Crowdfunding is everywhere you look.  It’s fairly easy to come across everything from the innovative to groundbreaking to the downright ridiculous emerging from a platform and concept that has exploded in the past five years.  But for every Pebble and Jibo, there are hundreds of campaigns that fail to gain support and achieve their financial goals. Increasing competition is making it harder and harder to gain significant traction and turn an idea into a successfully funded campaign.

Generating some buzz and awareness about a new product or concept can be difficult, but Prefundia, a showcasing index for crowdfunding projects, has now made it incredibly easy to do so. Based in Provo, Utah, Prefundia has quickly emerged as the number one platform for “coming soon” pages, enabling potential entrepreneurs to quickly and easily (and for free) build a community around their idea before launching it on a popular crowdsourcing site like Kickstarter or Indiegogo.  

All a user has to do is set up a project page, and they can immediately begin building a following and community during the critical prelaunch phase.   Project owners can customize their pages with pictures, text, video and audio files.  Additionally, Prefundia provides project owners with stats on page views, number of followers, and a comments section to collect constructive feedback or suggestions.  The early numbers coming from the startup would suggest a strong connection between community building and a successful crowdfunding campaign.   More than a thousand projects started on Prefundia have gone on the raise a total of $17M.  On average, its users have raised  412% more money than a regular Kickstarter campaign. 

Recently, Prefundia made the decision to open its prelaunch platform to mobile app developers wishing to use the site to test the viability of their idea.   I got a chance to chat with Daniel Falabella, one of Prefundia’s co-founders about that decision, his take on the Provo startup scene and the future of crowdfunding.  Check out the Q&A below

Q: How did all the co-founders meet and where do the responsibilities break down?
The four of us all met eachother through a combination of BYU and various events or extra-curricular activites.

Q: What are the benefits and drawbacks of being a startup based in Provo? 
I think it depends on what you compare Provo with. If you compare Provo with Silicon Valley, it has quite a bit of drawbacks (investment, vision, connections).  If you compare Provo with Cando, North Dakota then Provo is heaven for entrepreneurs in terms of talent, ecosystem, expenses, and opportunities.

Q: The comments section is a simple but probably critical aspect of Prefundia.  Do you see many projects revamping their original product or pitch based on comments from site visitors?
Not as much as you'd think.  While we built Prefundia to be a testing Platform, most people use it as a launching platform, so we adapted

Q: Is it a deliberate effort to have Prefunida look and feel like Kickstarter even though other major crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo and Crowdtilt exist? 
Yes, although we just changed the design.  The thought process was simple: Kickstarter is #1 by a lot, so why reinvent the wheel?

Q: How does Prefundia make a profit?
We decided to utilize a freemium model for Prefundia.   Users can create and host a project page on Prefundia for free and they have the option to pay for powerups.

Q: Any thoughts on Crowdsourcing and its future?
I'll keep it brief, rewards-based crowdfunding equals pre-orders, despite of all the Kickstarter PR efforts to prove otherwise

Drive 40 minutes south of Salt Lake City, and you’ll eventually land in Provo, Utah, the state’s third largest city with a population of just over 120,000.  With the Wasatch mountains covering the eastern side of the city and Utah Lake sitting just to the west, Provo’s natural setting and proximity to top notch skiing make it a dream destination for lovers of the outdoors.  However, having spent the past few months traveling weekly to Provo for work, I came to realize the town is home to much more than mountains, missionaries, and an odd condiment called fry sauce.  It’s also the setting of rapidly growing tech startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Numerous high tech businesses such as Adobe, Ebay, and Microsoft found the triple threat of low unemployment, an improving economy, and relatively cheap cost of living too good to pass up.  They have all set up offices in the Utah Valley over the past few years.  Large companies with global call centers or aspirations for international expansion have been quick to leverage the large number of multilingual missionaries belonging to the omnipresent LDS community in Utah.  The emergence of a strong business environment can be found on a single street in North Provo that houses three billion-dollar companies (Ancestry.com, Vivint, and Qualtrics) all within 1,000 yards of each other.  Moreover, just last year Google selected Provo as its third location to receive the highly sought after Google Fiber, a major benefit to companies both large and small seeking ultra-fast internet speeds.

The secret of Provo and its entrepreneurial hub has been difficult to keep as more and more media outlets have covered the rapid growth of Provo and the Utah Valley, officially naming the region “Silicon Slopes” for its growing population of high tech companies and proximity to skiing meccas like Park City and Sundance. In 2013, Forbes rated Provo the No. 2 city on its list of Best Places for Business and Careers.  Additionally, Fortune magazine recently ran a cover story on Utah’s rockstar business owner Josh James and his business intelligence company Domo that landed a cool $125 million in funding last year.  James, a Mormon who served his two year mission trip in Tokyo attended BYU before co-founding web analytics company Omniture which went public with James as its CEO at 33 and then was acquired by Adobe three years later to the tune of $1.8 billion. 

James is a part of a lengthy list of former BYU Cougars that are helping to shape the tech scene in Utah.  The prevalent Mormon community helps to create a heavily shared town and gown atmosphere in Provo that has delivered a noticeable impact on the blossoming startup community.  According to an annual state report, approximately 80% of students at BYU are multilingual, supporting a more nimble and proficient workforce required by many young tech focused companies. The highly regarded Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at BYU also helps to fuel the startup scene in Provo.  Ranked as the #4 Undergraduate programs for entrepreneurship by Business Insider, the center features a 100% rate of faculty who are entrepreneurs and doles out over $175,000 annually for business plan competitions.  “Throughout the school year the center is constantly holding competitions for ideas and startups at all stages of the lean lifecycle” says 2nd year entrepreneurship student Blake Hampson. "The events encourage participation from all over campus and are probably some of the best advertised and best attended of any BYU events."

Growing startups like Money Desktop, Tute Genomics, and IActionable show the broad swath of industries being impacted by companies getting their start in the Utah Valley area.   In order to foster the growth of the various early stage ventures that call Provo home, startup accelerators such as Camp 4, a collaborative co-working space offering discounted office space to early stage ventures, have been popping up in recent years. Born out of a partnership between Innovative Network, Provo City Mayor’s office and BoomStartup, a competitive five year old startup, Camp 4 serves as an outstanding example of the benefits of blending government support, established academic involvement, and a talented community.  As corny as it may be, “Silicon Slopes” seems like an apt name for this beautiful town with big aspirations.