In November we wrote about our plans for 2023 and set up an Indiegogo campaign to raise a seed fund to underwrite this next stage in the development of our network.
The campaign for us had a dual purpose, firstly to raise a fund we could use to put on events and kick start some of our educational content programs next year. As you’ll see, we didn’t hit our funding target online, but we’ve been having conversations with various backers who have expressed an interest in supporting our work in 2023. The amazing news is we think that we have the support lined up now for us to start developing the Huddles program and start to get a few other plans moving.
Secondly – and actually more importantly – it allowed us to start conversations with people and broaden our network of people who might be interested in what we do, this was also a huge success as we grown our network by over 30% across the last 4 weeks.
What did we learn?
- Everyone said getting a crowd fund campaign to land would be difficult, especially in December, in a cost of living crisis. They were not wrong!
- Indiegogo rejected a bunch of people’s payments / contributions – not sure why?! Thank you if you let us know this was the case, and we hope you’ll still be up for supporting us directly
- Our idea of offering tickets for huddles as a pre-sale really didn’t land with people. In future we’ll only sell real tickets for real dates.
- Against all our expectations, the ‘Golden Tickets’ that brought access across all 6 planned Huddles actually were most popular. Huge thanks for people who bought these perks. We’ll be thinking of a way of thanking you when we release Huddles tickets.
- There are some amazing companies out there looking for immersive clients to work with, being able to create those links is going to be a key part of our mission.
- People would prefer fewer, and more concise emails from us – duly noted!
What happens next?
- Anyone who has already contributed to the Indiegogo campaign should get a full refund.
- Anyone who contributed will get sent vouchers for free Huddles tickets to use in 2023 as a thank you for your support.
- The six Huddles will be going ahead but probably spread out throughout the year rather than monthly. The Writing* for Immersive Huddle in London on the 20th Feb is confirmed and tickets will be on sale in January.
- We have some amazingly exciting plans for other Huddles throughout the year, both in London and around the UK. Tell us what content you want on our Huddles page and sign up to our mailing list to get news of ticket releases.
- If you are a company and want to support us, we’ll be announcing ways of doing this in the New year. Drop us an email and we’ll make sure we contact you with information.
