It is funny how life works, sometimes. Take Chad and I for example. A chance meeting at Drag Week in 2005 resulted in a friendship and it resulted in us having a mutual friend in Freiburger. Ultimately it resulted in BangShift which now serves as the primary means by which Chad and I support our families. Another guy who has a great internet story, one that surpasses ours by a bunch is Ryan Maturski. Ryan was one half of a pair of guys that founded RacingJunk.com on a couple of computers in their living room which was located in a small town on the extreme western end of Massachusetts. From those humble beginnings rose a huge company, one that changed hands over the years and freed up Ryan to explore some other stuff that he wanted to try. Being a gearhead and racer, he delved into the world of motocross and dirt bike racing hard. It was during those times that the idea for RynoFund started to take shape. Seeing lots of talented and popular racers barely making it to the races on a week to week basis got him working on a creative way to help them out.”I’d look at these racers that had 10,000 or 20,000 people following them on social media and try to figure out how they could make that work in their favor,” Maturski told us. “Those are people who are following you because they want to see how you are doing and they want to see you succeed. Those people may not be wealthy but they might want to help you cover the cost of gas to get to a race or food while you are there. Your fans, friends and family want to be a part of your success. RynoFund allows them to do just that.”
And there we have the crux of what RynoFund is, micro-sponsorship. Different from the GoFundMe of KickStarter campaigns of the world, this is a system that isn’t setup to raise huge blocks of money in a “make it or leave it” scenario, instead it is a much more modest idea than that. “You can have people back you for $10 a week if that is what they can help you with or whatever they are comfortable contributing to the cause,” Maturski told us. “The recurring component of this is very important because I have sponsored racers in the past and paid them the money, gotten a sticker on their vehicle and never heard another word from them. It makes me feel like the bad guy when I have to call someone to kind of beg them for something back for my investment. Being that this is a recurring type of support, the racer needs to keep in touch with his supporters, thank them and acknowledge their support, and work to keep those people on board.” We think this is a novel concept and anything that requires some reciprocity between the racer and those people that are supporting them is perfect in our eyes. It is also a brilliant way to take an existing fan base in the world of FB, Twitter, Instagram, or wherever you are rock star famous and use it to your advantage beyond how many likes you can generate on a selfie, right?”The goal here is to help people fund their passion and do it in a way that the people helping to fund it are comfortable with what is going on,” Ryan told us. “You are not going to be able to see what specific people are doing, how much they are donating, or what the end total is. Part of the reason for that is we felt that people see a campaign on another site for $75,000 and think to themselves that their ten or twenty bucks was too small to matter. As anyone who has ever raced anything knows, anything and everything helps. That’s a tank of gas or dinner on the road or whatever.” This whole micro-sponsorship concept makes a ton of sense when you start to look at it like this.
Naturally we were interested in seeing what Ryan had in mind to prevent fraud and all of the other crummy stuff that happens due to lowlife jerks. He let us know that because the profiles on the site are tied into the social media accounts of the people using them there is verification of who the profiles belong to. “This is going to be a large community and it is a part of larger community. Those things in and of themselves are safeguards but we’ll be able to verify profiles to make sure that things are as they should be,” Maturski said.The element of this that we really like is the fact that there is work involved. If you want to have a successful campaign on RynoFund you’ll need to put in the times and effort to make it work. It goes far beyond just posting some static page up and hoping it works. This is about pounding the pavement both physically and virtually to work on getting the funding. This is about following up and providing something for the people who are allowing you to chase your dreams of glory on the track, no matter what type of track that it is.
In short we think this is a very genuine and interesting way that people with the desire, drive, and gumption to make it in the world of racing or at least get to a jumping off point could succeed. We’ve known Ryan for years and have no reservations about telling you about this venture. The guy is for real and we think this concept is for real as well.
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