Crowdfunding for Dr. Xu

[beetee]

I disagree, $4 million is a very easy target to reach. I think what needs to be done though is to involve Xu directly in the crowdfunding.

I asked kickstarter why they couldn't take us on, and they said that

1) Project outcome needs to be specified clearly with quantifiable metrics
2) They don't do science

SDSurfing: any progress on your end?

All the better, I hope you're right. Hopefully a platform can be located and a project created so that people can start donating money.

[hellouser]

All the better, I hope you're right. Hopefully a platform can be located and a project created so that people can start donating money.

Before we start collecting funds we need to know if the researchers CAN in fact grow hair from cells. Right now we're pinning everything on 'theoretical' conclusions. We need 100% certainty. Imagine we raise all the cash needed and they ARENT able to do what we need them to? How terrible would that be?

[Thinning87]

A page isn't enough. You need an entire site/platform to show that this project is being taken seriously. Unfortunately, most people are too content with their life (especially those with hair) to give a shit and do something... and that includes people suffering from hair loss, as is exhibited by so many negative nancies on the forums here and elsewhere.

True, but let's prove these people that some of us are willing to give time and effort to create something useful.

At this point, SDsurfing is in contact with Xu and also offered to create the crowdfunding campaign. He also said he has previous experience, however I don't believe he has stated how/when/what crowdfunding platform he intends to use.

My understanding is that you can't open a crowdfunding campaign for a third party; the recipient of the funds (in this case the department of dermatology at UPenn and specifically Dr. Xu) needs to be the one initiating the campaign. However, we can do most of the work (writing up the objectives of the campaign so they can be accepted by the platform) and let Dr. Xu's team just review and sign.

An important requirement is a specific statement of the objectives of the crowdfunding campaign: "we need to raise x dollars to achieve y in z-many years and we intend on doing this so and so... once we receive our funding".

SDsurfing is in contact with Dr. Xu and should make these things clear to him. I hope he logs on soon and can touch base.

In the meantime, we should do some research and come up with a list of potential crowdfunding platforms that we could use. We should study their legal and practical constraints, and come up with a final list summarizing our options.

We should also come up with a list of skills that us forumers can offer once we get the ball rolling with Dr. Xu: who knows about social media, how to make websites (we might as well build an independent website as base for the campaign), who can not just make twitter and facebook accounts but also run them in ways to drive traffic, and so on. These are all things we will need to be ready to do once we get the initial requirements fulfilled, so we'd bette be ready for it.

I for my self have a ton of free time but have no experience in any of the necessary skills, that I know of at least... so I will be coming up with a list of crowdfunding platforms.

-- Also please if you are in this thread to make useless comments that do not drive us forward please restrain yourself from doing so and go waste your and other people's time in other threads --

[hellouser]

I for my self have a ton of free time but have no experience in any of the necessary skills, that I know of at least... so I will be coming up with a list of crowdfunding platforms.

Whichever platform you look into, make sure you ask that the donations process can be made on our own website rather than having visitors go to the crowdfunding website. This would alleviate any confusion from visitors. For example, lets say we name our project "Cure For Baldness" and the website is www.cureforbaldness.com. Visitors should ONLY be there to get all their info and make donations. If they were to be directed to (for example) www.indiegogo.com they would then start to think 'what is this site? why am I being redirected? what is indiegogo? why are they involved? is my donation with a 3rd party?' and so on.

Everything needs to be as ridiculously simple as possible for visitors. If we cut corners in any way, we WILL be shooting ourselves in the foot and limit our potential incredibly. I'd strongly recommend we find ourselves a web developer that can code everything. Either someone from within the hair loss community that is a competent developer or we reach out to an agency that can give us a much needed break for a non-profit initiative... most agencies will lower their price for non-profits.

[Arashi]

I think key in such a project would be to guarantee beyond any doubt that 100% of the money will go the researchers. Not sure how to set that up, maybe to open an account in the name of the researchers and have the money go there directly. Something like that. At least without that I wouldnt even consider paying $1000. But if that's 100% sure, then I'll chip in my $1000

[hellouser]

I think key in such a project would be to guarantee beyond any doubt that 100% of the money will go the researchers. Not sure how to set that up, maybe to open an account in the name of the researchers and have the money go there directly. Something like that. At least without that I wouldnt even consider paying $1000. But if that's 100% sure, then I'll chip in my $1000

I *partially* agree currently. I say partially because we don't know which researcher will be able to create follicles from cells or if a researcher is already to do so... but how do we know which one is capable? What if we support one researcher and another guy comes out and says he's got it all working and we're still lagging behind? I could only support such an initiative if we knew 100% that they've been able to create follicles that grow hair on the human scalp... then we dump all the money we can onto them and get this disease out of our lives.

