My Crowdfunding Experience

This article details my experience with InventureX. As you’ll see, things did not go well. However, there is at least some reason to believe that the problems I experienced were due to startup issues, and that my situation simply “fell through the cracks”. I hope that is the case! However, for the time being I am leaving this page up so that others can be on the lookout. Read on to get the details of my experience and/or read the companion article to this one for advice you can use: Crowdfunding Guidelines, InventureX, and the Competition.

NOTICE:
To ensure the accuracy of comments that either denigrate or exalt any specific service, I will need EVIDENCE that confirms the assertions. If the claim is that the resulting campaign was terrible, I will need a link to it so I can save a screenshot of that page. If the claim is that the result was great, I will need a link that goes to the campaign, so I can reach the owners of that page and verify the statement. If the claim is that a page was never created, and there is no evidence to share, then I’m afraid the courts are your only recourse.

NOTICE:
I am NOT entertaining any more requests to remove comments posted to this page. For a couple of reasons: 1) At least some competitors have posed as customers, leaving negative comments and directing people towards their services. (Those comments have been removed, but saved, along with the clues as to their actual origin.) 2) It seems that some customers have been using this page as a vehicle for obtaining refunds they may not actually be entitled to. (A campaign can fail for many reasons. The agency that created it is not necessarily to blame.)  3) When informative comments are removed, many  others may be hurt. 4) Deciding which comments to remove and which to keep makes me the judge and jury, the sole arbiter of your case. I’m trying to help people here, and allow information to be shared. The vehicle for redress of grievances is the legal system and the courts. It is no longer me. 

12 Mar 2020: Comments Disabled—Again
Unfortunately, this page has become a lightning rod for spammers and scammers. And it’s taking too much time to keep up with them. One lady was offering to email people the name of an outfit that “worked great” for her, only to discover that the outfit she was directing people to was anything but on the level. Most recently, another correspondent wanted to get money back from the company for a “failed campaign”. But when I got a link to their campaign page, I found a well-designed, well-written page that was offering a “gum stimulator” for $7, when the very same device is available for a couple of dollars or so in every drug store and large grocery store in America. They used that exact phrase to describe it, as well. So a simple search suffices to surface the commercially-available item. I reported that page to Kickstarter, and expect that it will go away soon. But in the meantime it has become apparent that it is impossible to know who to trust! The only way to be sure is to investigate every claim that comes in, and I simply do not have the bandwidth for that.

When this article was first published, I heard from people who really did get hurt. And the page seemed to make a difference. Since then, however, the number of comments has reduced considerably. And most don’t even describe what they’re offering, much less make it possible to verify their claims, even if I had the time to do so. So I am disabling comments for a while. In addition, Many of the remaining comments have been deactivated. In the end, all I can really do is to convey MY story, to help people be alert for and avoid similar problems.

WARNING:
Agencies that offer crowdfunding assistance will often promise to evaluate your offering, and only accept your business if they think you have a winner. However, that is pretty much like a car dealership saying they will evaluate your driving skills, and only sell you a car if they are good enough to take to the road. Fundamentally, they are in business to take your money and give you a car in return! So just as you would be hard-pressed to find a driver they will turn down, it will be similarly difficult to find a business concept that isn’t “good enough” for funding. [REQUEST: If you were turned down, please post a comment with a summary of your proposition. It may help to establish the credibility of the organization in question—or may help you find someone who sees the value in it!]

IMPORTANT:
Read this review carefully, and then compare any new outfit you are considering to the points identified here. If there is a match for three or more of those points, be wary! (And note, too, that anyone who is advertising for your business is probably out to take your money. Good outfits are generally too busy turning away business to advertise!) 

Note: I do NOT send emails
One correspondent reports that another scam outfit sent an email “from my domain”, and offering their services. That email appeared to come from TreeLight.com (that’s what the text said), but instead it came from somewhere else entirely. (She hadn’t even left a comment. But she contacted everyone who had–at least one of which was the scam outfit, in disguise. So know this: I DON’T SEND AN EMAIL UNLESS I GET ONE. (My problem, at this point, is that these outfits have a full-time staff who are out to take your money, and neither the government nor service providers are doing diddly to stop it.)

