Campaign Success: Brickowner

Brickowner is a property investment platform who has successfully launched eight campaigns on Seedrs, raising over £1m. We spoke with Head of Marketing, Hugo Fairey to hear their equity crowdfunding success story.  

You’ve now launched eight successful campaigns on Seedrs. What keeps you coming back?

Early on, we made a decision only to raise what we needed, and have managed to grow our company on a mix of investment and revenue. This has preserved our share value for investors. Using Seedrs, we can quickly action these raises, efficiently communicating with a large pool of potential investors using a familiar process they understand.

Aside from capital, how has your Brickowner benefited from equity crowdfunding?

Our company has its own crowd, who can invest in properties, so it was clear from the start that raising money from the crowd would help build up our user-base. We like the idea that shareholders in Brickowner can become customers and advocates for the business. We also like it when our customers go on to become shareholders. It makes for a very healthy business and has worked really well for us.

How do you prepare for your Seedrs campaigns?

Working hard on the deck and pitch to communicate in simple terms what our company does and the problem it solves gives you a solid foundation to build upon. This is a constant process as the company grows and evolves, so the deck and pitch are evolving with time too. This has led to a unique pitch and a story that people have been able to follow as we’ve grown.

What do you think has been the key to your Seedrs success?

We try to be objective about our raise and our company. We consider the concerns that potential investors may have and answer any questions quickly and frankly. We realise this is about communication and remaining human. Before the lockdown, we ran regular evening events where any of our investors or customers could come and meet us. As everything is being done online, we think it’s important to remember to go offline and actually meet our investors, customers, and future investors. We think it’s really important that we have a chance to know each other, to chat, and to answer often quite challenging questions. Making sure the online element of crowdfunding has an offline, human, aspect has been important for us, and I think for many of our investors.

What would be your top crowdfunding tips?

Keep it human; try to be realistic and honest about your business. Be very organised, and don’t go into this thinking crowdfunding is easy.