Not many chief executives have an email signature that reads Chief Bubble Blower.
But then not many company bosses are like PledgeMe founder Anna Guenther, a woman forced to wear a panda onesie during a recent flight to Samoa.
It was her first holiday in four years and one that was appropriately crowdfunded; organised secretly by her fellow PledgeMe employees.
Since its launch in 2014, Wellington-based PledgeMe has helped raise $8.9 million in more than 1000 campaigns, from Kaitaia to Invercargill.
Now Ms Guenther and the PledgeMe team are hitting the road, coming to Dunedin on Thursday to show companies and organisations how they could use crowdfunding to bring in capital.
"The most successful campaigns are ones that have the backing of a community, whether that's customers, benefactors or the people in a particular place.
"We know there are some exceptional businesses and organisations in Dunedin with great support, so we wanted to introduce them to crowdfunding and how they can use it to access project, equity and loan funding,'' Ms Guenther said.
At AbacusBio, the team will be running its CrowdfundingU introductory workshop, covering the types of crowdfunding available, how to activate a crowd to reach a financial goal, and legal and accounting requirements for crowdfunding.
Returning to Dunedin, where she completed her Masters of Entrepreneurship at the University of Otago and where she has family, was always enjoyable, she said.
It was also a city where there had been crowdfunding campaigns, including Powerhouse Wind, a single-bladed wind turbine manufacturer, and Parent Interviews, a cloud-based school appointment solution.
Ms Guenther believed there was potential for many more local enterprises to use the platform to fund their aspirations.
"Crowdfunding is still a relatively new product, but we have seen it help Kiwis fund the things they care about time and again. If you have a project or business that people are passionate about then crowdfunding is a way to leverage that support to raise funds,'' she said.
PledgeMe recently launched crowd lending, a move she believed was very exciting.
Social enterprise Eat My Lunch, which fed hungry school children, was raising up to $1million in debt through the new platform.
There had been many highlights but the biggest "Oh my God moment'' came in 2015 when craft brewery Yeastie Boys raised $500,000 of equity in 30 minutes.
It had also been a lot harder than she imagined.
"It's a lot of work to educate companies on how to go out and raise money,'' she said.
But it was rewarding seeing people do things they were passionate about and being able to help them.
And it was exciting to see the types of companies coming through and getting funding.
