What is all this kickstarter talk about?

Kickstarter is a site for what is called “crowd source” funding. It allows businesses to collect pledges from a vast majority of people to help fund projects. The best explanation I can give is that it’s like a PBS pledge drive, except online. For pledges anywhere from $1 up you receive gifts as a “thank you”.

It’s a new type of financing, but many companies have found great success through using this site. There are around a dozen breweries on the site that have gotten the backing that they need to get going. Many of them with goals equal to or above our $30,000 goal.

One of the key elements to the site is that your funding is all or nothing. That means if we don’t reach our goal we don’t get any money. This makes it imperative that the campaign holder work to get the pledges and stay connected with their audience throughout the entire process. Before we could even begin we had to be approved for the project and go through a lengthy set-up process. The site makes sure you cover all of your bases to ensure that your project is well put together and successful.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tsbc/get-turtle-stone-brewing-company-brewing

So why not go for investors or a bank loan????

We do currently have a bank loan in the works, so this money is to make up the difference. As for investors, we a have a couple reasons why that just won’t work for us. The main issue is that in New Jersey anyone owning 1% or more of your company must be listed in the license. That means they go through the same background checks, credit checks, bank account reviews that we as the license holders do. Then their name is on that license and they assume some liability of the company. That’s not overly desirable to investors plus we’d have to go back and start the license process over from the beginning and we just don’t have the time or money to do that.

Another appeal to kickstarter is how fast it works. We have 30 days from project start to completion. That means if we are successful on October 16, $30,000 (minus fees) goes straight into our business account.

Shameless Plug for Your Money

It takes a lot to shamelessly ask for your money, but we are. We’re on a tight schedule and have to be more liquid to keep moving at the pace we have been.

With that said, any and all donations help. Even your dollar will help or five or ten or twenty. If we have 1,500 people pledge $20 or more we will reach our goal.

Shamelessly spreading the word will help too. We all have 300 friends or so on facebook. If we can spread the word far and wide we should be able to reach thousands of people. Tell you mother, father, brothers, sisters, best friends, in-laws, co-workers, business contacts and anyone you know that loves beer.

 A little later today we will be posting an email link that you can use to forward the message to the non-facebookers in your life.

We are people just like you with a dream. Help us make it a reality! You will get cool gifts and get to brag that you helped a micro-brewery get off the ground. You can sit at the bar drinking a pint of Turtle Stone beer and know that you made it happen.