I love the VinoMatch project and the VinoMatch team. The VinoMatch idea brings together some of my favorite things - technology, entrepreneurship, innovation, simplicity, and wine! Their team has raised over $10,000 on RocketHub already and shines as a major crowdfunding success.

I connected with the team (Olivier, Pierre, Marc, and Sonya) to learn more about their inspiration, system, and crowdfunding experience. What was the inspiration behind the international wine and business project you are currently running on RocketHub? 

We set out to answer the simple question: “How does it taste?” Why you might ask? Because we, like 80% of wine consumers, are completely confused when making a wine purchase.  

Our founders being the geeks they are had the right skill set to get the job done. Although admittedly, they had no idea just how complicated and long the journey/adventure before them was going to be. Isn’t it the same with most new technology?

In answering this simple question for all consumers our team has built the first and only sensory based search engine. Not Google, Yahoo, Yelp or Amazon has done so. Only VinoMatch. Technologically speaking this is profound.

Second, we have managed to standardize how the “vast majority” of people will communicate about wine. No small task.  

Third, we have created a valuable massive data base of wine criteria like no other before.

Fourth, we have put it all together and packaged it into an easy to understand visual code anyone can understand. In the end, for most of us, it’s a matter of taste and personal preferences.

That's a big endeavor that must inspire your team. Why is it important to you?

VinoMatch helps consumers have the knowledge needed to choose wines they will love for themselves, wineries to find their perfect target audience for their product and merchants to have a laser target reach into the largest market group they could only have imagined before.  

We are most proud our service will help small businesses. Small businesses are the foundation of the American economy. Anything which improves profits and market reach for small businesses in this country is good for everyone. Wineries aside from their wine production are farms growing grapes. Producer/Farmers are the back bone of America.

Many of these wineries have small production with little to no marketing avenues or budgets. Often they depend heavily on receiving a high wine score from industry critiques. Unfortunately, if they receive a low score, their sales can suffer and their prices may be compromised.    

Who is to say if one wine is better than another for you? VinoMatch unlike wine rating systems does not attempt to determine if a wine is good or not.

We only give a clear understanding of how a wine tastes and smells with an easy to understand visual code anyone can understand. This way the consumer can determine for themselves if they like a particular wine or not rather than relying solely on someone else’s taste preferences.  

In doing so, VinoMatch levels the playing field for wineries giving consumers the ability to choose wines based on personal taste preferences. Through our service wineries have a direct equal opportunity to connect with potential consumers who will love their wines which would not have been possible before.  It is free for wineries to enter their wine tasting profiles into the VinoMatch database.  

On the merchant side, there are 80% of wine consumers that wine merchants could not possibly be able to afford to blanket market to. They would go broke trying to do so.

With VinoMatch we will be sending prequalified targeted consumers to merchants/restaurants selling particular wines. Many of these merchants are also Mom and Pop owned small businesses, again the back bone of the America.  

With our service, gaining economical laser targeted consumers will help their businesses grow and prosper without breaking the bank. They will be able compete toe to toe with larger businesses.

We are proud to offer a solution which is compelling to purchasers, grower/producers and merchants alike!

What has your experience been as a crowdfunding pioneer in the world of wine, technology, and entrepreneurship - how are your supporters responding?

We have loved being crowdfunding pioneers. It has been an amazing growth experience.

We went into this knowing we were at a disadvantage. The product we are developing is a virtual online product available to the public for free which is not yet available (we will open in closed beta December this year). We do not have a loyal customer base and our industry is not one which is traditionally supported by contributions (like the film, art, music, science or charity causes).  

Literally, we entered into crowdfunding with our hearts on our sleeves. We said “what have we got to lose.” We are pioneers in our industry and crowdfunding is a natural choice for us to trail blaze for raising seed funding. 

We are overwhelmed with our success considering our lack of success factors.  Our supporters are $10,000 strong and growing. As we suspected, most of the press is awaiting our product launch, however it has not stopped us from trying. You cannot succeed at something you have not tried.

Our advice to other projects in our position based on our experience crowdfunding – Go For It!!! You have nothing to lose and much to gain.

