Tal

CEO & co-founder of Popsmith 🍿

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@stevereallysaid @JeanneD19495 BTBF26 will work through this Sunday. 25% off.

[Tal @TalMoore10]

I started a popcorn company. Things got a little out of hand.

$20M+ in lifetime sales. 100,000+ customers. And now, you can own a piece of Popsmith.

We’re raising our final community round. Already over $1M+ invested.

Invest before Nov 16

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@hunter_nft Who knows. I keep prior investors informed but I don’t push or pry. I trust they will make the right decision for themselves.

[Tal @TalMoore10]

I led Popsmith’s first equity crowdfunding round on StartEngine in 2024. We raised $1.08M that round. Our second round just crossed $1M with a week to go, closing on Nov 16th.
You can check out the progress here: https://t.co/JEu9wcDaI8

After doing this twice, I think equity crowdfunding can be a great fit for a growing consumer brand that’s proven people want its product and could use more time to grow before bringing in a strategic or institutional investor. That’s where we were with Popsmith.

Who I think is best positioned for equity crowdfunding

I think the sweet spot is a consumer brand doing 2 million to 10 mil in annual revenue. At that stage, you’ve got enough traction to show people there’s a real business here. Once you’re above $10M, you may have more institutional options worth exploring.

Beyond revenue, I’d look for four things.

1. A product people get immediately. With Popsmith, you can watch someone make a batch of popcorn and understand what we sell and why people buy it.

2. Strong branding. A polished website and a good video help someone who’s never heard of you understand the business and take it seriously.

3. An engaged customer list. My rule of thumb is 50,000+ email subscribers. You’ll be leaning heavily on the people who already buy from you.

4. A network you can call on at launch. We’d been sending quarterly updates to our friends-and-family investors since 2022. By the time we launched on StartEngine, they’d seen how far we’d come, and some were ready to back us again.

If that sounds like your business, here’s what I learned from our two rounds.

Your audience gets the round moving.
Before our first raise, we emailed about 45,000 subscribers to see who was interested. We emailed them again on launch day and raised $200K in 48 hours.

StartEngine and Wefunder both pitch access to their investor networks but my experience is they contribute very little, maybe 15%- 20% tops. The rest is on you.

Give interested people a reason to keep paying attention.
For the second round, we announced the raise to our customer list and created a separate email list for people who showed interest. It started at about 2,000 and grew to about 5,000.

I emailed that group once or twice a week and posted campaign updates on StartEngine about three times a week. Most were about things actually happening at Popsmith. A retailer rollout, a press feature, a business milestone. It wasnt just sending lazy “invest now” emails. It was about really painting the picture that we’re a real brand that’s going places. This took a lot of work but it paid off.

Paid ads behave differently when you’re selling equity.
We spent $0 on ads in the first round. For this current round, we expect to spend about $90K across Meta, Google, and X.

This type of ad is very different than what you’d run to your website to sell a product. Here, you’re selling an investment. The consideration phase is much longer. Here, we were often paying for someone to follow the campaign and maybe invest months later. A lot of the investment activity picked up in the final few weeks.

That’s an uncomfortable gap when cash is going out every day. I’d budget around 10-20% of expected raise goal from the start. In my case I was conservative on my spend since this was my first time advertising a raise. Spend definitely ramped up once we past $1 million raised and we were in teh final weeks of the raise.

Your best campaign video might already exist.
You need a great video explaining your business to potential investors. In our case, we used a Popsmith commercial we’d already made last year. I wrote 100% of the script myself, my brother @RonMoon helped shoot and edit it. We spent $13K producing it. It went on to get over a million views on YouTube. You can check it out on our Start Engine campaign page.

In a couple of minutes, you could see what we make, why someone would want it, and what kind of brand we’re building. And we made it funny; humor never hurts.

The biggest checks can come from places you didn’t plan for.

A venture group found us through the campaign. Three meetings later, @dave_stickland and I were on a webinar with about 200 of their investors. Within days, several hundred thousand dollars came in.

Meanwhile, I spent a bunch of time reaching out to angels on LinkedIn and still can’t tell you what that effort returned. If you’d asked me beforehand what would move the round, I wouldn’t have picked a webinar with a group we hadn’t met yet.

Budget for the audit and everything else.

For our first Reg CF round, we needed a financial review. It cost about $15K, took three weeks, and was pretty painless.

For our second round, we needed a full audit, which is required when you are cumulatively raising over 1.2M. That cost nearly $80K and took ten months. Ten months of hell.

Add in platform fees, legal, ads, PR, and mailers, and I expect we’ll have spent nearly $250K on the second campaign by the time it closes. That’s before counting my time. If you’re planning a raise, figure out what you need to walk away with after expenses and work backward from there.

Why I’d still do it

When we launched our first round, we’d done under $3M in revenue over the prior 12 months. I thought our odds of raising from VC or private equity were slim to none. By round two, that prior 12 month revenue was about $5M. I thought we had a better shot at getting a meeting, but I expected to get clobbered on valuation and terms, which I was unwilling to do.

Crowdfunding was expensive and took a fuck ton of work. But it let us raise the capital we needed at a valuation I was comfortable with and at terms I was happy with. I’d make that trade again.

Our current round closes November 16. If you’re a founder considering equity crowdfunding, ask me anything about the process. I’m happy to share what I’d repeat and what I’d do differently.

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@ReydCronkwright @nathanfielder @ElizabethHolmes @per_asp3ra @BusinessInsider Working out so far!

[Tal @TalMoore10]

Loved the @nathanfielder documentary with @ElizabethHolmes and @per_asp3ra.

I spoofed her infamous Forbes cover to create awareness for my popcorn company’s raise. Somehow it kinda took off 😂

Thanks for the love @BusinessInsider

https://t.co/hfcKazeVnN

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@docmurdock Appreciate it very much

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@devininNYC I see you

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@hunter_nft About 23% repeat investors. Rest new.

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@MenachemAni Thanks my man!

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@drewfallon12 It’s 99% garbage. But occasionally there are real opportunities. We’re one week away from closing our second crowdfund round on start engine for Popsmith. First round was over $1 million. This round at nearly 1.2 million. 28% of investors from first round came into second one.

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@adcelerate360 Appreciate it!

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@reshax0 Campaign page

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@JeanneD19495 Not cheap to make or market. Dm me, will send you discount code.

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@Patrick07612186 My inspo

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@BruceExec Been at it for a minute

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@TheMikeMorton Popcorn that’s earning

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@CAsunshinegal Over $1250 investment gets a free popper. See https://t.co/sJkGzVGxgY for color options

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@riwired @HenryofTomorrow 💯

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@Xmade $350

[Tal @TalMoore10]

@ZingBatt Steam vent, spinner to move kernels around just like a movie theater kettle, and a thick bottom to ensure heat distribution.

[Tal @TalMoore10]

Most people make popcorn in a microwave bag.

Popsmith bet on something better, and it worked: nearly $19M in lifetime sales and $1M+ crowdfunded. Its new StartEngine round has 250+ investors so far.

Investing is risky; you could lose your entire investment.