Ep. 088 - How to Crowdfund your Food Startup (from a Food Crowdfunding Startup) with Cheryl Clements, CEO and Founder of Pieshell

Oct 16, 2017

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If you want to know ALL ABOUT CROWDFUNDING, you must listen to this episode.

Let me introduce you to Cheryl Clements, one of the most delightful people I’ve ever interviewed. She owns the startup, Pie Shell, which helps food startups raise capital using crowdfunding.

What makes Pieshell a unique crowdfunding platform is that it is super focused on food. All they fund is food companies but more importantly, they help food companies prepare to get ready for the crowdfunding journey.

So this episode is jam packed with so many tips on how to name a company, how to ask for help, and how to most importantly, raise money to achieve your dream.

Pieshell is currently in a crowdfunding stage itself and here's how you can be part of the pie.

How to invest into the early stages of Pieshell. All you have to do is go to https://www.seedinvest.com/pieshell/seed and invest at minimum, $500 dollars. After I edited the interview, I hopped on and invested and this is not because they are my friends or anything, but it’s because I really believe in pieshell’s mission, and I hope after this episode, you do too.

Crowd Funding Statistics

Why 75% of food startups fail
Why it takes 3-4 months to prepare for a crowdfunding campaign and how PieShell prepares for this and gives you tools for success
1 spelling mistake can reduce funding by 13%
Venture Capitalist will only work with Food companies that make 1 million to 3 million
85% of people in Expo West will not be there next year

Question Summary

When someone asks what you do for a living, what do you tell them?: I help make people’s dream come true. We are building a community of food entrepreneurs and businessmen How did PieShell get its name?: It was actually my mom’s company. People loved it. What the best thing about your job?: Working with all of the projects How PieShell gets founders: People find us all over the internet. We also have over 60 community partnerships who send us people. How did you learn about crowdfunding?: I did a lot of homework. And then I crowdfunded to start pieshell. I made $13,000 dollars from that crowdfunding campaign The steps to get to where you are today: I’ve been in a family who loves food. I spent a lot of time installing SAP to businesses, Cheryl understands process and can translate it to many fields. How did you reach out to mentors?: You have to be brave. You have to be open to building relationships, Charming robot web design – met through an internship One tip on networking: Talk to everyone. Don’t be shy. You need to be talking about yourself all the time. You never know who will show up. Why Does Your Food Job Rock?: I do what I love everyday. I love helping people. Food Trends and Technology: People really want to know where things are coming from. Transparency in the market place. What companies are being transparent?: A lot of smaller companies. However, the bigger companies are doing wonders like Unilever and Chobani What’s one of the biggest challenge the food industry needs to face?: People don’t understand how much money and time goes into food. It takes 3 to 5 years for a food company to get established.