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Her First Workshop

Yannan came to her first workshop on campaign creation (which we run every Wednesday on Skype for those interested by the way – book here – https://crowdfundcampus.com/workshops) with an idea for a Tea Rooms in the lovely town of Royal Leamington Spa. For those that don’t know Leamington Spa, it is already teeming with tea and coffee shops. But Yannan’s idea was unique in one way – her products. Opening a tea shop was going to require a large amount of preparation and commitment, and from a crowdfunding point of view, she was going to have to pre-sell an awful lot of tea, coffee and desserts in order to raise the funds necessary to cover premises, fitting, rent, rate, bills and wages to name just a few things to get started. More importantly, how did she know people would buy her unique teas and desserts?

So Yannan went away from her first workshop with me, a little… flustered. In a little under an hour, she received a barrage of information about how to create a campaign but more importantly a number of questions to consider about how she was going be ‘crowdfund ready’ i.e. how much was the premises going to cost? how long was she going to commit to this? Did she have other funding sources she wanted to match fund? When would she be able to deliver her rewards? Etc ….

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What next?

I’ll be honest, at this point, I didn’t expect her to come back. We launch about 1 in 5 of the campaigns that start the creation process on our platform. It’s part of the reason we have such a high success rate (70%) because we give these students and graduates a healthy dose of reality and questioning before we click the launch button. It is a part of the ‘value add’ to our University partners.

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Fast Forward 2 months

On March 14th Yannan’s name pops up on my calendar, she’s booked in her second workshop on campaign marketing, but the campaign now had a different name… ‘Teamisu’.

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In the Interim

So rather than delve straight into the workshop, I needed to find out what has happened in the last 2 months. Yannan had done 3 things vital to any entrepreneur at this stage of her business.

1) Focus

Rather than take on a whole tea shop with an array of teas, coffees and desserts, she had decided to focus on one product – her concoction of tea and tiramisu ….’Teamisu’. It comes in 4 flavours and is still #FundingOnCampus. Pre-order here: https://crowdfundcampus.com/campaigns/teamisu

2) Found first customer/partner

Yannan approached ‘Warwick Retail’ who I think have the monopoly of retail and culinary outlets on Warwick campus. They had asked her whether she could prove demand and set her a challenge; prove that students want to buy these products and they would consider stocking them. It’s amazing that Warwick Retail are open to such propositions and a tribute to the University’s approach to Enterprise. Universities have massive potential to be ‘playgrounds’ for new ideas (sometimes they just need to loosen up a little bit).

3) Prepared a market test

Yannan arranged to have a market stall on the Piazza at the University of Warwick on the 27th April, and this is where the crowdfunding campaign comes back into play. Having ran a crepe stall at markets and festivals for a year, I know its much easier to keep a queue, than start one. But by pre-selling desserts through Crowdfund Campus for collection on the day, Yannan is starting her queue. The combination of successful crowdfunding campaign and successful market stall (I am sure it will be) can give her the confidence that the market wants her products, and she can take that evidence back to pitch to Warwick Retail. Genius.

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Back to the campaign

So now Yannan’s campaign looked very different. What started out as a Tea Room in Leamington, was now a market test of ‘Teamisu’ on campus. She de-risked her proposition for her and future wholesale customers, she conducted a market test that proves her customers want her product and more importantly, that they are willing to pay a price for her product that contains a profit margin. And it is this type of test that uses crowdfunding to prove desirability, feasibility and viability of a new product, that I am constantly talking about, and is our driving ethos behind Crowdfund Campus. It is not about how much money you raise, it’s about conducting a replicable test that could be scaled to become a business.

At the time of writing, her campaign is overfunding with 9 days to go, 115 Teamisu’s have been pre-ordered from 34 backers, and I still need to place my order.

I guess now the only remaining proof is in the pudding

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Thanks as well to Yannan

In the day to day challenges and frustrations of running a business, you can easily forget why you started it. But I’m so happy Yannan persevered, and I have this story to tell. Thank you Yannan for inspiring me, and reminding me why I started Crowdfund Campus.

I’ll be seeing you on the 27th for some ‘Teamisu’.

The University of Warwick has launched a crowdfunding campaign in order to create a Student Enterprise Fund. This marks the first time a University has raised funds in this way for this purpose and is a tribute to a University itself acting in an entrepreneurial manner.

Enterprise has been a notoriously difficult area for Universities to handle. Whilst they value and want to promote the enterprising activities of students, and indeed see it as a vital part of a student’s personal development, Universities are slow, lumbering, bureaucratic beasts that struggle to show or even understand the pace of action required to develop a product or service and take it to market. They insist on putting committees in place to manage committees who oversee partnerships between groups who develop strategy to present to the managing committee, and round the cycle spins. (All have bizarre acronyms which no-one really knows what they stand for)

Some Universities have whole student enterprise departments, employing between 10 and 20 staff, others leave enterprising activity to one lonely but dedicated Enterprise Officer, and inevitably they find more doors blocking their path than are open. These departments rest on the principle of inspiring enterprising action through events and the use of external companies.

Students on the other hand, come in October and leave in June (roughly, depending on the specific University calendar). They have studies, extra curricular actives and many seize the opportunity to turn their spare time to something entrepreneurial. But their short University life-span does not easily match University politics. They need fast answers, and dedicated programmes to develop their enterprising skills.

At the University of Warwick, much of the Enterprising activity has come from the students themselves. In 2007 a group students approached the Students Union to start the Warwick Entrepreneurs Society. They came up with Dragon’s Den like competitions, and took inspiration from the Apprentice to run challenges around campus. Some of these early members have gone on to found multi-million pound businesses and non-profits like NACUE (secured £3.5 million in government funding) and Buffer (raised £3.8 million dollars), and some provide experiences to students that still exist to this day like TheUniExpress. Each year, students pass through the society, generate ideas, and try and implement them. In 2014 two students set up an Incubator, which took 10 start-ups from idea generation through to working prototypes and businesses with customers.

