PreFrame

I built PreFrame's brand and took equity in it, so I'm listed as a co-founder on their site.

Overview

Jake Ireland noticed that the silent auction is often the highest-earning part of a fundraising night, and that almost nobody organising the night has time to run one. He built PreFrame to take the whole thing off their hands: the items, the bidding, the payments and getting prizes to the winners. The organiser keeps everything above the reserve and pays nothing.

Jake started with a network and no brand of any kind. We built the identity, the website and the print system, and took a co-founder stake instead of a fee. Badfish Labs owns part of what it built here.

Challenge

Jake was asking charities to hand over their fundraising night to a company that had run zero events. His network got him the meetings. He had no logo and no website, and nothing to leave behind once the meeting ended. A treasurer who went looking for PreFrame that evening found an empty search result.

The model sharpens the problem. PreFrame keeps the reserve, so the organiser has to trust that the items will be worth bidding on and that the winners will get their prizes weeks later. Charities are careful about that for good reason. With no track record to point at, the only evidence Jake could offer was how PreFrame presented itself.

Most of the selling also happens face to face, at golf days and PTA meetings. A website was never going to carry that on its own, which is why the flyers, cards and banner mattered as much as the digital work.

Outcome

Jake secured PreFrame's first event within days of the brands launch. Leads now come in without him chasing them, which for a company this young means the brand is doing the qualifying. He arrives at a meeting with a banner behind him and something to hand over, and PreFrame looks like a business that has run a hundred of these nights.

"The brand was doing the selling before I opened my mouth, and the first time I walked into a room with the banner and the flyers people took me seriously. Sick work."

Jake Ireland, Founder, PreFrame

I take equity in some of the companies I work with. PreFrame is one of them.