WARNING:
If you make a comment that points to another company which has done “a really good job” for you, that’s great, but I’m going to need a link to the product, the company, and (ideally) the crowdfunding page that resulted. Such comments will be activated after I verify the reference. (Good references are welcome! But we need to weed out folks who seem intent on taking your money a second time. For the moment, as a result, new comments can no longer be added.)

GOOD NEWS:
So far, a couple of people have obtained refunds for non-delivery of promised services. They were obtained after adding comments to this article. InventureX then paid them after those comments were removed. (The tried to pay me to take down the page, as well. I refused, to keep from harming others.) However, I can’t promise I’ll have the bandwidth to keep up with remove-requests from everyone who deserves to get their money back!

QUESTION:
Does anyone have information about Ideazon or BeyondBuzz? At least one correspondent has reported that they look like the same operation. (But business people copy from each other all the time, so it is entirely possible for similarities to be coincidental. In any case, I’d appreciate hearing about your experiences.

WARNING, and REQUEST for INFO:
And according to another correspondent, one outfit (CrowdFundPros)  claimed that they helped my website with a social media campaign. (They haven’t, and I’ve never had one.) However, I do not want to allege that they are out-and-out frauds without substantial testimony to that effect. So please contact me with any information you have.

COMMENTS DISABLED FOR A WHILE (Dec 2019):
Comments were temporarily disabled, for the simple reason that people posing as victims appear to be working on behalf of similar operations (or the same one under a different name). I detail the email exchanges at the end of this post. In the meantime, know that if you contact me directly, I will need some way to verify that you are legitimate, or your message will go straight to the dust bin. (I will need a link to a product, or a company, or a crowdfunding page. Or something else that makes it clear that you are honestly trying to deliver something of value to customers.)

Summary

I have sent InventureX $500. I got some educational materials, and learned a bit, but nothing that seemed like it was worth that much. In the initial phone call, I was told there was a “funding option”, and was promised an outline of a plan (never received), with the understanding that the “earnest money” I advanced would be refunded if I decided not to use their service. It took a couple of months to review the materials. At the end of it I saw no way to ask for a refund, and my emails went unanswered. So the operation began to look more like a bait-and-switch scheme than an honest business. Since Google was (and is) running a ton of their ads at YouTube, I decided to post this article. (Update: A refund was at last issued. So I’m whole. But when it was originally posted, quite a few comments came in from others who had similar experiences.)

Background

When it comes to running a business, I admit that I am not the sharpest tool in the shed. I’m an idea guy, full of enthusiasm and optimism. Bright ideas, I’ve got. The knowledge of what to do with them, not so much.

That’s why I was ripe for a $500 “investment” with an eye towards getting the job done right. Unfortunately for me, that kind of person seems to be their kind of prey.

I came to InventureX by way of the many YouTube ads they have been running. In retrospect, the sheer amount of advertising they were doing should probably have been a tip-off. In any case, it was my first clue.

It all started early in 2019, somewhere around January or February…

One More Item:
Shortly after I turned down an offer of money to remove this page, my WordPress plugin began reporting attempts to crack the site at the rate of 100 a minute. It may be a completely unrelated event, of course—one that is simply the result of having a page like this that has become quite popular. Nevertheless, it is worrying. If the site suddenly goes away or becomes unreachable, then, therein may lie answer.

