At Develop:Brighton 2016, Tomas Rawlings, Design & Production Director at Auroch Digital, about second-generation crowdfunding.

Rawlings defined second-generation crowdfunding as the world of crowdfunding now the novelty has died away, where backers are cautious and jaded, and the press are less likely to cover your campaign.

"The chances of you getting near £100,000 is small," said Rawlings, unless you have star power, and even then success is not guaranteed.

Getting started

The new model that is seeing success is to instead use crowdfunding money as bootstrapping, allowing you to ask for less money to make a prototype.

In terms of practical tips, Rawlings suggested looking at failed projects, and seeing what exactly went wrong so you don't make the same mistakes.

As well as this, he said that developers should back projects, not only to be seen as part of the community, but also to see how it feels to be on the backer side of things.

Plan for the doldrums

You also need to plan your campaign two to three months in advance, as well as planning to run it for just a month, because "the start and the end are what matters", according to Rawlings.

And "you're always going to get less than you asked", says Rawlings, as you'll be spending money with daily operations, looking after your community of backers, and any unexpected costs.

When running the campaign, Rawlings suggested drawing in backers early with cheaper tiers to begin with, and then putting plans in place to keep interest going during the "doldrums" in the middle of the campaign.

Rawlings also encouraged developers to keep an eye on stats and data as the campaign progresses, so you can accurately see where your backers are actually coming from, and push further in these places.