In 2006, 23-year-old graduate Anthony Eskinazi walked out of a well-paid job as a chartered accountant to turn his pet project, developing a parking app, into a successful business. The app works by connecting drivers with property owners who have underused parking spaces, whether domestic driveways, hotels, car parks, churches, schools or businesses. It was a great idea and one that was already saving thousands of users money. The only snag was that he was completely broke.
For almost six years, Eskinazi struggled to turn the company - then called Park at My House – into a profit-making venture. He tried anything and everything to keep it afloat, from online gaming to moonlighting as a wedding planner. At one point, he was £30,000 in debt.
“If I could go back and talk to my 23-year-old self, I would give myself a slap,” says Eskinazi. “I burned out a dozen times in the first two years, making myself ill. I was doing it on my own, I had no money.”
Then the die-hard entrepreneur discovered crowdfunding. Having raised investment from BMW and Index Ventures, JustPark turned down further venture capital to give its community of users the opportunity to invest and share in the company’s success. The move more than paid off and the campaign – launched in February 2015 – is now the most successful equity crowdfunding round in UK startup history, raising £3.7m from almost 3,000 individuals.
While the record-breaking campaign sounds like a walk in the park, Eskinazi admits it took a lot of careful planning and preparation to pull off. The first step was polling existing customers to find out whether they would actually be interested in investing in the company. The response was overwhelmingly positive, so Eskinazi began thoroughly researching the field with business partner Alex Stephany. They became crowdfunding experts to ensure they had sufficient knowledge to answer questions from investors on the pitfalls, legal issues and restrictions involved in this form of investment. An online public forum was launched to allow people to ask any questions about the business.
Eskinazi believes the secret to a successful crowdfunding campaign boils down to two key things: excitement and momentum.
“People have to be excited to invest in your business,” he explains. “Excited about the financial opportunity, about being part of something special, wanting to join the journey with you.”
Once the campaign was live, they pushed to get to £1m as quickly as possible, sharing their updates across social media and with the press. They reached their target in just four days, gaining coverage in major newspapers and radio stations. When £1m turned into £2m, they held parties for investors to meet the team.
“Everything we did was carefully timed to make sure that if there was any lull, we would have a press release ready to announce a new product or upcoming event,” he says. “We wanted to really capture the attention of anyone who was potentially looking to invest.”
If you lose momentum, he warns, your campaign can go stagnant: “When we launched the campaign we had the best part of 600,000-700,000 customers, so we knew if we hit a downturn and couldn’t maintain momentum, we could send out emails to our customers to get a surge. That was our safeguard.”
JustPark was shortlisted in the Small Business Showcase competition’s Innovation in Funding category. Find our more about the competition here
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