Tilt, a Silicon Valley crowdfunding start-up that makes it easy for groups to collect, fundraise, or pool money securely and effectively for free, recently launched out of beta and is now available to all Australian users.
Tilt has been experiencing rapid growth, at more than 41 per cent month over month. Founded in February 2012 by James Beshara and Khaled Hussein, the company has secured over $67 million in funding from notable Silicon Valley figures including Facebook’s founding president Sean Parker, Andreessen Horowitz, Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian, and the rapper Nas.
“Australia was the perfect market to launch in next,” said Tim Ryan, Head of International at Tilt. “After a successful 2015 launching in the UK, Nordics and France, we knew that Australia would be a great community because of its high smartphone penetration and their reputation for being early adopters of innovative technology.”
How exactly does Tilt work?
Tilt allows users to contribute and collect money for birthday presents, charitable causes, weekends holidays or anything in a group – from 2 to 2,000. It takes less than 30 seconds to create a tilt, invite friends to chip in and start collecting the money.
People can start a tilt by typing a quick description, deciding how much they want to raise, and tagging friends to chip in. Once you reach your goal, your campaign “tilts” and the funds are deposited directly into your bank account. If you fall short of your goal, no cards are charged. As the organiser you can personalise your tilt by adding photos, gifs and descriptions. Unlike other platforms, collecting money is entirely free.
The Tilt app, available for free on PC, Mac, Android and iOS is one of the highest rated apps on iTunes and has to date seen over 500,000 groups pool their funds.
How is Tilt doing in Australia so far?
Tilt is the first company to bring a social and mobile-first approach to payments. In Australia, the average tilt collects $185 with the help of four contributors.
Australian students have adopted the app in droves using Tilt to pool money for a wide range of on-campus activities ranging from organising O-week parties, pooling money for birthday gifts, sporting trips, or collecting funds for university society events. $30,000 was collected for an engineering camp in March.
Aussie students are also very tapped in on mobile — more than 70 per cent of users created tilts through the iOS or Android app. Tilt revealed that since October, they have received over 1,000 applications from students who want to join their Australian Ambassador program.
Aussies are using Tilt everyday for everything. The team said some of their favorite tilts so far include: a 120 person pub crawl, 40 people hiring a yacht to sail around Sydney harbour, collecting $5,000 for a bucks night, and collecting $2,000 for a baby shower.
