Indiegogo Now Wants Fortune 500 Companies To Create Pre-Order Campaigns

Indiegogo has historically been about helping the young and scrappy entrepreneur to put their idea out there and get some much-needed capital for a first production batch. The company is launching a brand new set of tools today dubbed ‘Enterprise Crowdfunding.’ This time, it’s all about the large well-established companies and helping them make risky bets.

Indiegogo is going to work with General Electric, Harman International Industries, Hasbro and Shock Top at first. Compared to newly launched startups, these companies don’t need cash to launch new products. It would be unfair to talk about crowdfunding for Fortune 500 companies.

Instead, this new focus should be seen as a way to test consumer’s interest by leveraging Indiegogo’s audience and reach. General Electric can create a pre-order campaign and see if people actually want these new products.

Now, there’s a risk that these large aging companies will use Indiegogo as a way to market themselves as edgy companies. Indiegogo will have to make sure that these big clients are showcasing actually interesting products.

The company is going to provide strategy advice, hands-on support, promotions and analytics data. General Electric already successfully tested the model with its Paragon Induction Cooktop.

Harman is going to launch a campaign for selective noise cancellation headphones. Hasbro is going to work on board and card games. Shock Top already launched a campaign in August 2015 called Shock the Drought.

Potentially, these new campaigns from large companies could be much more successful than campaigns for new companies. That would mean more revenue for Indiegogo.

Today’s news shouldn’t come as a surprise as more and more established companies have been using crowdfunding platforms to launch products. Pebble raised $20 million on Kickstarter with its second campaign. Indiegogo is hoping that many other companies will follow the same path.