Bullet Summary

• They claim to have a AAA rating with the Better Business Bureau. But when I checked, the Better Business Bureau in Los Angeles had no listing for them. (Their website says they have offices in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.)
• At the very beginning, they claim to “have the know how” to set up a crowdfunding operation, and the “ability to predict” the number of people who will join. That sounds great! They can predict how much money will be coming in and can therefore afford to front you the money needed to get it. Right? Not quite. When you get to the fine print, things change a bit.
• When it gets down to the point that they are going to arrange a loan for that funding, they make it a point to say that they want people “who believe in their product”, which means (they say) that they don’t expect InventureX to “assume all the risk”. What does that really mean? In short, it means that you are entirely responsible for the loan. If too little money comes in, for whatever reason, you are on the hook for it. (Or it might mean that they wish to share the risk. That would be fine, too. But when it comes to answering questions they are missing in action, so it is impossible to find out.)
• Of course, if you get crowdfunding money, you can pay them and their fees. Will you have enough left over to fund your business? One can hope…
• To even get to the fine print, they want $500 “earnest money”. That’s pretty reasonable—especially when they say they will refund it if you decide not to go with them. But nowhere in the materials I have seen is there any indication of how to say you have decided against using them. And to date, they have not responded even to questions. How then, is it possible to get a refund?
• The $500 ($497, to be exact) gives you access to a “members area” that contains a collection of videos on what you need to. A really nice education, in a lot of ways. I learned a lot from it. But is it worth $500? I’m not really sure. At this point it doesn’t look that money will ever be coming back, so I’m learning all I can from it.
• Then there is the fine print. They say they do profit sharing at the back end. Fine, if the price is right. But how much is their profit sharing percentage? Is there a cap? It makes a difference to product pricing, of course. And profitability. And any sort of reasonable number is fine. But what it is that number? The inability to get answers to questions is troubling.
• The funding option they point you to is Lending America LLC. They say their fees are 3–4% at the front end. That’s less than the 10–12% (they say) that others charge. But “others” aren’t involved in a profit-sharing arrangement. (They say InventureX pays them. Again, how much? It could be the greatest deal in history. For them. Or for you. Without the details, who knows?)
• The line of credit will generally be $50–100k. It’s arranged through a variety of local banks, global banks, and credit unions. You tap into it when you need funds, and have 12-18 months to pay it back, at zero interest. Sounds good, right? Maybe a little too good.
• InventureX point to several success stories. They definitely have crowd funding pages, and several people have recorded videos telling how satisfied they are. But, as far as I can tell, not one of those products has made to the store shelves. In other words, when it comes to “evaluating” your idea, you are pretty well guaranteed to be well-regarded, in their eyes.
• Looking at those products, I don’t see anything I would buy. I’m not sure that many would. So it seems that InventureX is going to tell you have a winner, regardless of your offering. Not a good sign.
• Lending America says you can spend the money on product development or any number of other business expenses. InventureX says 50% of it has to be spent with them. But how much of your company’s operations is InventureX really prepared to handle?
• For one thing, their real expertise seems to be in crowdfunding and marketing to people like me. If they have other skills, I haven’t seen evidence of it online or in the “members” area. And then there are the products they offer as examples of “success”. I haven’t seen any of them for sale anywhere. So clearly their income derives from being paid to design the products, rather than from actually selling them.

My Questions

Although I have tried on several occasions to get answers to these questions, I have yet to see so much as an acknowledgement that a question has been received! Much less an answer.

• How much will they need for a promo video & campaign page, with text and images?
• What else is in the marketing plan, and how much will they need for that?
• How much extra would they charge for the video-instruction segments I need to record to show people how to use my product?
• How does their profit-sharing arrangement work?
  • What is the percentage?
  • Is it a percentage of gross incoming funds, or a percentage of net funds, over and above the cost of goods sold?
  • Is there a cap on the amount?

• Does InventureX stand behind their claim that they are experts in crowdfunding, that they know how reach potential funders, and can predict how many people will sign up?
• Or is the risk entirely assumed by the entrepreneur, with only their say-so as to expected revenue?

The Full Story

On Monday, I had a great conversation with InventureX over the phone. I had spent time looking at reviews and searching the web for negative reports. But it is possible I did not go deep enough.

Their intro video says that they take a $500 deposit, to weed out those who aren’t serious. After that, if I decide not to go with them, it will be refunded. It also says they will craft a plan that is tailored for my project.

