Chances are you have heard of the crowd funding site Kickstarter, but incase you haven’t let us give you a really brief introduction. Kickstarter was founded in 2008 by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler and Charles Adler, the simple idea behind the site was to create a place where ideas could be made a reality by the backing of others. If you had a venture that you would love to make happen but aren’t rolling in money and not sure where to begin Kickstarter might be perfect for you, as the creator of the project you can select how much money you require to make your idea happen and how much time you want to allow for your project to hit its goal. If you fail to reach your goal, then no funds are collected from your backers.
Kickstarter (Photo credit: Scott Beale)
There is a broad range of projects that are on Kickstarter, and they are placed under various groupings to allow them to be found easier. As of July 18th 2012 there were 64,216 projects that had been launched on the site, and the overall success rate of these projects stands at 44.03%. Even after a successful fundraising attempt, there is no guarantee that the project will be successful. It is, after all, business and many things can go wrong. Hence, there have been some worries about quality control with people creating projects without any real plan to carry them out. Kickstarter now make all project leaders aware that they may be liable to legal damages should they fail to deliver on promises. And as this platform is such a great opportunity to launch new concepts, we hope that people don’t go there to try and make it harder for genuine people looking to create their ideas.
The amounts raised by different projects really varies, but some of the most successful projects that have taken place on Kickstarter are:
- The Pebble Watch – Raised over $10 million which was 10,266% over the original target set out.
- Double Fine Adventure – Computer games company managed to raise over $3 million which was 834% over the original target.
- Wasteland 2 – Another computer game that managed to raise just under $3million with 325% over the original fundraising target.
Below are some examples of Kickstarter projects that you can back now.
5 years in the making, a 140 page hardcover book packed with spacemen, eerie monsters and crazed robots from CreatureBox.
Many musicians use Kickstarter as a way to help fund their albums. Madeline Fuhrman is one of them.
Small businesses looking to take the next step can use Kickstarter to reach out for help raising funds, in this case it is for new kitchen equipment.
These are just a couple of examples showing the diversity of projects that people run on Kickstarter. We think that it is a really great site that looks to let people create their dreams, whatever they may be, by connecting with an audience that is interested, engaged and wants to see the idea come to fruition.
Have you ever launched a project on Kickstarter? What project would you choose to launch? Please leave any comments or thoughts about Kickstarter in the section below.
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July 30, 2012
Social & Internet