I’ve always hated that stupid saying ‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd’.

When it comes to friends, it’s a load of old tosh but when it comes to money-making ventures, it’s even more outdated.

Look at the massive success of crowdfunding, where complete strangers sign up online to back a venture, sometimes because they think it’ll succeed and other times, just because they like the idea. Eight million people can’t be wrong, which is how many have stumped up funding through www.kickstarter.com

Arguably the biggest and best known of the crowdfunding sites, Kickstarter started six years ago and since then, it’s been used to raise more than £1.3bn for 80,000 creative projects from Oscar-winning documentary films, albums, video games and comics through to a banana piano and bus stop in Athens.

More than 400 Kickstarter projects have been funded in Oxford, some are still ‘live’ now, while others are done and dusted, but it’s amazing what a huge variety they are, with entrepreneurs raising cash to finance children’s books, fashion websites, computer games, a play and recording an album. Someone raised £140,000 to develop a video game, others have been funded to the tune of a couple of thousand quid and there’s a smattering, it has to be said, which have netted a big fat zero.

Investors in Kickstarter projects don’t end up with a share of the venture they’ve helped bankroll, they do it mainly to help the project off the ground, but there are usually rewards built in to thank people for investing – these could range from a free product or experience to the chance to have a pint with the genius behind the venture.

The thing being funded has to be a project with a goal and once that’s reached, the appeal closes. If a project reaches its goal, Kickstarter takes a fee of five per cent but if it’s not reached, there’s no fee.

Crowdcube.com is another crowdfunder which has yielded £64.4m and numbers TV presenter and designer Kevin McCloud and celebrity chef Michel Roux among those who have used it to raise cash. McCloud’s firm HAB has financed new housing developments in Oxfordshire, including Graven Hill in Bicester and Westlands Drive, Barns Road, Dora Carr Close and Cumnor Hill in Oxford.

In fact, Crowdcube is so well known, even the UK government is an investor and it’s regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

The 145,000 people who invest chip in as little as £10 and there’s a choice between picking the venture you put money into or handing over cash (you need at least £2,500 for this) to Crowdcube’s experts, who will invest it in up to 10 firms on your behalf and build a financial portfolio for you, in the same way a broker would do with investments on the London Stock Exchange.

Unlike standard investment trading, there are no investor fees but like stocks and shares investment, it’s high risk, but can be high-reward.

Similar is Indiegogo, which has helped get 275,000 campaigns off the ground since it was started six years ago.

In 2011, it helped pay for the world’s first crowd-funded baby by raising cash for an American couple to pay for IVF.

Others like Peerbackers.com and gofundme.com tend to be more personal, so along the lines of ‘I need a life-saving op, please will someone pay for me’ type thing and claim to have raised more than £525m. These are all amazing examples where tens of thousands of strangers come together to make a project work.

Which proves that two may be company but if you want that company to be successful and expand, don’t ask your friend. Ask lots of people you’ve never met.