5 fundraising tips from a founder who raised $3M on a community round

* This week's newsletter is supported by ​Wefunder​ - the largest Regulation Crowdfunding platform. Wefunder has enabled startups like Substack, Mercury, Replit, and Levels to raise more than $5M from their customers and community.

You can save up to $50,000 when you visit them ​through this link​. You can also ask me for an intro to their team to get the same benefit - I've been working with Wefunder and their founders for years, and they are awesome.

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Caroline Strzalka is a co-founder of ​Overplay​, a platform that lets anyone turn their videos into games and share them with the world instantly (like TikTok for gaming). After their recent appearance on Shark Tank, Mark Cuban became one of their investors and advisors.

Overplay has raised over $3M on Wefunder (​wefunder.com/overplay​). We asked Caroline for some tips on running a successful Community Round.

Here are her top 5:

1) Traction really helps: As with all fundraising, it’s easier to run a community round when you already have some traction. When you do decide to run a community round, commit to it wholeheartedly. There are some companies like Substack that can raise $5M in 24 hours from thousands of their users, but for most startups, raising on Wefunder takes time, creativity, and effort, consistently over multiple months. You can't half-a** it. If you don't have the capacity to run the round, hire a consultant who specializes in investment crowdfunding to help you.

2) Get ready. Even before your raise, polish up your LinkedIn so that you look irresistible, and have everyone on your team do the same. Create a list of all potential investors and allies. Make sure the investment terms are tight. Soft circle anchor investors, and a Wefunder lead investor. As with all fundraising, preparation is critical.

3) Make an absolutely killer raise page. First, create a video where you speak as the founder and show off your awesome product, talking about the problem you're solving. Lay out your fundraising page so that it tells a succinct, exciting story. Give stats and facts with charts and additional video. Create a downloadable deck of no more than 10 slides. Put the deck on DocSend so that people have to give you their email addresses to view it. Put those email addresses in your email list.

4) Raise privately first. When you hit a big milestone, like $1M, make the round public. Again, as with all fundraising, strong execution of community rounds is a lot about telling a story and creating FOMO. You should raise from your private network first - invite friends and family, former colleagues, classmates, etc., to invest in your Wefunder at a discounted valuation. Once you reach your threshold, launch publicly with a huge story saying you raised $1M in 24 hrs (but you were really always raising privately in the background before you went public).

5) Communicate consistently with investors and allies. Send out regular investor updates, push out content on social media -- LinkedIn, Facebook, updates on the Wefunder page etc. Attend pitch events and pitch your company -- getting folks to take pics, etc. so that you can share with investors. You always want to tell them something new and exciting that's going on. Coordinate closely with the Wefunder team as they push out your company to their millions of investors.