Taiwanese-American Mike Huang (黃楀鴻) is an entrepreneur with a background in economics who is passionate about promoting the arts. Having launched Fuudai.com (福袋), one of Taiwan’s leading crowdfunding platforms in 2011, he has since worked with numerous creative types to raise over NT$1.2 million in funds for projects such as music videos, books, live events and indie films.
Huang will be the guest speaker at the monthly Filmmakers Night in New Taipei City’s historic Yang San-lang Art Museum (楊三郎美術館) on Sunday where he will speak about crowdfunding in Taiwan, as well as his segue into filmmaking.
FROM CONCEPT TO FRUITION
Photo courtesy of Mike Huang
Crowdfunding, Huang says, is still a relatively new concept in Taiwan, although it is starting to gain traction. Last year, Fuudai.com collaborated with singer-songwriter Harlem Yu (庾澄慶) to help launch his own line of cycling jerseys. In addition, they are the first crowdfunding platform in Taiwan to fund over NT$500,000 for an indie movie, Repack Youth (復刻青春). On a smaller scale, Fuudai.com also successfully raised funds for camera equipment for a young Aboriginal photographer from Hsinchu County last year. These projects show the broad spectrum of what crowdfunding can be used for.
Like Kickstarter or Indiegogo — both popular crowdfunding platforms in the US — the concept is enticingly simple. You have a creative idea for a life-changing project — like writing a comic book or starting a co-working space for freelancers — but don’t have the big bucks to back it up. Therefore, you put together a video where you let your personality shine, upload it to the crowdfunding platform’s Web site, spread the word through social media and sit and hope that the public will be moved by your cause — enough to donate money.
Huang says the most important thing is having a compelling story to tell. Also essential, but often overlooked, is doing the background research — “you need to know if you actually have the resources to bring the concept to life,” he says. For instance, if you are making a product, you should source out factories that will be able to make prototypes for you.
Photo courtesy of Mike Huang
Then comes the rewards, or in other words, the goodies for the people who helped fund your project. Huang says while the rewards don’t necessarily need to be flashy, “it needs to be unique and creative — a bridge that connects the project creators to the funders.”
Finally, it’s video time. Huang adds that this is “a very sticky point in Taiwan because for some reason, a lot of entrepreneurs are camera shy.”
LETTING THE CREATIVE JUICES FLOW
Having worked in both the US and Taiwan, Huang says that the major difference is that the US media tends to focus more on the creativity of the actual project, while the Taiwanese media likes to fixate on success rates. For this reason, when launching a crowdfunding project in Taiwan, Haung advises to keep the funding goal to a bare minimum.
“Traditional Taiwan media love projects that hit their funding goal many times over than projects with a big funding goal that just barely make it,” he adds.
Regardless, it’s important to reach out to corporate sponsors, Huang says. No matter how much your friends and family may believe in you, corporations have the potential to fund an entire project.
Haung says that he likes to keep the atmosphere at work fun and not too serious. He once ran a social experiment to see if the public would be interested in helping him learn how to bake bread — “the project didn’t even raise NT$1,000,” Huang says.
As for future endeavors, Huang recently co-founded Self Pick Productions with Jack Hsu (徐嘉凱), a production house focused on creating original content for YouTube. They are currently working on a reality Web series based on the life of singer-songwriter Venk Yang(楊子樸).
“Making films and music has always been on my bucket list — being involved in our production house justifies it for me to check it off,” Huang says.
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