What students don’t realise is that the University has provided them with the environment to make this happen. They brought these students together, provided space, equipment and allowed them to take part in these activities. The University actively looks for ways to support this activity, and sees the society as a vital tool in delivering it’s own Enterprise agenda. The question is how does the University go from a facilitator of entrepreneurial activity to an instigator of it.

Enter the 50 Years of Warwick Enterprise Campaign.

Warwick was built on the foundation of entrepreneurial thinking and fundraising. The founding Vice-Chancellor Lord Butterworth persuaded industry to protest in the 1960s when the University Grants Committee resisted his ideas (the idea of the Vice-Chancellor leading a protest would seem quite unusual these days). According to his obituary, when he was refused funds to create a business school he went raised them himself to establish one anyway. He and Lord Rootes, “were an extraordinary fundraising combination and established a tradition at Warwick that success could not be achieved on government funding alone.” Michael Shattock

There are a large number of alumni who were involved in Enterprising activity at Warwick, whether they were the founders of the Entrepreneurs society, or benefitted from it’s existence over the last 8 years. There are Warwick Business School alumni who over the last 40 years have reached positions high up in corporates due to the entrepreneurial attitudes they developed whilst studying at Warwick. There are alumni from all over the University who have gone on to found lifestyle businesses or businesses they have gone onto sell or are now publicly traded.

The 50 Years campaign is about using the knowledge and experience of these alumni, and matching it with the enterprising students that pass through Warwick every year. It’s a crowdfunding campaign and a crowd sourcing one. With the funds generated and the knowledge accumulated over the last 50 years, Warwick can become an instigator in developing the enterprising activity of it’s students and take it’s traditionally entrepreneurial fundraising attitudes, and apply them once again to make this campaign the first of it’s kind for a University.

What is your campaign about?

Passion Hunting is a coaching service on a mission to inspire the Millennial generation today to be daring enough to explore who they really are and what they really want in life, to step into their leadership and authenticity and to live a fulfilling life by leaving a legacy for the world.

As the girl behind this business, I want to provide the best coaching service this generation need and deserve. In order to do that, I demand myself to learn from the best in this industry. And the first person that come to my mind is Tony Robbins. Among the millions of people he has coached, his clients include some of the biggest names in different fields: Hugh Jackman, Pitbull, Serena Williams, Donna Karan, Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton etc. When I attended his Unleash the Power Within Seminar back in March 2015, I was blown away by how much a person can change under his influence just within 4 days. I was thrilled to discover that he, with a 3 other world renowned coaches, designed a coaching training programme (Robbins Madanes Training) for aspiring coaches so that they can make a difference in people’s life just like he has. I want to be one of them. Therefore I’m fundraising to take this training so I can learn the skills needed to change people’s life.

What attracted you to crowdfunding?

First of all, crowdfunding is a fantastic way to build a bridge between your business and your target audience. Through crowdfunding campaign, you will be able to talk directly to your audience about your vision, your commitment and your drive. Platform like Crowdfund Campus gives small business owners an opportunity to expose their ideas to the masses.

Crowdfunding is also a great learning experience for entrepreneurs. To build a successful campaign, many skills are required like marketing, communication, community building, PR and time management. I consider it as a fabulous warm-up for the official launch of the business.

What motivates you?

What motivates me is a compelling future and vision with my business. Whenever I’m caught up with daily blur, the thought of what a difference I can potentially make is enough to motivate me to get back on track.

I also have accountability buddy on this entrepreneurial journey. We share our weekly business plans on Sunday and review our week on Saturday together. We keep each other motivated and on track.

What is your biggest challenge?

My biggest challenge has always been my own limiting beliefs. Growing up in a traditional Chinese family, I’ve always been the quiet and shy one. I never spoke up about how I felt and allowed other peoples in my life plan my life for me, Two years ago, I thought the only to live a good life is to be an accountant and to marry someone rich.

For me, becoming an entrepreneur is a huge jump. It took my 2 years to unlearn a lot of limiting beliefs and stories I “learnt” from my childhood and teenaged years about me and my future. And I’m still in the process of recovering from my years of self-sabotage. But I do believe, if I can overcome this challenge, I can use my story to inspire today’s minority group, especially women, to start their own business and create their own success stories.

What did you have for breakfast?

I had my favourite green smoothie with filtered water, baby spinach, ripe mango, frozen blueberries, 2 big conference pears, 3 scoops of vanilla protein powder, some wheatgrass powder, 2 teaspoons of fish oil, plenty of chia seeds and probiotics. I only have one body, I choose not to compromise it.

How would you explain crowdfunding to your gran?

Crowdfunding is the 21st century way to inject enough cash into a launch of a startup using the support of a crowd.

Who is your favourite lecturer and why?

I have 3 favourite lecturers: Rachel Dickenson, Louise Gracia and Rob Poole. Although they teach very different subjects but they all have one thing in common: they encourage students to challenge the status quo and openly discuss the systematic flaw in today’s capitalist society.

Are you part of any clubs or societies at Uni?

I’m not active in University’s societies or clubs, but I created my own community in 3rd year with a group of like-minded people. We gather weekly to have honest conversation about our ambitions, dreams and beliefs. As the facilitator for these sessions, I would use my knowledge to guide the discussion with prepared topics and questions. This was my first attempt at giving regular group coaching to university students.

See Jing’s campaign here: https://crowdfundcampus.com/campaigns/passion-hunting