In the second of our series featuring some of Tooting’s great young entrepreneurs, we introduce Jes Bailey, a crowdfunding specialist and founder of Crowdfund 360.

For those unfamiliar, crowdfunding is a way of raising finance online for a particular cause, project or business venture by asking a large number of people each for a small amount of money. Local businesses such as Unwined In Tooting (A Grape Night In), Sound Lounge and Brew Tea Pub are all examples of new ventures that have successfully used crowdfunding to launch.

Jes, 25, said “I started Crowdfund 360 because it’s my passion to help others achieve their goals and believe that crowdfunding is the perfect way to achieve this. The aim of Crowdfund 360 is to provide entrepreneurs with all the tools they need to fund their dreams and bring their projects and products to life. Crowdfund 360 provides everything needed to succeed in running a crowdfunding campaign, including strategy, planning, finding your crowd, communicating, amplifying your campaign, creativity and visual storytelling.”

Originally from the Cotswolds, Jes ended up in Tooting via an unconventional route of Turkey, Holland (where she worked for a human rights charity) and most recently Bangladesh, where she worked for an organisation that helped to get street children out of prison and reunite them with their families.

These experiences and a real passion for ‘awareness raising’ led to Jes’s return to the UK to work on a contract basis for Global Giving, the world’s largest crowdfunding platform for non-profits. There, she organised and led their crowdfunding workshops and ran their online training courses before branching out to launch her own consultancy business at the start of this year. She was supported by Business Launchpad (based in The Trident Business Centre), who provided access to valuable workshops and gave her the confidence to succeed.

Jes shared with us her Top 5 tips for success, for any venture planning a crowdfunding campaign:

1. Spend time building your crowd (following) in advance of the launch of your campaign.
2. Don’t try to be everywhere from a marketing perspective – focus on what you’re good at.
3. Your campaign video is important, but not everything.
4. Get relevant influencers on board to promote you.
5. Never run a campaign for more than 40 days – you will be really stressed and will annoy your audience! 

Jes feels at home in Tooting, not only due to its crowdfunding history, but also because Tooting’s diversity allows her to stay close to the Turkish and Bangladeshi cultures that she loves. She is a regular at Istanbul Food Gate on Mitcham Road and loves practicing her Bangla language skills in Sew Much More, the Bangladeshi Tailors in Broadway Market!

Jes helps businesses and projects in a number of different sectors to succeed and is happy to meet and provide advice to any local businesses or ventures who are thinking of running a crowdfunding campaign. 

You can learn more on the Crowdfund 360 website, follow on Twitter and Jes can be reached at info@crowdfund-360.com

Business Launchpad offers free business support & counselling to young entrepreneurs aged 16-30 in Wandsworth. To find out more about Business Launchpad, click here.

If you’re a young Tooting entrepreneur who’d like to be featured in future articles, then drop us some details via email – we’d love to hear from you!