The best Crowdfunding books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Here’s a great book on the topic. It covers how to raise equity, how to structure your partnership, and will help you realize what resources you’re going to need. Good luck!

Raising Private Capital: Building Your Real Estate Empire Using Other People's Money https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947200984/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_j-QNBbF9WRXP2

I am in a handful and am increasing my allocation to about 20-25% of NW and selling some direct real estate investments to fund the syndications.

My first several were single deal Multifamily syndications with a friend - ok but nothing great.

I recently joined a couple online groups for syndication investors - very helpful DM me if you want. They have great deal flow and thoughtful other investors and share DD on sponsors and deals.

For the new stuff - I’m betting on the jockey not the horse as too hard to evaluate all the horses. But some people analyze every deal (horse in the analogy). I prefer funds to individual deals for diversification - with investments spread across multiple sponsors and property types.

Here is a book on evaluating as well.

The Hands-Off Investor: An Insider’s Guide to Investing in Passive Real Estate Syndications https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947200275/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_WJ11TE6P9B2RNNJNTPZH

Yeah I hear you!!! I have been trying to pull together a single project to try to promote and sell kits for ... for a few years now, I even work professionally with Linux now from my Pi experience, but I still really haven't put much _out there_. So many things to learn when it comes to business and development and then there's pricing and PCBs and advertising and competition from copycats and on and on it goes...

I think having something that has appeal with some traction that you can sell as a kit is a huge deal, and you already got something perhaps viable. So thats great..! Personally I'm realizing its just not possible to do everything alone and have any significant speed/scale [unless you're a genius of some kind] so probably gonna look to contract folks myself to help with things I'm not skilled in such as PCB design. But yeah this type of path is tricky.

If you're interested in learning more about the topic, I'd recommend reading "The Hardware Startup" ... its a good attempt to be brief regarding a complex set of topics and as a result is rather intimidating... but as long as you keep in mind you don't need to do {everything it takes to make a startup} to just sell some kits ...might be helpful? [not an affiliate link]

https://www.amazon.com/Hardware-Startup-Building-Product-Business/dp/1449371035

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Cheers!

I'm in one. I bought in around 1 year ago so haven't gotten a full cycle of returns yet. Ideally it should be a somewhat small percent of your nw. I'm not losing any sleep over what happens. Despite this specific investment being risky, I personally view my overall portfolio as being less risky having about 5% of it in of these investments rather than being 100% in vti/vxus.

BTW, here's a book that talks about these types of investments. I haven't read the book, but have read/listened to the author a decent amount and what he says makes sense to me: https://www.amazon.com/Hands-Off-Investor-Insiders-Investing-Syndications/dp/1947200275/

I "hate" telling people about this book because I feel I'm giving away secrets but it's a great, detailed primer about passive investing. I did about 6-7 syndications before reading this book and I still learned a few things. Great read.

https://www.amazon.com/Hands-Off-Investor-Insiders-Investing-Syndications/dp/1947200275

Hot Seat - The Startup CEO Guidebook by Dan Shapiro was an excellent read. Geared toward startups specifically, lots of actionable advice on how to structure the company, issue shares to owners, raise money, etc. It's mainly geared toward startups that go the VC route, but I thought it was a great read and I'm not planning on raising any money anytime soon.

If you're looking into real estate private equity, read The Hands-Off Investor.

It's a really good guide to investing in real estate syndications. The author is also the founder of one of the most reputable firms - I've invested with them.

Yes using other people’s money is a common way to grow your portfolio in real estate, however the first deal is always hard since it’s the trust you are trying to establish. A good route to go is to partner with a more experienced active investor and you offer up your expertise be it a network who you can tap into or sourcing deals.... this will take a good one year before you crack but keep at it. I would remain positive, everyone starts somewhere. You can find books like these that will offer some nuggets of information https://www.amazon.com/Raising-Private-Capital-Building-Peoples/dp/1947200984/ref=nodl_. Happy to help you, you can hit me up for more.

I recommend Jamey Stegmaier's book: A Crowdfunder's Strategy Guide. His experience is with board games, but the book makes a good stab at product-type independence. His blog is also great. Lots of reading, but really sound advice about how to get started.

As /u/exmormon13579 mentioned, it's illegal to have employees that are not paid minimum wage. If you can't at least afford minimum wage, then they would have to be equity partners.

My recommendation when just getting started is only bring on partners that are absolutely necessary to get your minimum viable product or service market tested and start generating revenue. Then hire your first couple of employees on the cheap (minimum wage or close to it) giving them equity on a regular vesting period. Keep 10-20% of total equity for these key first hires, because you want to be able to reward them for taking a chance on your company and making peanuts. But don't offer someone 1% ownership and then not even pay them minimum wage...

Check out Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook by Dan Shapiro. It goes through pretty much every aspect of creating a startup from distributing equity to first hires to raising capital and eventual exit strategies.

Because reddit is essentially a link aggregation site, simply browsing r/boardgames occasionally will help you find various content creators as their stuff gets posted here.

Another thing to do is to subscribe to various games on BGG. What this will do is that when people post their blog/video etc, it will tag that game and send you a notification. This should allow you to curate your own list of reviewers etc, for various things.

For Kickstarter evaluation, I use the very nice weekly Kickstarter Roundup thread (which can be accessed at the top of the sub) as well as browsing KS projects on my own looking for a few things (in no particular order):

1. Publisher: Is the game being published by a company I recognize or has a track record?
2. Designer: Do I recognize the designer? What other games have they published? If they are new, check to see who they are working with on the KS project.
3. Jamey Stagmaier has a book called A Crowdfunder’s Strategy Guide. Check to see if a KS project is following some of his suggestions such as: Do they have a quality intro video? Are the pledge levels clear? Do they have defined stretch goals? How much art/graphic design does the KS page and the game have? Is that good quality? Are there various run throughs and blogs who have shared an opinion about a game? etc
4. Are they offering deluxe components?
5. Do I like the art?

Also recommend you read The Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook. It covers more practical aspects of founding and growing a startup, including chapters on managing, company culture, etc. If you're not the CEO, buy it and give it to the CEO.

You may want to check out this book, a billion new people are going to join the internet in the next few years. He say in the book: if you want to make a billion dollars help a billion people. Focus on doing something of value that will help people. - http://www.amazon.com/Bold-Create-Wealth-Impact-World/dp/1476709564/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

FWIW, Andrew Aversa (game composer) wrote a book about running a successful kickstarter campaign. I haven't read it, but Andrew's a standup guy, and I've had this book recommended to me a few times by other people. Might be worth a look.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Ultimate-Kickstarter-Guidebook-Crowdfunding-ebook/dp/B00FE03D1Y

/u/ParmesanPlatoon- You really want to be asking two questions:

• What are all my investment options?
• How do I do Property Management (purchase and manage properties)?

Property Management can be a profitable/revenue generating endeavor, but it can also be very demanding and risky without being done well and without the proper knowledge. You might want to first asses other types of investments (stocks, angel investing, bonds, etc...) before you decide purchasing/owning property is what you want to do.

If you decide it is what you want, I have a few suggestions:

• Find a job working for a multi-family property or property manager in your area. Property management pays reasonably well and it would very quickly give you the business knowledge you need.

• The book I link to here which is a pretty good resource on how to actually manage a property effectively.

I work in the Property Management industry with a wide-variety of companies and have seen very well-run and profitable ones and poorly-run companies that go bankrupt.

Read 'Bold: How to go big, create wealth and impact the world' by Peter Diamandis. Pretty much exactly what you are looking for. Very interesting read for all entrepreneurs. http://www.amazon.co.uk/372/dp/1476709564