Cornerstone

Cornerstone's journey to finance

• We sell our own brand of quality men's toiletries on a subscription model over the internet, using our smart recurring service to effectively automate our customers' bathrooms.
• We launched in 2013/14 when we raised £5,000 through a Start Up Loan, followed fairly quickly by a £250,000 Angel Funding raise, so we had experience but Crowdfunding is completely different.
• Firstly, it was on a different scale, our target was £500,000, and secondly, the whole raise is done in the public eye, so if something goes wrong there is nowhere to hide.
• The whole process is time consuming. When raising large sums via Crowdfunding, there are understandably strict requirements on making lots of information available to investors and lots of details about your business plan for example. Preparation time up front was well spent as it meant we were able to easily handle any questions asked once the campaign was launched.
• We raised £500,000 within 48 hours, at the time it was one of the fastest ever Crowdfunding raises. We then overfunded for a month after that. We raised £900,000 in total.