platform or company on the planet…”

Lang confirms that the exact format and structure of the programme will ‘inevitably’ differ depending on the partner and the requirements of their community, and lists drop-in sessions, one to ones and workshops as just some of the forms that the programme’s events could take.

Running through it all though is an impetus to impart six years of learnings at Crowdcube, which has seen it support the funding of over 500 businesses and collectively raise over a quarter of a billion pounds on its platform.

As perhaps the foremost crowdfunding platform anywhere the world, Lang points to the ‘unprecedented’ and ‘unparalleled’ expertise flowing through Crowdcube’s management team and operations that make them a crucial resource as crowdfunding continues to develop into a mainstream source of finance.

“We’ve learnt a huge amount over the past six years. We’ve funded more businesses and raise more capital via equity crowdfunding than any other platform or company on the planet, so we’ve got unprecedented and unparalleled levels of knowledge and expertise that are kind of baked into the team here and we’re keen to impart that knowledge and that experience.”

Keeping the cycle spinning

Evidently the metrics of a programme like this are a no-brainer if the calibre of partners for the programme are anything to go by.

Everyone benefits from greater levels of support and more widely available access to education, as the older generation imparts their experience to the new generation the whole ecosystem itself gets turbocharged and everyone benefits as a result.

For Crowdcube, getting a jump on some of their crowdfunding rivals in talking to promising startups is an obvious advantage which Lang is quite open about.

But just as important is keeping that funding wheel spinning and proving the benefits of the crowdfunding model by ensuring companies only turn to the crowd when they are good and ready, and when it makes sense to do so.

“Part of the driving force behind Crowdcube to try and help as many businesses as we can to raise the capital that they need to go on and become a success,” concludes Lang. “And hopefully that success translates into investor returns, where we have more examples of Camden Town Brewery that raised on the site that were acquired or WeCarClub that raised on the site and were acquired by Europcar.

“We can continue that cycle of innovation, investment and returns and if we can continue to prove that relationship and that model then the future is bright.”