As I earlier noted, I participated in a continuing legal education program at The University of Tennessee College of Law last Friday on the basics of crowdfunding.  My partners in crime for the last hour of the event were two folks from Chattanooga, Tennessee (yes, home of the famous choo choo) who have been involved in crowdfunding efforts for local businesses.  One used crowdfunding to finance a change in the location of a business; the other used crowdfunding to gauge interest in his business concept and raise seed capital.  They described their businesses and financing efforts in the second segment of the program (after a foundational hour on crowdfunding from me). 

The business location change was for The Camp House, a coffeehouse owned and operated as part of The Mission Chattanooga, a local church.  Private events, including music performances, also take place at the venue.  The Camp House raised over $32,000 through a crowdfunding campaign on Causeway.  Matt Busby, Director of The Camp House, educated us on donation crowdfunding through a non-profit platform.

The new business concept and capital raise was for Treetop Hideaways (a/k/a, The Treehouse Project), a business that designed, built, and rents time in a luxury treehouse.  The principals raised over $34,000 on Kickstarter.  One of the two men behind this project, Enoch Elwell, offered us practical information about reward crowdfunding.  Enoch also told attendees about his work with local entrepreneurs through CO.LAB and CO.STARTERS.

In the last hour of the program, the three of us reflected on crowdfunding successes and failures and speculated about the future of crowdfunding (using their experiences and my research as touchstones).  It was a wide-ranging discussion, filled with disparate tidbits of information on business formation, finance, and governance, as well as professional responsibility and the provision of practical, cost-sensitive legal advice.  Both Matt and Enoch turned out to be great folks to talk to about business finance, choice of entity, and the role of lawyers in small business formation and operation.  Their observations were thoughtful and sensible.  I learned a lot from them, and participants (practitioners and students) also indicated that they learned a lot.  Everyone had fun.  It was pure business lawyer/law student joy on a Friday afternoon!  :>)

For those who were not at the program on Friday and would have liked to have been there, all is not lost.  We plan to post a recorded version of all three program segments here in a few weeks.  Continuing legal education credit will be available in Tennessee for viewing the online recording, upon completion of the test provided and payment of the applicable fee.