Crowdtilt

Crowdtilt, Inc.

Type	Private
Industry	Crowdsourcing
Founded	Texas, United States (February 8, 2012 (2012-02-08))[1]
Founder(s)	James Beshara Khaled Hussein
Headquarters	370 Townsend, San Francisco, California, United States
Area served	United States
Key people	James Beshara (CEO)
Services	Group-funding
Website	www.crowdtilt.com

Crowdtilt is a group-funding platform that allows users to establish fundraising campaigns The company is legally certified in securing fundraisers for non-profit organizations. James Beshara and Khaled Hussein launched Crowdtilt out of Y Combinator in February 2012. The company was initially based in Texas and is now headquartered in San Francisco, California.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]}

Background

Crowdtilt’s CEO and co-founder James Beshara, a 2008 graduate of Wake Forest University, developed the concept for the group-funding platform while working as a microloans collection officer in South Africa.^[9] Beshara utilized the concept of social collateral to create Dvelo.org, which aimed to provide group-funded loans to micro-insurance organizations.^[3][10][11] When Dvelo users began to use the service to fund non-charity related ventures, Beshara shifted the company’s model to concentrate on raising funds for parties, gifts, events, or any other cause that a user proposed.^{[2][3][9][10][11]}

Beshara brought on Khaled Hussein as a co-founder in 2011.^[10] Beshara and Hussein rebranded Dvelo as Crowdtilt and were accepted into the winter 2012 session of Y Combinator.^{[9][11][12][13][14]}

Developments

In May 2012 the company closed its first round of funding at $2.1 million.^[15][16] Investors included SV Angel, CrunchFund, and Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian.^[11][15][16]

In November 2012 the company met federal regulations regarding fundraising for nonprofits.^[17] As a result, Crowdtilt fully supports charity fundraising, providing users with tax-deductible donation receipts.^{[16][17][18][19]} As of November 2012, services like Kickstarter prohibit charity and cause fundraising.^[17]

In December 2012 the company released a crowd-funding API that allows startups and third-party developers to integrate Crowdtilt’s functionality into applications.^{[19][20][21][22]}

In April 2013 the company raised $12 million in Series A financing.^[5][21][23] The financing was led by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.^[5][21][23] This round of financing brought Crowdtilt’s total funding to approximately $14 million.^[21][24]

Services

Crowd-funding platform

Crowdtilt’s principal product is a group-funding platform that allows users to contribute to and create campaigns of their choosing.^[2][12][13] Every campaign is assigned a tilt point, which defines the minimum amount of funding needed to make the campaign successful.^[2][3] Users can contribute as much as they like, and campaign funds are only released if the tilt point is met.^[3] The company receives a 5% processing fee (2.5% charged to contributor, 2.5% charged to campaign owner)^[25] for each successful campaign.^[11] A 2012 VentureBeat article reported that, “86% of [Crowdtilt] campaigns are successful, and on average, raise almost twice as much as they need to tilt. Campaigns that reach a 34% of their goal have a 99% chance of going all the way, and 38% of activity happens in the last few hours.”^[15]

API

In December 2012 the company released an application programming interface (API) which allows third-party integration of the Crowdtilt group payment functionality into any application.^[20] The API’s universal payments interface is compatible with multiple payment processors in any currency.^{[19][20][22][26]}

Crowdhoster

Crowdhoster by Crowdtilt is an open source application that uses Crowtilt’s API to create unbranded fundraising campaigns.^[23][27] Technology for the application was derived from the SelfStarter open source project.^[23][27]

Notable campaigns

Tony Forte

In December 2012 a Crowdtilt campaign was created for Tony Forte, a 7 year-old with Total colonic Hirschprung’s Disease. The campaign sought to raise funds for Forte’s medical expenses. ^[28]

National debt April Fool’s

On April 1, 2013, Crowdtilt created a hoax-campaign aimed at paying off the United States’ national debt through crowdfunding.^[29][30][31] The prank prompted 31 thousand page views for Crowdtilt in one day.^[32][33]

David Henneberry’s boat

In April 2013 a Crowdtilt campaign successfully raised over $50,000 to replace a boat "Slip Away II" that was damaged during the arrest of Dzhokar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. The boat’s owner, David Henneberry, commented that he “doesn’t want the money and would rather have it go to a fund for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.”^[5][6][7][8] However, he reconsidered, and in September 2013 accepted $50,000 to purchase a used boat he named "Beth Said Yes" (for his wife), and directed that the excess go to One Fund Boston.^{[34] [35]}

Hurricane Sandy

Several campaigns were created to provide relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy. Crowdtilt waived their service fee for any donations and reported about $180,000 donations towards the hurricane-related projects.^{[15][17][18][36]}

References

External links

• Crowdtilt — Official Website
• Crowdtilt — Official Blog
• Crowdtilt on Facebook
• Crowdtilt on Twitter
• James Beshara interviewed on the TV show Trianglation on the TWiT.tv network