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About

Three people in Pittsburgh, one idea about who a crowdfunding project should be standing next to.

About

A crowdfunding platform built for one city first

Crowdasaurus is a different kind of crowdsourcing website. It has been built to connect corporations, nonprofits, and individuals so that projects see funding faster and more often.

The company was three people in Pittsburgh, working in beta through 2013. Its bet was that crowdfunding did not fail for lack of ideas; it failed for lack of an audience. So instead of asking a project to build one, it borrowed one.

Regional by design: the platform was meant to move money inside a city, not away from it.

The story

From political ads to crowdfunding

Previously we had focused on the distribution of political ads, but as election season wound down we needed to find alternative sources of revenue.

What they landed on was a platform that treated a crowdfunding project the way a media company treats content: something to be placed, promoted and measured, rather than something to be posted and hoped for.

We still consult on big crowdfunding projects and build big crowdfunding platforms. The site closed with that single post in September 2014.

  • Before

    Political ad distribution

    The team built for the distribution of political ads. When election season wound down, they went looking for a second product.

  • 2013

    A crowdfunding ecosystem

    The idea they landed on: crowdfunding treated as digital marketing content, paired with the institutions that already have a crowd.

  • June 2013

    The Hardware Store opens

    Bud’s Hardware at 744 E. Warrington Ave. in Allentown had been closed for five years. It reopened as a co-working incubator for media and crowd-sourcing companies — built, in effect, to house Crowdasaurus and thirty others.

  • Late 2013

    Beta, and three regional partners

    The Pittsburgh Foundation, WQED and C-Leveled began testing the platform on regional projects. The site carried a red BETA flag in its header.

  • September 2014

    The platform becomes a practice

    The site was reduced to a single post: the team still consulted on big crowdfunding projects and built big crowdfunding platforms.

Shops along East Warrington Avenue in Allentown
East Warrington Avenue today. The Hardware Store opened in the 700 block in June 2013. Photo: Cbaile19, CC0

After 2014

What happened to the company and the domain

The company went on consulting on large crowdfunding projects and building platforms for others. The domain did not stay quiet: by 2015 it was serving Elements, a Pittsburgh organic meal-delivery business with no relation to the crowdfunding company; by 2021 it was listed for sale; and it has been a parked page throughout the 2020s.

This rebuild is of the crowdfunding company. The meal business that later used the domain is a different company, and nothing from its site appears here.

Get going

Bring a project to a bigger crowd

Hosts, nonprofits and project creators all start in the same place: a short conversation about what you want to fund.

Crowdasaurus

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