Foundr Magazine Podcast | Learn From Successful Founders & Proven Entrepreneurs, The Ultimate Startup Podcast For Business

You can fund your baby on the Internet. That’s the world we live in. One in which a couple who wanted a child but could not conceive naturally were able to turn to strangers on the web to raise money for in vitro fertilization. A new life, crowdfunded. The couple’s campaign for a bundle of joy might seem odd — it’s certainly not ordinary — but it is a triumph of technology and humanity. It’s a story made possible through crowdfunding, a method of raising money for ideas online by seeking small contributions from a large numbers of backers, who usually receive perks in return for their support. The couple in question acquired funds to conceive their child by running a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, which, along with the New York-based Kickstarter, is one of the world’s preeminent crowdfunding platforms. Danae Ringelmann often recounts the couple’s story, because it conveys the extraordinary potential of crowdfunding. Few ideas lie outside the bounds of what can be funded (within the law, that is) — you ju