Awesome, I think. I know I can use help in many areas, especially in the areas of crafting professional marketing materials, financing, and initial production. So I make the call, so they can “evaluate my project, to see if it is a fit”.

Here’s how the conversation went:

• [Jason@InventureX]: We’re experts in crowd funding. We have our own studio to make videos and everything else you need to succeed.
• [Me]: Sounds great, the problem is how to afford it. I’m getting to the end of my financial rope.
• [Jason]: With our Partner Profits Program, we provide the financing.
• [Me]: Awesome. Here’s my card. Bill me $497. It’s a not even gamble, given that I get it back if I decide not to go with you.

Now, they didn’t tell me what the financing option(s) would be. Maybe it’s an investment. That would be cool. Maybe it’s a loan. That would be fine, if payments come out of crowdfunding proceeds.

After all, they say that they are experts in the process, and can predict what they will be able to generate in funds. So that, too, is a no-risk proposition, if it is structured right.

On the other hand, if I wind up on the hook for the loan, despite the results, that is a proposition I am prepared to turn it down. Too much risk for me, at this point.

So what I am expecting at this point is a financing proposition to evaluate, and a plan for raising the funds needed to get the TreeLight Yoga Bench into production. (Crowdfunding done right will actually be a great vehicle for that. In addition to generating funds, it will raise awareness while at the same creating pre-order sales for the product!)

Okay. It is now Friday afternoon, at 3:25. An email arrives. I see it at 6:30 pm.

It is my login instructions! Wonderful. I go there, to a page entitled “Partner Profits Program”.

What I see is a list of videos and instruction-pages for me to review. I’m sure they’re all good. But there is no mention of a customized plan or financing. All I see are segments on how I can find partners, and how I should go about arranging financing with my partners.

I’m sure the material is valuable, and I’ll be happy to go through it, if it is only the first step. But nothing in the email I received or the page I visited tells me it is only the first step.

At this point, I can’t very well go through the materials. Because if I did wind up paying up $500 for a generic education, I can’t very well go through it and then ask for my money back.

Now then, since it is late Friday, I suspect I won’t see a response to the email or the Tweet I sent until Monday. At this point, I am recording my thoughts in draft form, just in case.

I hope I’ll wind up deleting it, and that they just need to improve their communication process. After all, I’m happy to make them money if they will help me get the product out to the world. It’s just that I have fallen victim before, and I’m wary…

The Education Begins

After being unable to reach anyone over the weekend or early the next week, I begin investigating the materials. I might as well get something for my money. It seems like a pretty good collection of videos. It takes me a week or so, but I get through them.

Of course, what the videos don’t say is way more important than what they do say. A couple of months later, I get the straight scoop from some helpful contacts at IndieGoGo:

1. Successful campaigns generally get 1/3 of their contributions in the first couple of days. (Those campaigns build momentum and get the word-of-mouth ball rolling.)
2. During that time, about 5% of your contact list will contribute.
3. So, based on the size of each contribution, you can do the math to figure out how much capital you are likely to raise with your current contact list or, conversely, how large a list is required to raise the capital you need.

Basically, the success of your campaign depends on the size of your mailing list and the size of any “influencers” who are on board with your idea.

Now, it may well be that InventureX excels at finding people and building the list you need. That’s the kind of thing I expected to read in their “plan”–how they would identify the right people, how they would target those people, and the number of folks they would expect to come on board, as a result.

But since I never say anything resembling an actual “plan”, the only confirmation I have that they really know what they doing is their say-so—that, and the highly selective testimonials of people who appear to have succeeded.

But was that success based on what InventureX did? Or on particular skills or resources possessed by the entrepreneur?

The “Financing” Option

The bottom line is that InventureX doesn’t plan to invest one thin dime into the operation. They sent me to their secondary outfit which will give me a “zero interest loan” (a line of credit, actually) for 18 months or so, at a variety of banks.

And what is the interest rate after 18 months? No clue. Neither they nor the loan outfit says a word about that. But from the way things have happened so far, I’m guessing it’s a usury-level credit-card rate close to 30%.

