Pamela Castrucci is the latest entrepreneur to discover the benefits of crowdfunding.
On Nov. 12, she created a campaign on the popular crowdfunding website Kickstarter seeking $10,000 to help her build Voice Kite, a software product that will allow people to more easily preserve and share memories by tethering digital photos with audio recordings. As of Friday afternoon, with two hours of the campaign to go, 152 backers had pledged $10,983 toward the project.
Castrucci, a Scarborough resident who works in Unum’s legal department, said she was very pleased with the success of the campaign.
The Kickstarter money will go toward helping test the Voice Kite prototype, which is being built by local firms Shines & Jecker Laboratories and Big Room Studios.
Castrucci said crowdfunding may not be right for every entrepreneur because of the amount of work it takes to plan, execute and promote a successful crowdfunding campaing. But for her and her partners — Janna Smith, Kate St. Clair and Kirsten Schultz Marjerison — it is a way to work on the company’s brand, gain some valuable marketing and raise necessary funds. Only Kickstarter campaigns that reach their goals are able to collect the pledged money from their backers.
“Because I’m not independently wealthy we have to be smart and savvy and willing to throw ourselves out there,” she said. “The crowdfunding is part of that.”
The Kickstarter funds will supplement other grants and awards the startup has received from the Maine Technology Institute, the Maine Small Business Development Center and Gorham Savings Bank’s LaunchPad business plan competition. In April, it received the Emerging Ideas Award at the LaunchPad competition, which came with a $5,000 award. Most recently, MTI awarded the company a seed grant of $16,000 to help build its software prototype and to fund some market research.
She said the local support she and her team have received is amazing.
“All you have to do is ask and people are generous with their thoughts and expertise,” Castrucci said. “I just don’t know as a startup company if you’d have that kind of community in another state. It’s very cool. I cant imagine being in another state and trying to do this.”
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