Kickstarter.com

A listmember sent me a link to a website, kickstarter.com that I think is vastly superior to quirky.com.  In fact, this is an amazing site which looks like something I would design if I had thought of it.


In essence, you post a notice of a project you wish to accomplish, and people pledge to fund it.  For their pledge, they get some reward, like a hot air balloon ride, or a copy of a song if the project is to produce a song.


The pledge idea is really nothing new, there are plenty of examples in history, such as in old times when someone wanted a book published, he would pre-sell copies to enough people to warrant the printer making a run.


The site states explicitly it cannot be used for start-up funds, but it can be used for a project like developing a board game.  Although mostly creative projects like film and music, there are games, products and other hardgoods.  

Some groups are sponsoring topics, like this for agriculture.

Quirky.com charges a $10 idea submission fee, and selects which to promote.  It appears to then pay out  10% off the top of any selling item to the "inventor."  All fair enough, even generous for what is in essence payment for concept work.  I disagree with quirky's product positioning at mass market and dislike they do the sourcing, when I think this is your job, and critical to starting a business.  But just as Print On Demand killed the abusive vanity press business, maybe quirky will kill the abusive "inventor submission" business.  Overall Quirky is a good thing for a certain range of entrepreneurs.

Neither Quirky nor Kickstarter give a hoot about intellectual property rights, which is only reasonable.  In essence everything you do with these groups is open-source.  This is good. But then, who has studied with me cares abut IPR, right?   We all know IPR is pointless, and worse, counterproductive. 


I like kickstarter better since it is far more flexible, non-discriminatory, requires no upfront fee and leaves the marketing and monetization aspect where it belongs, with you.  It appears their system gets about 10% off the top (all in) if your funding is a go, which is very reasonable.


Another subtle difference: both sites generate lots of attention for your project.  It seems to me with Quirky the attention goes to Quirky, with Kickstarter it goes to you.


Milestone 3 is enough orders to cover the suppliers minimum production run in a workable amount of time, profitably. Kickstarter very well may prove to serve as a controlled pretest of your project before you go off into Plan A.  Learn and test a lot of theses with a project on Kickstarter, then proceed into the real market on a even more solid basis.


I will think this over to test an idea and then report on progress.  If anyone else does too, please share your results.

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