Case Study: BucketFeet

Just to reiterate, the best part of our business is getting to meet all the amazing entrepreneurs who are making their goals and dreams a reality. Every day, we’re blown away by the purpose and passion of the entrepreneurs we talk to. Bucketfeet, a “wearable art” shoe company based in Chicago, was something else all together. The founders, Aaron Firestein and Raaja Nemani, are fantastic people, their mission of building communities is great and their shoes are, well… really cool!

Aaron and Raaja met while traveling in Argentina and the two bonded over the next two years over their love for social entrepreneurship, travel, art, and of course sneakers. During that time, the demand for Aaron’s “wearable art” (a hobby of painting and designing on white-canvas shoes) was steadily increasing, but Aaron never had the capacity or time to make enough shoes to fulfill customer demand. In May 2010, the two decided to unite and make a real business out of Aaron’s unique, hand-drawn shoes, and use BucketFeet to help others and promote the arts. Now, BucketFeet is partnering with children-focused non-profits and collaborating with guest artists from around the world to make a difference and promote the arts.  So buy a shoe, build a community, and get involved!

With so much pent-up demand, Aaron and Raaja knew they were on to something and that they needed to expand. Instead of going to a bank for a loan or equity investors for start-up capital, they decided to leverage the support of their friends, family, and network of supporters to get the business off the ground.

Bucketfeet used a 3 year term with a 5% revenue share. By not giving up equity in their ProFounder raise, the business is still in a great position to raise money through an equity round in the (potentially) near future.

BucketFeet was able to raise $60k from 33 investors. As one of the first ProFounder entrepreneurs, BucketFeet’s raise really showed everyone what it takes to successfully crowd fund for your business. We caught up with Raaja to ask him a few questions about his raise and what he took away from the process:

Did you have a specific strategy when you started your raise and how did your strategy change throughout the raise process?
As we began the process, we really didn’t have a specific strategy. We knew the different state securities laws and just tried to target people who were most likely to invest from States that had the least limitations.  Our strategy definitely changed throughout the process.  Our assumption was that lots of people would invest a small amount, but it turned out that the people who were interested actually wanted to invest more significant amounts of money.  Because of this, we shifted our strategy to invite investors from in California and Hawaii, which were the relatively more restrictive states we had avoided in the beginning.

Were there any specific tactics you used that worked better than others?
The most important thing we did was just stay on people without trying to annoy them (although we probably did that too): calling, emailing, etc.  Initially, we had to be very proactive to educate people on ProFounder, the terms and process, and then tell them about the business.

Other than raising money, did you see any additional benefits to using ProFounder and going through the crowd funding process?
Crowd funding helped us raise awareness about our company.  Raising money from lots of investors gave us credibility.  Also, some people thought it was a really creative/cool way to get supporters involved.  It goes along with our brand’s theme of building communities.

If you could give an entrepreneur (who was going to use ProFounder) one piece of advice, what would it be?
I would advise entrepreneurs to educate people on ProFounder, the process and the agreement terms well before publishing your raise.  It took people a lot of time to get up to speed or spend the time to get up to speed.  Most of our money came in the last week.  Also, I would suggest being very proactive and staying on people with reminders.  Be prepared to change your strategy.

Raaja’s answers confirmed everything we’ve been hearing from other entrepreneurs who’ve used the platform: It’s all about timing! All the extra effort you take to plan ahead by preparing potential investors, educating them on the opportunity as well as the process, pays huge dividends as soon as you publish your raise.  In addition to pre-raise planning, it’s also helpful to think about timing in terms of post-raise momentum building. For BucketFeet, successfully closing their raise coincides perfectly with their public launch of their first line of shoes. Great timing. As excited as we are to have helped BucketFeet raise $60k, we’re equally excited about buying a pair of shoes when they officially launch in the next few weeks!

Make sure to sign up here to get notified of BucketFeet’s launch!