Copyright: PhD Joaquin Vila-Belda, LifeKeeper. June -1- 2014 Page 1

New Initiative Aims to Reduce Unfair Manipulation in

Crowdfunding Campaigns

A preliminary analysis made by LifeKeeper reveals abuses that can put at

risk the continuity of the Crowdfunding industry. A forum has been

created to share experiences and proposals.

Joaquin Vila-Belda, PhD, and CEO of LifeKeeper talks about the company's experience in

crowdfunding and presents a preliminary analysis explaining the initiative to promote a forum

called “Crowdfunding: Improving fair play.”

A few days ago, LifeKeeper launched a crowdfunding campaign on a well-known platform. The

goal was to find backers for the first personal mobile device that can help prevent myocardial

infarction and stroke.

However, after the first days of the campaign, the results were poor. For LifeKeeper, it was

surprising to see such lack of response to a campaign with such an important goal – “combating

the most common cause of death in the world” – even though it offers discounts of up to 40% to

its backers. The crowdfunding campaign can be found at http://bit.ly/1mu4N68.

Consulted experts have expressed that the team behind the project clearly has a very strong

professional background, and the purpose and motivation of the project are clear and easy to

understand.

Before concluding on this issue, an analysis of what successful campaigns were doing was carried

out.

First, a sample of campaigns with different subjects was selected, including some on technology

applied to healthcare.

After the aforementioned analysis, an apparent common factor for obtaining success is the

originators' ability to manipulate results by providing funds at key moments. This created a

feeling of success, and, more importantly, raised them in the rankings used by the crowdfunding

platform, such that their campaigns appear in the best positions and in publicity campaigns of

the platform itself.

A specific case was followed in which a campaign had collected more than a million dollars, even

though in the platform’s forum and in the press it was argued that the proposed device is not

really useful for measuring calorie intake as promised (*).

Copyright: PhD Joaquin Vila-Belda, LifeKeeper. June -1- 2014 Page 2

But how is this possible?

In the cases studied, the procedure used is as follows:

The funding goal for the campaign is set low, for example, $50,000.

On the first day of the campaign, friends, acquaintances, and so on make contributions.

Also, the originator of the campaign provides his or her own funds via anonymous or

virtual user accounts, such as, $30,000; bringing the total to more than the campaign

goal.

This gives it an excellent ranking on the platform, placing the campaign on the website

homepage.

The media reports this extraordinary (but manipulated) early success.

This has a knock-on effect: people are attracted to success, and the contributions of real

backers multiply.

Having passed the campaign goal, the platform begins to pay out the money.

These real earnings are used to keep the campaign popular with more fictitious

contributions.

In the cases that were analyzed, the amount of money used for manipulation was as much as

10% to 30% of the funds apparently raised. In the case of the device for measuring calorie intake,

an initial support of $30,000 led to contributions which appear to top a million dollars. It is hard

to know what the real investment by backers was, but in the mentioned case, signs of

manipulation appear until the last three days of the campaign.

Consequently, LifeKeeper decided to promote a LinkedIn forum called “Crowdfunding:

Improving fair play”, with the goal of finding answers to the following questions: Is it possible

that backers are being so badly cheated? Is this abuse frequent or infrequent? How can this be

avoided?

The forum is open to anyone interested, and can be found here: http://linkd.in/1pxjla5

Contacts:

General Inquiries: Marc Martin info(at)lifekeeper(dot)pro

Website: http://www.lifekeeper.pro

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jvilabelda

Copyright: PhD Joaquin Vila-Belda, LifeKeeper. June -1- 2014 Page 3

(*) Citation

http://pando.com/2014/03/20/on-indiegogo-a-miracle-health-device-raises-730k-and-a-whole-

load-of-red-flags/

http://pando.com/2014/03/31/as-more-experts-dispute-gobes-bullshit-medical-claims-

indiegogo-still-refuses-to-pull-its-near-1m-campaign/