Interview: Zoop launches equity crowdfunding campaign and here’s why
Zoop launched as a comics crowdfunding platform back in 2021, offering more services for creators as part of the campaign, from planning to fulfillment. Their timing was good: not only did crowdfunding soar during pandemic times, but industry leader Kickstarter caused controversy with an ill-planned announced shift to the blockchain. The move prompted creators in many fields to start their own platforms, and others to move to BackerKit, IndieGogo and more.
In three years, Zoop has funded many successful campaigns, but it’s now moving into a new phase: raising capital itself via equity crowdfunding on the Republic platform. Callign on its own community for support, it’s a way for the company to raise capital while remaining more independent.
We’ve talked about a lot of Zoop campaigns here, and now it’s time to talk with co-founder Jordan Plotsky about their own crowdfunding campaign.
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
Heidi MacDonald: Jordan, it seems we’re in turbulent times, there’s a lot of stuff in play, a lot of people moving around, a lot of new platforms. We did an interview back in 2021 around the time you launched and I think I asked, isn’t it really hard to build a crowdfunding platform from the ground up? And you said, yes it is. What have you learned in those three years?
Jordan Plosky: That’s a really good question. Early on we made a lot of mistakes and it was a learn as you go type of thing, but now that we’re three years into it, we’ve gotten our heads screwed on straight. We know how to run campaigns. Realistically, our team has done over 130 campaigns now, and I don’t think anyone in the comic space can say that they’ve done more crowdfunding campaigns than us. So after all the trials and tribulations, after the learning curve, we’re really dialed in. We know what works, we know what’s not going to work, and the support that we give only increases the chances of success.
The short answer is we’ve learned a ton because we’ve seen so much, but some of the most important things are…How do I put this? Just a pro tip for anyone looking to do crowdfunding: your number one thing is you’ve got to start promotion way before your campaign starts. Building an email list is your number one tool. These are all things that we knew but now that we’re seeing the evidence and the data, it’s unmistakable. You have to promote ahead of time.
MacDonald: I think that’s another way of saying that in order to crowdfund you need a community base already. You can’t just say “Let me do a Kickstarter and I’ll build a community.” That is not going to work, right?
Plosky: I came from the music industry, as I think you know, I used to be a professional musician, and other aspiring professional musicians would ask me how did you get that gig? How did you build your resume the way you did? It’s the same thing in comics or really any sort of creative profession. It’s not about how good the material is — if you don’t tell anybody about it, nobody will ever know. So as a creative you have to be in business for yourself. You’re an entrepreneur, you have to get that marketing side down as well. And that’s so important and quite frankly very often overlooked by creators
MacDonald: Absolutely. And it’s a hard lesson. But one of the things you wanted to do at Zoop was offer tools for people who maybe didn’t have that complete tool set. Everyone always says, “Heidi, why don’t you do a Kickstarter for this or that?” It’s like…I just mailed my last Christmas present. I’ll be brutally honest. Mailing things out is not a strength of mine. I would need a fulfillment house to help me in any case. So I think you were coming into this offering a suite of tools for people who didn’t want to do it all soup to nuts.
Plosky: The biggest differentiator between us and your Kickstarters and Indiegogos is that you’re not alone. You have a built-in team helping you with everything from figuring out rewards to pricing to strategy to budgeting, getting quotes on what your products are going to be well ahead of the campaign launch. We see a lot of people who have done what look like killer numbers, but they didn’t take the time to properly budget ahead of time and then ultimately wind up potentially in the red. So having a team of people who have been there, like I said, over 130 times now. We know what steps to take to ensure that you’re not going to be underwater on a project and that even includes the fees that you have to pay us for our work. We’re a team supporting the creator. We take a ton of the heavy lift off of our client’s plates. We lower the barrier to entry for crowdfunding.
MacDonald: Right, which is great. What have been your most successful projects?
Plosky: We have quite a few that have broken that six figure barrier. The one that kind of put us on the map in 2021 the Artist’s Edition for the late John Paul Leon, for Wintermen. Our top grossing one is Nick Pitara with Ax-Wielder John which did over $210,000. We had a great benefit anthology called Comics for Ukraine, which had a cover by Alex Ross.
MacDonald: I have that sitting right here by my desk. It’s a beautiful book.
Plosky: So we’re super proud of that — we got to donate $100,000 Operation USA, to be associated with names like Alex Ross, Bill Sienkiewicz, Art Adams, Walt Simonson. We just had another successful one, a Conan the Barbarian sort of artist edition. We ran a campaign for Stardust, this crazy golden age now public domain superhero.
MacDonald: I loved that one.
Plosky: We’ve been having fun and putting out some really cool stuff.
MacDonald: So now you are entering a new phase, the Republic phase. If you could explain a little bit just what this is in layman’s terms and why you’re doing it.
Plosky: The first thing I want to say is yes, we went from “who’s Zoop?” to now when people are talking about crowdfunding, we’re in the conversation with Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and that’s great. We’re thrilled about that and at the same time we’ve been building up our community and trust, we’re delivering projects, we’re taking care of customers. So we have people who have returned multiple times and in fact, dozens of our campaigns, which is humbling to build something that people are so invested in.
But we’re in an interesting place. Zoop is not necessarily like a venture capital backed type of company for a number of reasons that I don’t need to get into but what’s available to us is something called equity crowdfunding. It’s very similar to what we do already except instead of people supporting a campaign to provide some financing to allow a creative project to come to life now with equity crowdfunding you can put down your money. Instead of essentially getting a comic, you’ll own shares in the company. So your investment is actually working capital for Zoop to continue doing what we do and to grow and keep providing creators an outlet for their projects.
MacDonald: I know there are some other companies on Republic, Skybound and Legion M.
Plosky: The other big one in our world was a company called Gumroad. I think Legion M has a slightly different business model in that their investors all become sort of film producers. Equity crowdfunding allows us to maintain control. It allows the community to kind of step up and support something that they love and for us to not necessarily have to answer to venture capitalists or other people who are going to tell us how to run our business, without knowing anything about the world of comics, collectibles, and fandom. So it helps us maintain control. It puts the power into the fan’s hands.
Read the full interview: https://www.comicsbeat.com/interview-crowdfunding-platform-zoop-joins-equity-crowdfunding/
