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A lot of people confuse crowdfunding with crowdsourcing. While they are similar in that they both allow people to primarily leverage mass-community collaboration, they relate to two different things entirely.

So, what’s the key difference?

The short answer:

Crowdfunding is the process of sourcing money or funds from a group or groups of people.

Crowdsourcing is the process of sourcing information or skills or end products from a group or groups of people.

The long answer:

What is crowdfunding?

In a crowdfunding campaign, a person, business, or organization raises a relatively small amount of money from a large group of people. Crowdfunding is a method of raising capital through the collective effort of friends, family, customers, and...

As my partner, Startups.com and Fundable founder, Wil Schroter likes to say, “There's not a lot of ‘fun' in funding.”

Raising equity funding for your startup is a long, difficult, and often demoralizing process. However, if you're successful, you walk away with money that will help your startup grow and become everything you hope it could become.

One of the major challenges that founders run across is that raising a round often takes more time than they expected. While a founder might know that your startup is excellent, convincing other people to invest thousands — and potentially millions — of dollars into their company is not a simple task.

“I've always heard that the rule of thumb is three to four months to do a fundraise — or that yo...