Instead of a traditional investor or bank financing round, we deliberately opted for a crowdfunding campaign. After all, we are making our product for you, who should become part of us, because we can only initiate the energy revolution together.
Decentralised and with a focus on self-consumption, ready2plugin is the missing piece for feeding self-generated electricity into your own power grid safely and in compliance with standards. Simply connected between the inverter and the socket, our Stromwächter in conjunction with a current sensor determines your current power consumption and regulates the inverter so that only as much generated energy is fed in as you consume or operation on your power line is safe. The technical terms for this are: Zero feed-in and line reserve.
Let me record our thoughts on the most suitable platform for us.
What platforms are there?
We have had a look:
According to our research, there are a few more. However, they did not convince us in detail for the shortlist.
Nobody can avoid the top dog Kickstarter. Originating in the USA and active since 2009, Kickstarter is the epitome of crowdfunding. The fees to be paid are manageable at around 10% and the wide range of functions are already an asset that you would like to use for your campaign. In the meantime, Kickstarter has invested in German localisation, which enables new users to be onboarded in their native language. But USA and SaaS? My GDPR heart doesn't quite want to go along with that.
Indiegogo is a well-known brand, especially in the tech scene, and is in no way inferior to Kickstarter in terms of functionality. With fees of around 8%, they are in a similar range to Kickstarter. The onboarding of new users takes place in English. As a USA-based company, I have similar reservations to Kickstarter.
Startnext was our preferred platform from the very beginning. Reduced to the bare essentials, a company from Germany, orientated towards the common good - easy to love. If we don't voluntarily want more, the fees are just under 7%.
Long Story - Short
A majority decision was reached. We vote for the top dog. Time will tell whether this is a good or bad decision. I will report back.
(From other businesses, I now understand customers better: "If SAP can't do it, nobody can and it's not my fault." - Let's see how that feels over time).
You can register for the campaign soon. You can already add your name to the list here.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/indielux/ready2plugin-der-schlusse…
