Good ideas “if communicated well, can spread fast and wide”. Good projects if communicated through the correct platform will not only be funded but also generate a wide base of fans willing to virally & freely propagate the essence of the project grabbing at the same time the invaluable attention of the mainstream media.
This is what happened to Diaspora earlier on this year. A project begun by four students at NYU’s Courant Institute who were dreaming of an “open” Facebook alternative (when this one was involved in a big mess of privacy issues). They were hoping to get 10K to start coding their so called “privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network”. In the end thanks to this massive media support (Techcrunch, NYTimes, BBC….) & the anti-fb momentum they managed to raise more than 200K.
Then it came The Pirate Bay documentary earlier this summer… and again, Simon Klose raised twice his set goal. And right now just after this post was published the “TikTok+LunaTik” iPod nano wrist band by Scott Wilson is about to reach a new record for KS…. more than $600k and still 10 days to go… not bad huh?
These are just 3 examples of the several hundreds of projects that a couple of years ago would had probably never found any support & even less monetary funds if it weren’t because of crowdfunding. Today there are all sorts of “social” on-line platforms that allow you to fund pretty much anything… from ONG’s projects, to new start-ups, businesses, album records & so on….
…for the creative bits we have Kickstarter, which we found about at the beginning of this year & we’ve haven’t stopped using to support those wet ideological dreams we found paranormally creative.
The NY-based start-up has helped funding the most bizarre, sometimes genuine, sometimes pointless & most-times amazingly original projects & forms of art expression; like for example building a temporary wedding chapel in Manhattan, converting an old bus into a mobile Thai restaurant, sailing around the world… tons of webcomics, 8-bit videogames, theatre shows, lock-picker kits, …. a long list of unimaginable ideas that showcase the creative spirit of the human being.
Today we’re welcoming co-founder Yancey Strickler who together with Perry Chen structured KS as a tool to fund “only” creative projects, something they defined & created on their own since meeting back in 2005. From the beginning they had this concept where they” wanted to have a very broad definition of creativity and wanted to approach each proposal that came to them with excitement & openness to see what anyone wants to achieve”. Quite an “empathic view of creativity” as Yancey puts himself.
aqnb: Hello Yancey, first of all thanks for dedicating us some of your time, let’s start with our impertinent questions…
Continue reading Kickstarter, when crowdfunding comes of age
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