Headfunder is a young crowdfunding platform that is challenging the much larger and significantly more funded platforms like Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Founded by two young entrepreneurs, Nolan Thompson and Chris LaBonty, the pair entered into a competitive space and have generated some initial success. While still quite early in the game, Nolan and Chris shared that one of their successful campaigns, iPatch, switched over to HeadFunder after successfully running on a larger platform.

An interesting angle for HeadFunder are the tools they are developing to help project creators raising funds on their platform. HeadTalker is Nolan’s and Chris’ spin on Thunderclap – and it is totally free. Using HeadTalker includes a boost of 250,000 social touch points when using the product. Using Thunderclap – you are all on your own AND it costs some dough to use. HeadTalker is apparently growing faster than widely known Thunderclap.

Recently I had a chance to speak with both Nolan and Christ to learn more about their upstart platform.

Crowdfund Insider: Why did you decided to launch a rewards / donation based crowdfunding platform? Are you doing flexible funding or fixed or both?

HeadFunder: We have been following the crowdfunding industry for a while before we decided to launch our own crowdfunding platform. Just being able to experience the power of the crowd joining together to make amazing things happen from an outside perspective really made us want to be directly involved in helping our local community as well as the rest of the world with crowdfunding.

We felt that something was missing from the crowdfunding industry though. We saw that there were all of these platforms having complete strangers join in to make a campaign successful, but there was really no way for them to connect. Sure they could leave a comment or contribute with their real name to search online, but is that enough to keep the crowdfunding community connected? Shouldn’t the crowdfunding community be able to connect with each other to discuss campaigns found on the platform? That’s why we added features to allow you to follow users and private message them on our platform. We will be adding more features to show the importance of the social aspect of crowdfunding to really emphasize the power of a social crowdfunding platform.

HeadFunder offers both fixed and flexible funding for our campaign creators. Fixed campaigns have a fee of only 2% and flexible campaigns have a fee of 4%. These are some of the lowest, if not the lowest fees in the crowdfunding industry based on the research we have done. We feel that the campaign creators should be rewarded with these low fees because they are putting in almost all of the work to create and push start their campaign to be a success.

We have also introduced a way for campaign creators to get no fees for their crowdfunding campaigns. Users on our platform have the opportunity to earn HeadCoins. When they obtain enough of our currency, then they can use it to “pay” for no fees. This is a fun and interactive way for users to see how our platform works while giving them the opportunity to crowdfund for free.

Crowdfund Insider: What about competition with Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Tilt – and more?

HeadFunder: We know that we are not pioneers since the crowdfunding industry has been around for several years now, but we know we have the creativity to try and bring new features into the crowdfunding industry that haven’t been tried before. We work with our users to test new features and listen to their feedback on what they want to see in a crowdfunding platform. We have had many users come from those large name competitors and tell us they love our site more. Sometimes they like the style, other times it is just because they feel like they are treated like a human being rather than just a dollar sign.

In our opinion we believe that this industry is still in its infancy. Crowdfunding is getting more mainstream each and everyday, but you can still go up to people and ask if they have heard of crowdfunding and their reply might be no. We believe that until the entire world knows about crowdfunding, we can still make a name for ourselves by providing a platform that people love to use.

Crowdfund Insider: How are you sourcing crowdfunding campaigns? Why are people selecting your platform over the Kickstarter / Indiegogo duo?

HeadFunder: We haven’t spent a dollar on marketing to get our campaigns. Our focus is to interact with people online and build fantastic products. After our users have experienced our customer support and have used our platforms, they typically spread the word for us. We find most of our new users on social media channels especially Twitter. Social media is a great way to connect with others and we take full advantage of it.

We think people are selecting HeadFunder over Kickstarter or IndieGoGo because it’s new and different. One of the main reasons that we hear from our users as their reasoning behind using HeadFunder is because our pricing is way less than Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Some people are sick of paying 9% on IndieGoGo when they are doing most of the work to get their campaign launched. We are also very social and focused on building our community. Users can connect on HeadFunder more personally with each other than they can on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. We encourage our users to connect and treat HeadFunder as a social network for crowdfunding. We are constantly improving our product and adding new features for our users to enjoy.

Crowdfund Insider: How many campaigns have your launched on your platform? How successful have they been?

Headfunder: Headfunder and HeadTalker have had almost 700 campaigns launched by awesome campaign creators since we launched. All of our crowdfunding campaigns on HeadFunder have been created by people in the United States because we are not able to crowdfund internationally yet. International users can contribute to all HeadFunder campaigns though. We have people from over 50 different countries around the world who have requested to be notified when HeadFunder is available to be used to crowdfund in their country. Our HeadTalker campaigns have been created by people from every continent on the world. We get new campaigns everyday on both platforms so we definitely stay busy at HeadFunder HQ.