That would make sense. They simply defer their income. They say they have an “approval” policy, but looking at the products that have been approved, none of them have hit the market, and none seem to me to be very marketable.

So they approve anyone who applies, deliver a collection of videos instead of the promised “marketing plan”, and switch from “we know what we’re doing so we can afford to invest” to “we only want people who believe in their product” (so it’s your fault if things don’t work).

Meanwhile, they never delivered on their promise to return my initial $500 investment. I don’t know for sure, but if it isn’t illegal, it seems to me it should be. At the very least, Google should stop running their misleading ads.

Epilog

At the time this article was originally written, Complaint-34149 was filed with the California Department of Business Oversight in hopes of obtaining the promised refund.

In late Dec, 2019, a complaint was filed with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (ic3.gov)

Update, Mid-July 2019: Refund in Process

After not hearing from me for 5 months or so, their main admin guy sent me a note asking how I was doing with the program. I replied saying I wasn’t doing anything with it, and asking to how to obtain a refund.

He said he would process that, and wondered if I would send him some comments on the program, and my reactions to it. I responded with a short version of the items listed in this article.

As of today, the refund is being issued. But the fact that there was no clear way to ask for it nor any response to repeated questions remain troubling.

To his credit, though, the InventureX representative thanked me for my detailed feedback, and for identifying many potential areas of improvement.

The only question remaining  is whether any of it would have happened absent this article, my Tweet of it, my note to the CA Dept. of Business Oversight, or my letter to YouTube regarding the many ads they are running.

It’s not clear whether any of those actions made a difference. It is clear that once communication was established, they reacted quite well and are issuing the refund.

In that conversation I was told:

1. They’d love to partner with inventors, but can’t really do that.
2. They provide the “program” as a DIY tool so people find out what goes into it and so they can try it themselves.
3. For “funding”, the only option they have is the zero-interest loan for 12-18 months. (But what is the interest rate after that? I never did find out.)
4. With some kind of funding for marketing, it becomes possible for them to put together a plan they will execute, instead of the “DIY” approach.

Finally, to be clear, they never did promise “investment” in the initial phone call. They said they could help me get the “funding” I needed to get off the ground. It was my own mental processing that translated “funding” into “investment”.

The Bottom Line

If you have a product with a clear need that people will pay for, InventureX may well be a good vehicle for you. In my case, I’m doing an “educational sell”. (For some reason, that is the kind of project that gets my juices flowing.)

But because it is an educational sell (for a yoga/meditation bench), there are several possible audiences and several possible appeals. (AND I’m dealing with production pipeline issues.)

Possible marketing appeals include:

• Make meditation more comfortable.
• Enhance the experience of “energy flow” meditation”.
• An easier form of yoga anyone can do.
• Develop the capacity to sit in Lotus Pose.
• Sit as though on the floor, without having to go to the floor.
• Reduce back pain.
• Develop strength.
• Improve osteoporosis.

That’s a pretty long set of options! One audience, for example, consists of aging Indo-Americans who are no longer comfortable on the floor. They have a positive response to the bench, but are they likely to be found in a crowdfunding venue? (Probably not. So the question becomes: Can their kids be motivated to purchase it for them?)

And so on for each possible combination of audience and appeal. It can take time to find which approach(es) will work best, and during the time, the loan-clock is ticking!

In the end, I decided that this may not be the right vehicle for me. With the information you have now, it may be the right one for you—but keep in mind this bit of wisdom from the good folks at Indiegogo:

• The success of your crowdfunding campaign depends more than any other factor on the size of your mailing list.
• You should reach a third of your goal in the first couple of days. (That kind of pace generates the buzz that produces viral growth.)
• In general, about five percent of your mailing list will participate in the first couple of days.

For a given contribution amount, then, you can do the math to determine how big a list you need. Alternatively, you can use your current list to determine how big a crowdfunding goal you can reasonably reach.

And that, fundamentally, is why you need paid marketing assistance–to use the tools at their disposal to reach a given audience, trying different appeals to find the ones that work best.