We need all the guarantees.

[jgold]

... all the guaratees which we are never going to get.

[hellouser]

... all the guaratees which we are never going to get.

Useless contribution to this thread. What are you trying to accomplish by this kind of negativity? Are you hoping for failure for a hair loss cure? Are you AGAINST a crowdfunding initiative?

[hellouser]

Just as an FYI:

We may need to create a promotional video similar to Replicel's:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCe5mg7X6zg

However, we may need to put real people with their hair loss stories or even have people send us their own stories that we can share.

Creating the promo is something I can do as long as I have video content, but for that we may need to purchase videos, we could use a site like Shutterstock where stock footage can be bought for $50 at SD quality (good enough for youtube) or FullHD at $80. I can use comps from shutterstock and then we can go ahead and pitch in cash for the content once we agree on a promo piece.

[Axel]

Hey folks how have you been? Long time w/o lurking or participating on the forums and today: surprise surprise, I find this thread....

The only external platform that we could use is medstartr but I think it is not even worth it. We can develop ours easily. I've built this kind of platforms before.

The money is NEVER collected from your bank account unless the project is successfully funded. Thats the way this stuff works. You are "pledging", not donating blindly... https://developer.paypal.com/docs/cl...guide/APIntro/

This can be easily made 100% transparent showing a list of pledgers and vesting the collected funds.

Me and Hellouser already started working in a prototype for this and we even found a fancy domain and designed some cool initial graphics..

If this researcher is really interested the proposal could get quite serious.

[greatjob!]

Useless contribution to this thread. What are you trying to accomplish by this kind of negativity? Are you hoping for failure for a hair loss cure? Are you AGAINST a crowdfunding initiative?

It's not a useless contribution, if you were to ask all the top researchers for a guarantee that they have been able to create follicles that have grown on human scalp you're not going to get it, because no one has done this to date. It might happen soon, but current reality is you won't get that guarantee. That's not being negative, it's just a reality.

[stillinHS1994]

Logged in to say that I would chip in some cash, if this thing gets going.

[sdsurfin]

xu

Dont need to make your own platform. Indiegogo will work just fine. I'm waiting for a reply from Dr. Xu to see if he's restricted at all by his university. Also got a reply form aaron gardner on jahodas team regarding current advancements. will post soon. basically they are just at the preliminary stages of learning about how to make a follicle, like xu is. it will be many years before they can make one, and they still dont know how it will grow in the scalp or what problems might arise. let's get this crowdfund going, but dont get your hopes up of a cure anytime soon. peace

Me and Hellouser already started working in a prototype for this and we even found a fancy domain and designed some cool initial graphics..

If this researcher is really interested the proposal could get quite serious.[/QUOTE]

[hellouser]

Hey folks how have you been? Long time w/o lurking or participating on the forums and today: surprise surprise, I find this thread....

The only external platform that we could use is medstartr but I think it is not even worth it. We can develop ours easily. I've built this kind of platforms before.

The money is NEVER collected from your bank account unless the project is successfully funded. Thats the way this stuff works. You are "pledging", not donating blindly... https://developer.paypal.com/docs/cl...guide/APIntro/

This can be easily made 100% transparent showing a list of pledgers and vesting the collected funds.

Me and Hellouser already started working in a prototype for this and we even found a fancy domain and designed some cool initial graphics..

If this researcher is really interested the proposal could get quite serious.

I still have all the files for the logo! I'm still digging the name we chose

[hellouser]

To the naysayers about 'crowdfunding doesn't work!'

Here's a social media campaign that raised $13 million dollars US:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/put-your-faces-back-on-ladies-why-the-nomakeupselfie-trend-has-to-stop/article17685301/

In mere weeks, the campaign has raised £8 million for Cancer Research UK, which writes that it can now fund 10 new clinical trials.

And guess how they did it? By having women post selfie photos WITHOUT makeup. Men weren't even involved! Just goes to show that social campaigns can and DO work, despite all the negative bullshit people moan about crowdfunding not being a realistic approach. All it takes is an honest effort from a group of us in an organized manner. The results WILL show if we do things RIGHT.