4 Questions with Kickstarter Tech Entrepreneur Giadha DeCarcer
Giadha De Carcer successfully funded her Kickstarter campaign last week, almost at the last minute, to fund a documentary series on a 90-day period where she will attempt to launch a startup company from the ground and at the same time seek romance and a balanced life. In the wake of the funding, De Carcer reflected on the campaign and on what comes next for her and her big plan to showcase what it's like to be a female tech entrepreneur in Washington, D.C.
1. How were you feeling as it got down to the wire and almost didn't happen and then after you pulled it off and got the funding?
Terrified! It took us a week to go from $3,800 to $4,000 and then between last Friday and Sunday we raised over $20K. People had been Tweeting at each other to pledge right after your article came out, and it was so exciting to see so much activity amongst folks we had never met who really got what we are trying to do. With just a few minutes to go we were still $1800 short and were facing loosing it all, it was insanity! We had people on the phone, who were also on the phone with other people, their mother's, boyfriends, sisters anyone they could get a hold of at almost midnight on a Sunday, and we just pulled it together at literally the witching hour. We had people doubling, tripling and quadrupling their existing pledges, and in the end that's what happened, two of our amazing supporters and friends Kataliya Rudolph and Ridge Banks closed the gap for us at 11:57! I just looked at the screen when it turned to $30,048 and stared at it until the clock ran out to make sure it was not going to go back down LOL I feel I saw magic happen, because our odds were NIL – Kickstarters either get 33% funded by the third day, first week latest, or fail. I would be curious to find out how many Campaigns succeeded in raising over 80% of their funding in the last 3 days of their Campaigns, not to mention how many of the successes are usually from female-led projects ;)
2. What are the next steps for you now that the show is a go for later this month?
We are now structuring the filming calendar to ensure we have a solid plan forward to incorporate all the elements we want to showcase: the Lean Startup Model roadmap, the Relationship & Dating Coaching, and the open discussion amongst DC Female Entrepreneurs to unveil those tricky topics that we truly need to air out and address. We are also bringing sponsors on-board who are DC locals as we want to show how vibrant the DC Entrepreneurial community is, especially amongst the female population, and last but not least, we will begin shooting early June – that's when the real work and fun will begin!
It is a lot of work because the series will be unscripted, which means we will not control what is said. In order to however ensure we do cover those important topics, we must do a lot of initial planning so we can at least introduce them at various stages and capture how the discussion evolves.
3. Since the funding (and the story too in small part) have you gotten new or different feedback that has stuck out for you in terms of what was said or who said it?
YES! Absolutely, and it has been very positive! I actually do think the article was able to bring attention to the right elements of our project and it has resonated with a lot of people. We have been receiving emails and Tweets encouraging us to capture these authentic aspects of what career driven women tackle everyday, and have even been thanked for bringing it to light via such a mass medium. We know there has been a lot of coverage in blogs, and that is fantastic, but we believe that in order to truly begin driving social change and educating both females and males about how gender role expectations is affecting us all, we need to 'show' it. We have also started to gain more traction as far as our plan to launch subsequent seasons around the US and abroad to truly capture a diverse set of female entrepreneurs, experiences, and hopefully successes, thus allowing us to feel we are doing justice to a well rounded dialogue.
4. What if anything would you do differently for the crowdfunding if you were to do it all over again?
I would have slept for a week straight before launching and prepared all my meals in advance for the 3 weeks of the Kickstarter! My partner in crime Noreen Butler and I did not sleep, rarely ate, and barely managed to shower most days! We were determined to make it happen, and that took a toll on us physically. Campaigning on this kind of platform is hard, especially with the social media element and the fact that if you are not on the phone, texting or on your computer promoting it, you should be out meeting people, recruiting them to pledge, and participating in as many events as possible that will allow you to bring attention to your project – IT'S EXHAUSTING! I will say this however, I sincerely believe that online crowdfurnding may very well be one of the best things that could have happened to female entrepreneurs. I believe it will mitigate a lot of the fund-raising challenges women in business are facing, and will hopefully empower many more female entrepreneurs to secure seed funding early on; especially if the SEC approves the inclusion of small equity divestiture! Doing away with awkward meetings with male-dominated VCs and Angels would probably be welcomed by some of us ;)
You can learn more about De Carcer and her upcoming series at the Love & Business Kickstarter page.
