View source for Building Project Sustainability into your DNA: Business models, hybrid corporate structures and feedback loops

Goals

* Understanding lifecycle
* Paying more attention to supporting developers and the reality that marketing IS code
* Understanding better how to take a product from self-funded to sustainable -- open source?
* Better ways to structure your business or projects to be sustainable

Discussion

* Corporate culture was so process heavy that it put the project we were working on went very late
* Knowledge sharing site (ideaencore.com)
** B-corporation to get investors
** Revenue model is transaction fees
** Subscription service for the library
** Self-funding for four years
** Some have to ask board to spend $500
** If they would need to develop their library it would cost several thousands
* We've done a lot of market research, but we learned a lot of stuff that didn't pan out
* Self-sustaining model is really important. How lean can it run?
** I've come from a venture model where there will be investors if we build something awesome
* Went to a conference (SoCap), but hype is way beyond reality
* Problem with social investment is that small projects aren't big enough (with those people funding 1m and up)
** "When you're ready to go global, come back to us"
* Kickstarter is at the bottom
* I have friends who have raised $70,000 on kickstarter -- they had a recognizable product
* With smaller projects, investors aren't getting "big social" or "big financial" returns.
* Foundation funding is also too siloed -- "we fund health and human services, your project is to broad"
* Three things are really jumping out
** Because of the expert nature of founders -- they have strong opinions -- you should focus on an emotional pitch for your investors (story, emotional connection)
** Really go for being as impactful as possible rather than as conformant as possible
** There's a learning curve. We're too big / we're too small. Work on strategically getting information about the funding sources -- you can really accelerate the process. Work with good people who understand how the funding sources work.
** Get informal relationships with others who have been funded, then build relationships up.
* For foundations, come at it: "You have a problem, and I can solve it." and work on capturing the program officer 
* There's a donut hole with a big gap in the middle -- the money is flowing easily when it's small
* What I'm hearing is that I need to listen to the funder and think about how my project can solve their problem.
* Gathering stories and problems for the community before presenting a pitch and distilling that -- creating a community of learning and practice
* Think about how you can tell your investors how they are already wasting their money by not using your capacity-building tool
* How did your organization build itself up? Global Integrity (indaba)
** We needed to get reporting and data out of a ton of people
** We went through a lot of iterations solving narrow, short-term problems with whatever problem we needed to solve -- so important to be aware of the problem
** We did some validation of the problems with their current technology -- watching people use their tech
* Here's a strategy
** Find a larger organization with a similar problem, build it for them, but say we'll take most of what's built and develop it into a general project
* Amidia (grant organization)
* One thing that is important is "how crowded is the room" -- if you're pitching in a less crowded room (fewer competitors), you have a better chance
* Transition into discussing persistence vs stubbornness
** Sometimes people just have a really bad idea and quit their day jobs -- first, test the shit out of it. Come up with experiments -- a site that says what you want to do and people start emailing it -- maybe you have a good idea. Think about the cheapest way to test it out -- paper, prototypes, etc.
** Get people paying for it early. The paying clients are asking for the right stuff.
* Who's the user? Is it an institution or a person?
* Maybe we could create a "truth-telling squad"
** A group of people who aren't invested and can call bullshit on ideas
** An honesty booth

Themes

* Self-sustaining is an important model, but when your growth outstrips your ability to fund it, you need outside funding
* There's a gap between small funding and big funding
* When dealing with funders, think about how you can solve their problem
* Work on developing back-channels and informal relationships with your organizational investors
* It's important to change expectations of how much funding you can get and think about how you can run more lean
* Focusing always on the shortest, cheapest way to solve a problem right in front of you that is really sucking for you helps you learn quickly
* Paying customers are the people you should listen to
* Institutionalizing your relationships can help maintain sustainability
* A record of strong credible work can help
* Find a truth squad to call bullshit on your ideas