Campaign Success: DeadHappy

Why did DeadHappy decide to launch an equity crowdfunding campaign?

I have to confess, I wasn’t an advocate in the first instance, but I was persuaded by the idea of giving our customers the opportunity to become investors. We take great pride in our customers (and how they view us) and are incredibly proud of our brilliant NPS scores – which is over 80. Crowdfunding has the ability to strengthen this relationship with our customers – giving them another reason to promote DeadHappy and provide us with honest and genuine feedback.

Did your Seedrs campaign meet your expectations?

Yeah, absolutely. We smashed through the target of £1.5m and, in the end, raised £2.75 from over 1000 investors – which was astonishing, particularly as a large proportion of these investors were customers.

How did you decide on your campaign target?

I would say setting your campaign target is as much of an art as a science. Momentum is crucial, and you want to strike the balance between setting a meaningful target for your growth plans whilst ensuring it’s not overly ambitious. Its always better to overfund by a significant amount than to just scrape hitting your target. For us, we were in a fortunate position, having secured lead investment from our VC partners who provided us with a good base. We then reached out to our customers and broader network to understand the level of interest before launching our campaign.

How did you prepare for your Seedrs campaign?

Like any investment around, preparation is everything. We started preparing for our campaign about 3 months before launching, making sure we had a really clear story that was easily illustrated in a simple deck. Unlike a normal fundraising round where you can tailor the pitch and walk someone through it, with crowdfunding, you have one shot to make your case. As such, we made sure that our pitch was as simple as possible whilst still including all the relevant information. Once we were happy internally, we then circulate it around to our network to get feedback and made adjustments accordingly.

What made you choose Seedrs over Crowdcube?

The truth is, it was very close and it’s important for any business to make up their own view and decision. One of the things that swayed it for us was Seedrs’s secondary platform and the concept of giving people an opportunity to realise profits before an exit event.

What was the most challenging part of your Seedrs campaign?

I think one thing I definitely underestimated was the time both myself and some of our senior team would spend responding to investor questions, which came in at all hours of the day. I would recommend anyone launching a crowdfunding campaign to look at other campaigns and come up with FAQs ahead of time.

What would be your top equity crowdfunding tips?

Firstly, I think anyone considering crowdfunding needs to have a rationale beyond raising money. For us, we’re a D2C business and saw the value of having customers as investors to promote advocacy and gain valuable feedback. Secondly, when launching your campaign, there’ll no doubt be other brilliant businesses on the platform at the same time, all competing for investment. As such, you need to make sure you stand out with an eye-catching pitch that clearly articulates your business.