We're three places above Occulus Rift. 

Holy smokes! Congrats Greg!

Where's your crowdfunding page?

Thanks!  I went to go compile the list, but I also found this page of the top 10 crowdfunding sites. http://crowdfunding.com/

We used AngelList, Fundable, Gust, Crowdfunder, EquityNet.com, FundingPost, and a few others. Crowdfunder was the biggest bang.

https://gust.com/companies/bitvore_corp

https://angel.co/bitvore

https://www.crowdfunder.com/bitvore

https://www.equitynet.com/featured-funded/bitvore-corp

https://www.fundable.com/bitvore-corp

What you did, I think, is unprecedented.

I've heard of people using one of those platforms but not all of them!

And unlike on Kickstarter, you primarily raised funds through investors, not customers, right?

Amazing.

Trail blazing.

Also is it safe to say that everything in the top 10 EXCEPT Bitvore is hardware?

There you go, breaking new ground again...

I mean, AngelList talks up the (few) companies that raised $1 million on AngelList as a big deal.

You raised more than four times that. That's a REALLY big deal, Greg!

Do you have any lessons learned that you can share for future startups that consider fundraising the way that you did?

I think so, but some of the stuff is still private.  We did about a third from crowdsourcing, a third from angel groups (I consider angel.co crowdsourcing), and a third from friends of the board. 

If you are a hardware company, borrowing against customer purchases with some incentive is a good way to go. Software, not so much.  

We put all our due diligence material online in a set of very well organized folders and re-used them over and over.  We put a lot of time into doing this.  We were very upfront about the terms and the deal.  Most people that ask for money aren't that clear.   What do you exactly get for the money,  when do you think we'd get the money back, what do you expect to accomplish with it and how soon?  Just having clarity on that helps a lot.

Also, we were constantly changing how we describe what it is what we do.    We're Personalized Intelligence Gathering for Business.   It's still got a little mystery, but it's what the customer told us what we were--how they understand the value of what we do for them. 

Thanks Greg; those are excellent tips and I'm going to refer entrepreneurs to this page in the future!

By the way, I had no idea that crowdfunding has raised so much money:

Crowdfunding websites raised a staggering $5.1 billion dollars last year alone and crowdfunding campaigns of all types are getting funded on a daily basis.

I didn't realize Veronica Mars raised $5.7 million:

http://www.businessinsider.com/powerful-kickstarter-campaigns-2014-4

Or Ubuntu Edge trying to raise $32 million, but only getting to $12 million something.  Despite their failed goal, Ubuntu smartphones are starting to show up.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/ubuntu-edge-is-dead-long-live-ubuntu-phones/

Hey, neat. I'm surprised they couldn't do something with $12 million.

I think they are going to pull it off, but not on their own native hardware. Even though I'm an iphone5 user, I want an HTC One m8.  Even better if it's running Ubuntu!  Their infinite focus feature, even after the picture has been taken is amazing.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-reasons-why-the-ubuntu-phone-should-be-your-next-mobile-device/

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-ubuntu-phone-is-official-let-the-madness-begin/

That IS amazing. Makes sense that they'd continue but without their own hardware.

Mozilla is doing something similar with Mozilla Mobile OS.