Congratulations on all the success! Since you've built a lot of momentum - any advice for Creatives looking to crowdfund a similar project?

Our best advice for all Creatives, regardless of the nature of their project, is something we did not read anywhere in any literature about crowdfunding. Make sure you are ok asking for money. Not the idea of it … but actually straight forward bold in your face asking for money from “your friends and family.” This seems obvious, but I can tell you that in our case, it was not.

We spent about a month developing our project to include a mini website, copy, developed and scrubbed our contact lists - broken down into 4 levels of contact and a very cute video to describe the indescribable. We launched our campaign and within about two weeks noticed that one member of our team was enjoying much more success than the rest of us.

This team member was very comfortable asking for money. He called all his friends directly, had them go to our crowdfunding page while he was on the phone with them and walked them through the video and asked for financial support. Guess what they did, they gave their financial support.

The rest of us, who were very uncomfortable asking for money, were asking our contacts to go look at our funding page and to send it out to their friends and family (feeling they would see our funding page and know we needed their financial support). Guess what, they did exactly what we asked. Looked at our video, told us how wonderful it was and sent it to their friends asking them to watch it as well (without giving financial support because we did not ask them to do so). And so the pattern developed of people sending people to our project to get excited about our project without financially contributing.

Luckily one of our friends who gave $100 was kind enough to email us. He said he was happy to support us … but the whole process was confusing to him. It took him a great deal of time to put two and two together to figure out we wanted him to support us financially. We were shocked! Thank goodness he was kind enough to inform us of this huge oversight.

In our discomfort of asking outright for money we had unknowingly undermined all our work.

Good news is we were able to recognize our discomfort, reframe our thinking from asking for money to allowing the people who love us and want us to succeed to help by giving a small amount of money. We changed our focus of all communication from help us get the word out to please support us financially and ask your friends and family to financially support us. DON’T BE AFRAID to ask for money! Most people will not figure it out for themselves. They are busy with their own agenda. Be direct about what you need so they can give it to you. If they want to help and can they will, but only if you are very direct.

This one issue had spilled over into our video, which is now too long because we had to go in and add an ending where we actually ask for money. We had to revamp our copy to include asking for money.  We had to change the focus of our communication with our contacts as well. Luckily we realized it before it was too late. To date, we have raised over $10,000! We are humbled and honored so many people have supported us.

Giving your ask a comparative is also most helpful. “For the price of a nice glass of wine ($10) you can join us on our journey and help get us one step closer to our dream and earn some pretty cool rewards for yourself.” You get the idea.

RocketHub has an amazing website filled with great advice on how to build a winning project. Follow their advice closely and you will have a great foundation. Most importantly … Ask for Money!

Anyone building a campaign should go to our project page to study our awards structure.  We went against common advice to have a tiered award structure where all the previous rewards are included in the next monetary step up.  Our campaign enjoys the same amount of $100 supporters as it does $10 supporters, we believe, because of the way we have structured our rewards!  

Our final advice. Participate on RocketHub. Fund projects you like. Although we need our money for our own project we felt it necessary to be submerged in the process. It is vital to experience being on the other side of the coin. We have funded over 20 projects!  It is something we will continue to do even after our project is complete. There is something magical, empowering and satisfying about helping people help themselves.

Being a part of someone else’s dream is fulfilling. It will change the way you interact with your supporters in a way that can only happen once you have contributed to another project. You should do this as soon as you decide to begin a project. Before you put your project to screen as it will give you a deep understanding of what you are asking others to do for you.

We want to take this opportunity to thank RocketHub for all of their support. You guys are so responsive in answering all of our questions. We could not have asked for a better experience.

To everyone reading our blog interview … we hope we have been able to give some valuable insight into crowdfunding. If you like our project, our team or we have helped you in any way … please go to our project VinoMatch and spread some love. “For the price of a nice glass of wine ($10) you can join us on our journey and help get us one step closer to our dream and earn some pretty cool rewards for yourself.” Cheers!

Awesome advice - thank you for your insights and passion. Join the VinoMatch movement and support this great new business.

-Vlad