Ooooby closed off their campaign last week (29 Sep) raising $286k from their crowd. To celebrate Barry and I, equipped with a couple of Yeastie Boys, headed over to Waiheke celebrate Ooooby’s success — success #12 for PledgeMe Equity!
It was great to sit down and informally to talk through the highs and lows of Ooooby’s campaign. Chats like this allow PledgeMe to evolve in how we help companies raise funds through their crowd.
Here were some of the success indicators Ooooby and PledgeMe reckon helped them run a successful campaign.
- Did it the Ooooby way: Things were authentic and genuinely Ooooby from start to finish. This was highlighted by putting the mission — helping to rebuild local food systems — before money. Working through this took (a lot of) time but its outcome ultimately resonated with the founders and their crowd (note: but required a lot of #2 & #3).
- Brought in professionals: Ooooby relied on professionals to help in spaces and places outside the team’s core capabilities. Their lawyer, accountants, PR agent, videographer and graphic designer all provided very valuable feedback and content in preparing their campaign.
- Prepped their crowd: Prior to launching, Ooooby had started telling people they were going to be running a campaign. By the time they were ready to launch they had more than 800 interested investors wanting to know more about their offer. This was done through effective communication and properly generating campaign awareness.
- IRL events: Although it was a pretty full on week one — Ooooby nailed it by setting up real life events with their crowd. Additionally, these events created new/shareable content along with an important understanding of the questions and feedback they received from their crowd given the uniqueness of the offer.
Crack photographer Barry G takes a snap of James and Pete. - Original content: As I alluded to above, Ooooby created original video content during their roadshow… but it didn’t stop there! The team properly planned and excellently delivered a range of communications — images, videos, blog posts, press releases etc — from the outset and throughout.
- Collaboration: Ooooby strategise in Google Apps and communicate or chat in Slack. Which is great, because so does PledgeMe. Open communication and collaborative tools can help get the most out of everybody.
- Knew there’s no such thing as a crowd in the cloud: As the campaign progressed Ooooby focused on the network their business and this campaign had generated to drive investment. It was a huge success.
- The Ooooby culture: Culture is a pretty big buzzword for startups and in many ways it has lost its true meaning. Sometimes media portray company culture as working in a hip(ster) office with table tennis/foosball tables and free drinks every Friday. To me, culture is the intangible how and why a team does what they do day in, day out. After the campaign closed at 8pm I’m pretty sure Ooooby single handedly almost brought down Auckland’s internet and mobile networks with phone calls and Skype as everyone was thanked and reminded for their roles in achieving this.
It’s been amazing to see a technology with global scalability help to make tangible local differences by exporting bytes not bites (as well as delivering delicious local food to Aucklanders doorsteps weekly).
