Want to know one of the most under-rated benefits of crowd-funding? It’s something I learnt from a world-class expert…

Slava Rubin is the CEO of one of the leading crowd-funding platforms – Indiegogo. I met him in Chile when we were both speakers at a conference about creative business.

The obvious benefit of crowd-funding is raising money, of course. Advance sales. Pledges to buy perks. Donations of support.

There are less obvious benefits too.

And they fit with the ‘Lean Startup’ approach:

– Achieve Traction

– Get Market Validation

– Pivot as necessary.

Crowd-funding can help you do all these.

Clearly you want maximum traction. Lots of pledges. And fast.

But what if the money doesn’t pour in as planned?

You still have the opportunity to tweak your product, service or project. In other words you can pivot.

And the traction you do get, from people pledging funds, gives you another opportunity. To engage with them. To ask for opinions and suggestions. To listen.

Finally, if the worst comes to the worst, you can drop the project. “Fail fast” as the Lean Startup movement says. Take a step back, to rethink. And with the minimum loss of money, time and energy.

As a creative entrepreneur, I’m sure you have lots of other ideas anyway. You can test each of them using crowd-funding campaigns.

Then select the ones that have the most support. It’s a low risk way to test a new product. It’s a powerful way to do active market research.

I call it “crowd testing”.

It’s a major opportunity provided by crowd-funding platforms.

It’s often overlooked or under-rated.

Instead, you can embrace it.

What’s your experience of crowd-funding or crowd-testing?