4 ms·

Consumer crowdfunding websites like kickstarter and indiegogo have largely failed to live up to their early hype. Campaigns now fall into two categories: design

by ohazi 6y ago

Consumer crowdfunding websites like kickstarter and indiegogo have largely failed to live up to their early hype. Campaigns now fall into two categories: designer vaporware from people you've never heard of, and established companies that don't need crowdfunding but are using it anyway for marketing purposes. On the other hand... niche crowdfunding websites like Crowd Supply seem to be doing better than ever. There are a few reasons for this: 1. A lot of campaigns are for open source hardware. These projects are developed in the open, and you can go to github and download schematics and look through prototype firmware to evaluate the project yourself, months before the campaign even starts. 2. Vetting seems to be better. There are almost always real prototypes floating around by the time a campaign goes live. 3. More modest goals. More often than not, the funding goals are right around some sensible volume buying / manufacturing threshold. The creators usually just want to be able to get a PCB with microvias, or buy parts by the reel rather than in single-unit quantities. You don't see as many creators trying to get rich quick or bootstrap a company. In my view, this is more in line with what crowdfunding was supposed to be: Getting volume buying commitments for an already working design rather than speculative "investing." A lot of kickstarter/indiegogo "creators" should probably be in jail for fraud.

noncoml 6y ago
> More modest goals More modest than building a hammer? As they say in their promotion page, we have been building hammers for tens of thousands of years now...
scrollaway 6y ago
Yeah. I'm wondering if there's somewhere that actively tracks this stuff, especially the popular ones. The park & diamond helmet for example (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/park-diamond-foldable-bike-helmet https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/park-diamond-foldable-bik...) raised over 2.5MM EUR and I lost track of how late it is but they've easily sent 10-15 updates saying "sorry, we didn't get it in time for [MONTH], but we'll be ready in [MONTH+2], promise!". They gave me a refund when I asked for one, at least, and since then I've only seen more of the same. Hard to tell if it's a scam or utter incompetence.
- madamelic 6y ago
  Oh my gosh, I love that their graphic [0] skips 2019 to make it seem like they haven't taken two years. That's disingenuous if I've ever seen it. [0]: https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-prod-cld/image/upload/c_limit,w_695/v1590682893/gv4chwdp0zhzrlltoedk.jpg https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-prod-cld/image/upload/...
dragontamer 6y ago
> and established companies that don't need crowdfunding but are using it anyway for marketing purposes. There are also groups who are using crowdfunding to check-and-see if a video game (or whatever) has enough fans to be worth greenlighting. See Mighty No 9, or Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. If a Kickstarter campaign is successful, then the investors dive in with the rest of the money to greenlight the project. If it fails, then they kill the project right there and then. Mighty No 9 and Bloodstained have their share of issues, but I think the methodology has been proven to work. "Proving worth to investors" is a real step in the process.
egypturnash 6y ago
Crowdfunding still works great for independent comics. "Hey I drew this thing and now I want to use KS/IG as a way to manage pre-orders" is a proven, solid part of an artist's revenue stream. My general rule of thumb is to avoid hardware campaigns, and to be exceedingly dubious about any campaigns that are asking for enough money for a creator to live on while they make a thing unless they have a long track record of delivering. And any campaign that meets a lot of stretch goals should probably be expected to take at least twice as long to deliver, if not more; sometimes I think it would be really worthwhile for Kickstarter to build active support for stretch goals into their platform, that trigger changes in the delivery date promised on the page when met, because "add four more levels and two playable characters to the scope of this video game" sure is gonna take some more time to build.
mc32 6y ago
The one use I see in the news is people who suffer some economic loss _and_ have some news notoriety set up a campaigns in an attempt to earn sympathy donations (not saying it's wrong to do, but rather it’s very few people under hardship shared by many who leverage their news status and get more donations than someone who was not in the news).
detaro 6y ago
Lots of successful kickstarters are artists, musicians, ... that can't prefund a production run, but have a product that's a clear scope of how this kind of thing is made (book, artprints, ...) and a large chunk of the work already done. That is still not 100% risk free, but an overall success outside your two categories.
chx 6y ago
> Getting volume buying commitments for an already working design rather than speculative "investing." This still happens in KS and IGG both. I have seen a number of rather interesting backpacks from companies we never heard of. Also, I had multiple successful deliveries from Chinese companies who see IGG as a great jumping board towards the international markets.
nerfhammer 6y ago
crowdsupply is almost entirely just making pcbs, which are literally the most straightforward thing in the world to get manufactured
- detaro 6y ago
  The point is that crowdsupply vets projects that they are at a stage where a lot of it is actually just finishing design and manufacturing, or at least have a clear path there, instead of letting people imagine "we will have a PCB and software running on it, how hard can that be" and kickstart that. (because most electronics products are "straightforward to get manufactured" at some level, getting there and not overcomplicating it so it isn't anymore is the problem)
irrational 6y ago
The exception might be boardgames. Boardgames are huge on Kickstarter. 30-50 new board game campaigns come out every week (most non-board gamers are surprised to learn that about 5,000 new board games are released every year). Many are from new small publishers that use it for its intended purpose.
0x53 6y ago
I think music is an exception to this. I have funded several indie bands that have released albums that I liked.

