For us at TIKI, the decision was not the easiest, but it is the one that stayed the truest to our core values of trust, transparency, and user-centricity.
Raising money for a start-up is pivotal, obviously. The check-writers are the driving force in separating the wheat from the chaff in early-stage companies, and it is no secret to anyone that these investors play a pivotal role not only in the funding of the company but also in future decision making. Ensuring you have the right investors is a process that involves quite a bit of forecasting. Money is money, but a stake in the company shapes the way the company operates.
With user-centricity playing such a vital role in what we’re trying to accomplish, we were blessed with fortuitous timing. Equity crowdfunding is new. It’s a bit confusing from a legal perspective, and also a big risk. You can’t equity crowdfund and engage in a traditional funding round simultaneously. In fact, you have to wait 30 days in between them, so you better be damned sure that the route you take is the one that makes you most confident.
For us, it’s a no brainer. While we’ve raised capital in traditional manners in the past, the money raised came from close friends and acquaintances. These are people who not only believe in what we are doing, but also believe in us as individuals.
To us, equity crowdfunding is no different. We opened up ownership stake to the public because these are the people who will actively be using our product. They are the heartbeat of everything we do and the standard by which we judge our decision-making. Since day one we’ve heavily relied on user input in regard to everything from feature implementation and functionality to brand design. This was our pledge from the get-go, and to stray from that path would be straying from our core beliefs.
For me personally, one inspiration comes from the world of professional sports. The Green Bay Packers are the smallest market in all of pro sports, but arguably the organization that invests the most in their fans. Objectively, their fans are also the ones who invest the most in the organization. Literally.
The Packers is unique in that the team is owned by the fans. They label themselves as a “community project, intended to promote community welfare.” About 360,000 shareholders own the five million outstanding shares.
This fan-centric approach generates unprecedented trust in the organization (by NFL rules, they are the only team allowed to take such an approach). Sharing a third common core value with us, transparency, the Packers is also the only professional sports team that releases its annual financial balance sheet.
The unique way the Packers organization is run creates a dynamic that is truly catered toward the fans. In the TIKI realm, we hope to create a similar dynamic that truly caters to the users, the ones to whom our success is directly tethered.
At TIKI, we didn’t have to force anything to do things differently. By nature, our founders have gone against the grain, and this endeavor is no different. In order to successfully enact change in an environment when corporations operate in a profit-at-all-costs model, thinking and doing things outside of the box is required. At this point, doesn’t it sound a bit ridiculous that more companies don’t actually practice user-centricity, even though many preach about it? Talk is cheap. Watch what people do, not what they say.
We talk the talk and walk the walk. We have to. To stay true to our core values, everything is open-sourced. There’s no wizard behind the curtain. Crowdfunding is our way of saying: this project is for all of us. It’s not just for those big-check writers. It’s for anyone with a little bit of extra cash and a belief that together, we can and will accomplish our goals: to return data to its true owners, we the users.
We hope you’ll consider joining us as we take one more giant step toward data privacy and fairness on the internet.
Let’s roll.
By Shane Faria, Co-founder & User Champion, TIKI