I hit a home run in my first game, and they told me to go into the stands and pass my cap around. I made six dollars in nickels, dimes, and quarters.
If you're a teenager in Palo Alto launching an app, you know from the outset how you plan to finance your business.
One of the amazing things about the Internet is that the content creators are the gatekeepers. We can think of an idea and execute it quickly, and we didn't have to pitch the idea to a major network or convince a studio head to sign-off on the concept.
There are two types of films - one made by the big-time producers, the other is low budget stuff made by some producers who make films for the heck of it, they complete their films for small amounts, sell it at low costs with almost no publicity.
The kind of system Kickstarter uses has been used for hundreds of years. Unlike Medici-style patronage, where the richest people in town give large amounts of money, Kickstarter's system relies on the general public for funding projects, and rewards those backers.
For 'Filth,' we had about 12 producers on the thing. The opening credits go on for months. Most of them are actually financers rather than producers. And the only way that we could raise the budget without interference from a studio was to have a lot of different financers on board.
I am good at raising money.
If you're clever enough and creative enough to get a good film made, then you should be clever enough and creative enough to find ways to get it out there, one being something like Jameson First Shot.
Small- and medium-sized businesses need access to a diverse range of finance options, including non-bank lending. These new forms of finance are still small in scale today but they should, over time, bring additional choice and greater competition to the lending market.
As an independent artist, you're always figuring out how you're going to fund your next album.
Financing is always the hard part, especially if you don't have friends or family to back you, which was my case and the case for most designers.
In the first years after 1989, films were partly financed from the state's budget as well as by public television. Still, except for a few special cases, most films are made this way.
Maybe self-publishing is going to be an extra step added to publishing. Maybe what's going to happen is you self-publish a book, someone notices it - an agent? - and it goes from there into the traditional sphere.
I think we really feel like Crowdrise could be something that, 20 years from now, people take for granted because that's just how you do it, like if you're going to raise money for something, that's how you do it.
So many people wait around for funding, and if they're unsuccessful, they don't make the film; if you've got a good idea, that seems so pointless. There's always a way of doing it; you've just got to find it.
You can always make a film somehow. You can beg, borrow, steal the equipment, use credit cards, use your friends' goodwill, wheedle your way into this or that situation. The real problem is, how do you get people to see it once it is made?
I used the principles of Kickstarter to make 'She's Gotta Have It.' We filmed that in 1985 to 1986. The final cost was $175,000. I didn't have that money. It was friends, grants, donations. We saved our bottles for the nickel deposit.
I didn't go on a campaign of developers asking, 'Please give me money.'
Having gotten TV shows on the air, that's so much less work that trying to get the 'Veronica Mars' movie made.
It's hard to get personal films off the ground, and it's hard developing them.
Where can I earn money if not from my work? We do some films for money and some for creative satisfaction.
I gotta admit, when you've been doing this a long time, going out to the audience and asking for them to help out with crowdfunding, it's a gut check. You never know how that's gonna turn out. Luckily for us, it turned out well.
I have a film called 'A Lonely Place For Dying,' which is the most watched film on the Internet, over 3 million hits, more than any of Hollywood's films.
When I'm raising money, this fundraising, I'm thinking about the next fundraising. I'm thinking how I'm set up for it.
Learn to raise capital by any means necessary. That's your primary job as an entrepreneur. You must continually raise capital from family and friends, banks, suppliers, customers and investors.
