About
Built in Lisbon, and checkable line by line
CoFunders is a reward crowdfunding platform run from Lisbon, Portugal. Your pledge waits on a public network until the campaign reaches its goal. If it doesn't, you take it back yourself. Backing buys a reward, never a share of a company.
Key facts
- We're based in Lisbon, Portugal, and publish every page in English and Portuguese.
- We run reward crowdfunding only: you get what the creator offers, never equity, a loan or a financial return.
- Campaigns settle in USDC, a stablecoin designed to stay at one dollar.
- A pledge on the free plan carries 1.5% plus a flat $0.99, and opening a campaign costs $5.
- Joining and looking around are free.
What CoFunders is
CoFunders is a reward crowdfunding platform. Creators publish campaigns for things they want to make, and people back them so those things get made. In return, you get the product or perk the creator offers. Not equity, not a share of profits, not a financial return of any kind.
Your pledge sits in an escrow account the program controls, not in a CoFunders account. Under the program's rules, only the creator can claim a campaign's funds once it reaches its goal, and only you can take your pledge back if it misses. The program can still be upgraded, and today one key we hold can upgrade it (see /security).
If the goal isn't met by the deadline, you take your pledge back from escrow with one tap, and nobody has to approve it. What comes back is the amount held for you: your pledge minus the fees taken when you backed (the platform fee, the flat fee, any tip and any share reward the campaign pays).
Is CoFunders the same as cofounders?
No, and it's not a typo. CoFunders is co plus funders: the people backing a project together. It's a reward crowdfunding platform, not a cofounder matching service, and backing a campaign gives you no share of the company.
What the name CoFunders means, and where to start if you came looking for a cofounder.
How it works
A creator opens a campaign with a goal and a deadline, and pays a single fee to put it on chain. Pledges are in USDC, a stablecoin designed to hold the value of a dollar. Each pledge, minus the fees taken at that moment, goes into an account the program controls.
If the campaign reaches its goal, the creator can claim the money and start building. The goal is what matters, not the deadline: a campaign that gets there early can be claimed early. If the deadline passes with the goal missed, each backer takes their own money back by signing for it.
CoFunders isn't a shop. Once a funded campaign is claimed, delivery is the creator's job, and we can't reverse it. That risk and the others are set out in full on the transparency page.
- Where your money sits, and who can move it. The custody rules above, instruction by instruction.
- Every fee, and what can go wrong. Including the parts that aren't reassuring.
Each side has its own page: what backing a project involves and what raising for one involves. The pricing page lists every fee, and the comparison sets them beside Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Ulule, PPL, GoFundMe and Patreon.
Why we built it
Most crowdfunding platforms take the money the moment you pledge, hold it in an account you can't see and ask you to trust them. We wanted the opposite: a pledge held where anyone can read the balance, a pledge you can take back without asking anyone, and a fee published before you back, not discovered after.
It's free to join, and looking around costs nothing.
The percentage fee on a pledge follows the plan of the account making it. It's taken when the pledge is made, so it isn't returned if the campaign misses its goal. Paid plans aren't on sale today, so the published fee is the free plan's fee.
Who we are
CoFunders is based in Lisbon, Portugal. You can reach us at support@cofunders.org.
We haven't published our company registration details here yet.
We haven't published a postal address yet.
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