by ohazi 6y ago

noncoml 6y ago

> More modest goals More modest than building a hammer? As they say in their promotion page, we have been building hammers for tens of thousands of years now...

scrollaway 6y ago

Yeah. I'm wondering if there's somewhere that actively tracks this stuff, especially the popular ones. The park & diamond helmet for example (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/park-diamond-foldable-bike-helmet https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/park-diamond-foldable-bik...) raised over 2.5MM EUR and I lost track of how late it is but they've easily sent 10-15 updates saying "sorry, we didn't get it in time for [MONTH], but we'll be ready in [MONTH+2], promise!". They gave me a refund when I asked for one, at least, and since then I've only seen more of the same. Hard to tell if it's a scam or utter incompetence.

madamelic 6y ago
Oh my gosh, I love that their graphic [0] skips 2019 to make it seem like they haven't taken two years. That's disingenuous if I've ever seen it. [0]: https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-prod-cld/image/upload/c_limit,w_695/v1590682893/gv4chwdp0zhzrlltoedk.jpg https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-prod-cld/image/upload/...

dragontamer 6y ago

> and established companies that don't need crowdfunding but are using it anyway for marketing purposes. There are also groups who are using crowdfunding to check-and-see if a video game (or whatever) has enough fans to be worth greenlighting. See Mighty No 9, or Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. If a Kickstarter campaign is successful, then the investors dive in with the rest of the money to greenlight the project. If it fails, then they kill the project right there and then. Mighty No 9 and Bloodstained have their share of issues, but I think the methodology has been proven to work. "Proving worth to investors" is a real step in the process.

egypturnash 6y ago

Crowdfunding still works great for independent comics. "Hey I drew this thing and now I want to use KS/IG as a way to manage pre-orders" is a proven, solid part of an artist's revenue stream. My general rule of thumb is to avoid hardware campaigns, and to be exceedingly dubious about any campaigns that are asking for enough money for a creator to live on while they make a thing unless they have a long track record of delivering. And any campaign that meets a lot of stretch goals should probably be expected to take at least twice as long to deliver, if not more; sometimes I think it would be really worthwhile for Kickstarter to build active support for stretch goals into their platform, that trigger changes in the delivery date promised on the page when met, because "add four more levels and two playable characters to the scope of this video game" sure is gonna take some more time to build.

mc32 6y ago

The one use I see in the news is people who suffer some economic loss _and_ have some news notoriety set up a campaigns in an attempt to earn sympathy donations (not saying it's wrong to do, but rather it’s very few people under hardship shared by many who leverage their news status and get more donations than someone who was not in the news).

detaro 6y ago

Lots of successful kickstarters are artists, musicians, ... that can't prefund a production run, but have a product that's a clear scope of how this kind of thing is made (book, artprints, ...) and a large chunk of the work already done. That is still not 100% risk free, but an overall success outside your two categories.

chx 6y ago

> Getting volume buying commitments for an already working design rather than speculative "investing." This still happens in KS and IGG both. I have seen a number of rather interesting backpacks from companies we never heard of. Also, I had multiple successful deliveries from Chinese companies who see IGG as a great jumping board towards the international markets.

nerfhammer 6y ago

crowdsupply is almost entirely just making pcbs, which are literally the most straightforward thing in the world to get manufactured

detaro 6y ago
The point is that crowdsupply vets projects that they are at a stage where a lot of it is actually just finishing design and manufacturing, or at least have a clear path there, instead of letting people imagine "we will have a PCB and software running on it, how hard can that be" and kickstart that. (because most electronics products are "straightforward to get manufactured" at some level, getting there and not overcomplicating it so it isn't anymore is the problem)

irrational 6y ago

The exception might be boardgames. Boardgames are huge on Kickstarter. 30-50 new board game campaigns come out every week (most non-board gamers are surprised to learn that about 5,000 new board games are released every year). Many are from new small publishers that use it for its intended purpose.

0x53 6y ago

I think music is an exception to this. I have funded several indie bands that have released albums that I liked.