The alternative is to have a thought-leader or celebrity in your corner, with a sizeable list of followers. Or develop that list yourself, in time.

That is pretty much the only way to make a crowdfunding campaign work!

Email Exchanges

As I write this at the end of 2019, I have had some pretty terrible email exchanges with people who claimed to be victims in the comments, and one from a fellow who offered me an (unspecified amount) of money to take down this page. (He asked me how much I wanted. I had a figure in mind, which scared me. I could have done a lot of good with the money. But in that case, how many others would be hurt?)

One lady’s comment said that she had found a company that “worked great”—send her an email, and she would tell you who it was. I asked her to share her link, and disabled her comment when the company she mentioned looked to be the same group of people operating under a different name. (My thanks to other commenters, who did the research on that.)

When I disabled her comment, she complained bitterly that “she had not wanted to share the name in the first place”. (Why? She was happy to share it privately. But she didn’t want to post it.) She went on to say “she knew that doing so would cause problems”. (Again, why? If the company was so great, why would she expect that naming it would cause problems?)

After several of those exchanges, I got an email from another “victim” I had been interacting with. 

In his message, he tells me that:

• He “received a call” from Julia this morning.
• He is the one that recommended InventureX to her.
• She and her husband lost over $150k.
• She has the name and contact info of someone who works at the company (an interesting talking point. She said so, as well. But why repeat it?)
• She is outraged, because she didn’t want to share the name of the company in the first place, and only did so at my insistence. (Right. She asked people to call her so she could tell them privately. But why didn’t she want to share the name of the company?)
• As she has mentioned in her messages, she was “afraid that giving the name” would lead to problems like this. (Why? If the company was so great, why was she afraid?)
• She and her husband helped him get a full refund in less than a week. (How, I wonder?)

Perhaps most indicative of all is the fact that neither of them would share the name of their product or company, Meanwhile, he too, has never shared the name of his less a link to either or a link to a crowdfunding page.

It is of course possible that I have become overly-suspicious, and am over-reacting. But the fact of the matter is that I don’t any entrepreneurs who would even hesitate to brag about their product offering.

Even in a one-on-one exchange, who knows what it could lead to?! It might result in a sale, or better yet, an investor. 

Then there was the fellow who said the company hired him to “improve” things. It took a while, but I finally got him to admit that he was willing offer me money. (The company gave him money, he said, and he was willing to give some of it to me, if I would take down the page.)

He wouldn’t make a specific offer, though. He wanted me to specify a price. (I had one in mind, but I was afraid for my soul! Had I named it, and they met it, I would have been facing the dilemma of how much good I could do with the money, versus how much harm could continue to be done to others.)

In the end, I told him no, and told him to stop writing. That’s when the exchanges with the other two started. 

At this point, keeping track of these shenanigans is becoming a full-time job. I have other more important work to do, so I have disabled comments.

Just know this: If you write to me directly, I will need specific information about your product, service, company, or crowdfunding page. It will need to be information I can confirm. Otherwise, your message will simply be stored for future reference, with no response.

I apologize to those of you who have stories you would like to share. Some of you, having spend your hard-earned cash, may well having nothing whatever to point to—no product page, no company site, no crowdfunding page—nothing.

If you are in this camp, I am truly sorry! But I can no longer take the chance that there are people posing as “victims” on this page who are out to take your money a second time!

More Scams!

Apparently, people who have posted comments on this page are being contacted by companies who claim to have helped TreeLight.com with a social media marketing campaign. I am here to tell you: THEY ARE LYING.

Absolutely no social media marketing has been done to push this site. So any outfit that says they have is making a false claim.

More Stories

• One correspondent pointed me to this page, recounting their story: https://dirtyscam.com/reviews/inventurex/ 
• The same correspondent indicated that Del at del@asfaleiadesigns.com is collecting testimonials from victims of InventureX in order to organize legal action. (The site looks legit, or I wouldn’t pass it on. But I cannot honestly vouch for it, either.)

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