# May Investor Update | CrowdSolve

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/feed/163626
- Entity ID: wefunder:feed_item:163626
- Published at: 2023-05-05 05:31:35 UTC
- Updated at: 2025-07-11 17:20:26 UTC

## Author
Tim Wolters

## Subject
CrowdSolve

## Content
May the Fourth Be With You!! &nbsp;With Mother’s Day just around the corner in the US it feels appropriate to talk about how innovation is being brought to life on the CrowdSolve&nbsp; platform.&nbsp; We are in the midst of conducting our first pitch competition with a set of&nbsp; our innovators who’ve gotten through their first stage (the “ideate” stage) on the CrowdSolve platform. Come to the live (virtual) event to hear the finalists do a quick pitch about their innovation.&nbsp;&nbsp;I also wanted to reiterate our theme for this quarter is to Reduce (do less, better), Reuse (work smart, together), and Recycle (test and shift). Using this theme we are doing our best to both move quickly, and be smart about how we spend our time, energy, and funds in the most impactful ways. Speaking of that, our bootcamp offer is starting to yield fruit. We have 7 innovators signed up and more joining us for an info session on May 15th. This becomes an important component of our tiered offering that starts with free access to the curriculum with light mentor touch, to a pro version that offers a lot more support and network connection, to the bootcamps.&nbsp; We plan to reuse content in the curriculum across mini-bootcamps we will hold for the pro version and as part of the full bootcamps downstream.&nbsp;&nbsp;And, that’s a wrap on our crowdfunding pre-seed raise. After a few months of crowdfunding via the WeFunder platform we ended up raising $286K in the platform and at a total raise thus far of $471K.&nbsp; That gives us around 6 more months of runway.&nbsp; I would feel more comfortable having 9 months, so we will likely add another $50K+ to this over the next 30-45 days as an additional SAFE investment.&nbsp;&nbsp;We are now moving into raising a seed round of $3M+ and are starting to socialize with prospective investors.&nbsp; If you know a VC who does seed stage investing and think they might be a good fit for us, send them my way!&nbsp;[PROGRESS]Market Traction - We’ve recently seen significant growth in the number of innovators on the platform.&nbsp; Thanks in part to finding more ‘carrots’ (the pitch competition being one of them) to help move encourage our busy innovators to continue to make progress on their innovations. All metrics are turning up, including MAU and MEU. (check those metrics above!)&nbsp;The Fulcrum Funding Accelerator that we were accepted into is cranking along. We are a little over a month into a 3 month program and meetings with VCs are about to heat up significantly.&nbsp; We have most of the materials together and will be working on setting up warm intros and meetings over the next month (planting and watering), and will be starting to harvest in June and July.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We have added capstones to the end of each stage for our innovators and that culminates in a pitch competition.&nbsp; Sign up to attend the first live pitch competition on May 10th to hear what 5 CrowdSolve innovators are building. We are getting our mentors involved in this and are recruiting sponsors to offer grants and other prizes for the pitch competition.&nbsp; If you know of someone who would like to sponsor a set of innovators or offer prizes, let me know. We are looking for sponsors for both the pitch competition prize packages as well as the bootcamps. It’s a tremendous opportunity for both the innovator and the sponsor to move innovation forward.We are continuing to connect ourselves into government agencies responsible for distributing grant funds in both the Colorado Economic Development Association (EDA) and the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.&nbsp; This is a “long game” and requires us to continue to play to have a seat at the table.Climate Week was great.&nbsp; We had the opportunity to meet with so many people and many who have since turned into CrowdSolve investors.&nbsp; Leah and I also knocked down the Future Days podcast, which if you haven’t listened to yet, is a great recap of what we do and why it is so necessary.&nbsp;&nbsp;[NEXT]Host the first CrowdSove Startup bootcamp. First one starts the first week of June and will be facilitated by a CrowdSolve team member and leading voice in climate, Jack Fritzinger.&nbsp;Close a bridge by mid-June to extend our runway to end of 2023.Launch the consumer grade UX.&nbsp; Due out at the end of May.&nbsp;&nbsp;[NEEDS]Where is that confounded bridge? Looking to raise up to 100K into our pre-seed round.&nbsp;If you know of an organization or group of people who would like to sponsor sets of innovators let us know.&nbsp; We have a number of global entrepreneurs from emerging markets needing scholarships to join the bootcamps.&nbsp; Or, if you just have ideas around that, give Tim and Rob Kellogg a shout.&nbsp;&nbsp;Follow us on LinkedIn and like, share, repost our updates. It helps to increase brand awareness and share what we are building with a broader set of folks.We are always looking for more innovators, mentors, and partners to join the crowd!&nbsp;