Crowdfund Insider: You mentioned iPatch. This is a product that has done 2 Kickstarter campaigns but decided to do their last one on your site. Why?

HeadFunder: Yes this happened and it is a great feeling. An amazing individual from New York chose to use our California based crowdfunding platform to launch his most successful crowdfunding campaign. We were so honored to get this experience and the campaign of the Eyepatch has became one of our friends.

The best answer to this question is his testimonial.

Crowdfund Insider: You are big believers in digital currencies like Bitcoin. You have created your own type of crypto currency with HeadCoins. Can you explain this approach?

HeadFunder: HeadCoins are a digital currency similar to bitcoins but different in a few ways. One reason is that instead of mining HeadCoins, users earn their HeadCoins by participating on HeadFunder. Users can earn HeadCoins by viewing campaigns, commenting, following users, gaining followers, starting campaigns, referring friends, and much more. This is a way for us to give back to our users in a fun and social way. Plus our users get rewarded for using our platform, which makes it more enjoyable to use. Currently you can “buy” no fee campaigns and soon you will be able to “buy” much more. We hope that we can allow these HeadCoins to be used to help fund crowdfunding campaigns featured on HeadFunder in the near future.

Crowdfund Insider: Headtalker is an interesting tool you use on your platform. It is similar to Thunderclap but growing faster. Please explain.

HeadFunder: HeadTalker is a revolutionary way to get your message viral on social media. Thunderclap was first, but so was myspace. There is a few key differences between HeadTalker and their platform. HeadTalker is 100% free for all features while Thunderclap charges up to $500 for the same features. These features are not anything that should be held hostage from the campaign creator which is the main reason why we provide them at no cost. HeadTalker also gives 250,000 free social reach to get a campaign creator started while Thunderclap gives no social reach to any starting campaigns. We feel that it is important to motivate the campaign creators. Plus our little boost of social reach shows them how quick and easy it is to have people add their support. We also focus on speed for our HeadTalker campaign creators. HeadTalker campaigns are approved within 12-24 hours while Thunderclap takes 72 hours for non paying campaigns. HeadTalker is also the first platform in the world to be available for LinkedIn users to add their support and create their own campaigns. Thunderclap has not added this feature yet.

Crowdfund Insider: You are still in startup mode. Are you looking for early stage investors?

HeadFunder: That is correct. We are still in the startup stage, but we are growing quickly. We have spoken with a few VCs and angel investors since we have launched and have received great advice and encouragement. We never accepted any funding from them since our expenses have stayed low and we are growing at a great pace with no money spent on advertising. We are already profitable and have self funded everything on our own. We have been friends since middle school and have known each other for over eleven years now so we work very well together. We are more than happy to speak with investors and see if they would be a good fit for us here at HeadFunder.

Crowdfund Insider: How do you see your two products evolving over the next 12 to 24 months?

HeadFunder: We believe there will be much evolvement with HeadFunder and HeadTalker within 12-24 months most likely. We have a vision of having 3 or 4 products in a year or two from now that will all relate to each other in some way to keep our community engaged while giving them more products to use. We are growing at an amazing rate and we will have many users and campaigns on both sites within that time frame so we will need to scale and grow our team accordingly.

Our users will also be able to make money by using our products because we want to give back to the people who use our products. We are slowly introducing new features where users can earn money and we know that in a year or two we will have users who make their living full-time or part-time by using our products.

Our main goal is to impact the world in a positive way, so if we can create a product that people love to use while allowing them to earn money, network, and gain exposure online, we are accomplishing our dreams.

Crowdfund Insider: What about equity crowdfunding. Do you have any interest in tackling that?

HeadFunder: Equity crowdfunding is the future of crowdfunding! We are very interested into entering this arena. We believe this will revolutionize the way startup companies get funded. Equity crowdfunding has the potential for helping people all over the world, who are not accredited investors, to have the opportunity to make a smart investment in the next big startup. We will always keep personal and reward based crowdfunding campaigns on HeadFunder, but adding equity crowdfunding to our platform would just be a different type of funding that would appeal to other types of users.

We want to be the most open and transparent crowdfunding platform out there, so we are going to make it a priority to have all funding types available to our campaign creators. We have even been brainstorming about doing an equity crowdfunding campaign for our company and having our users invest into us. We believe this could form a new type of company strength by allowing our users to be part of our success. At the end of the day users make the platforms come to life, which is why we care so much about making our users happy by providing them with platforms that they can enjoy to use to help them raise funds or gain exposure.