GoFundMe Learns The Taylor Swift Principle
Once in a while (a lot, actually), part-time Apple blogger and musician Taylor Swift likes to give to a charitable cause. She likes hanging out with kids who are in the hospital, too. She likes disrupting technology the most.
Swift’s most recent disruptive move was a donation made to a little girl named Naomi, who is kicking the crap out of cancer. It was for $50k, to help with some medical costs that insurance wasn’t picking up, through the site GoFundMe. Only problem was that GoFundMe never thought anyone would donate over $15k at once, so it took a bit of rejiggering to allow Swift to make her donation:
“Taylor Swift’s donation was so generous that it required us to increase the donation limit on the platform,” said Rob Solomon, GoFundMe CEO. GoFundMe’s previous donation limit was set at $15,000, but has now been increased to $50,000. There are never any limits on how much a campaign can raise.
Tay-tay can also add this feather in her tech disruption cap: she’s now the highest single donator in GoFundMe’s history.
There’s a lesson to be learned here: startups, don’t limit yourself like GoFundMe did…you never know who’s lurking. A lot of the time when you’re building something you set up fake walls or confines that limit you. These lanes that you stay in for no particular reason could stunt your growth before it ever even happens. You might think “We’ll never hit this limit” or “We’ll never need to do that” but the reality is if you’re successful, you more than likely will.
I mean, Taylor Swift made Apple change its business model for streaming music in the span of 12 hours with a Tumblr post, so shoot scale for the stars.