On August 27th, our own John James Jacoby was invited to WCEDA’s “Access to Capital” event to share his experience with a recently successful crowdfunding campaign.

John used IndieGogo to raise over $50k for the continued development of BuddyPress and bbPress, two open-source sister projects to the immensely popular WordPress platform. John is the owner of Flox (based out of East Troy) which is a company that develops and manages private social networks for niche communities. He is also the project lead for BuddyPress and bbPress.

Indiegogo, Kickstarter, and GoFundMe are the market leaders, but others continue to emerge. Crowdfunding is a relatively recent development that was legalized in 2012 through the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act. The most popular campaigns revolve around startups and social causes. Other funding industries are exploring ways to work with this model.