When I started looking for money for my project, I had no idea how to find funders.
I don't live in the US, I'm from Italy and spend too much living in different countries to be able to build the right relationships with funders.
So I decided to ask future potential customers.
The system I am building allows people to create their own online business.
In Italy I am known as "the guy who lives traveling" and everybody asks me all the time how I do it (I have a small online business...not a very big deal) and I kind of "sold the dream":
in short I said "I have been working online and traveling for 10 years.
Now I am going to build a platform so that also you can do this. I need money, would you pay in advance 1000 euro to be part of it?".
It worked and I collected 25.000..not much but enough to start.
If they decide to leave I have to give the money back (not immediately), while if they stay I made the sale before even writing a single line of code.
There's really a lot to say (it's going quite well), it deserves a few blog posts.
The best thing is not only that I got the money to go ahead but the community we built together.
Amazing people, with a common dream: work online and quit the day job to travel or simply have more control on one's life.
Nobody wants to be a millionaire.
I just wanted to share this with you as some may be interested about it.
Feel free to ask any questions of course and thank you for HN, it's my first read in the morning!
Greetings from Bali.
You ought to write up your plans, blog about your progress, and give as a link.
Please?