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Show HN: We open sourced Lockitron's crowdfunding app
- viraj_shah 14y agoThank you for this. This will be so helpful for my and many other startups. Interesting to note that Kickstarter has an Amazon FlexPay gem on their github.
- ccamrobertson 14y agoIt's very lean at this point, but hopefully it's a good starting point. Kickstarter was amazing for doing the heavy lifting and open sourcing it with their amazon_flex_pay gem.
- mttsn 14y agoSpent the better part of an afternoon cloning the lockitron site a few days ago... you guys are fucking awesome. And I'm impatient. I'll share a python version when I have a chance to clean it up. Thanks for being awesome.
- fuzzythinker 14y agoMany thanks for that!
- marknowotarski 14y agoKeep me posted. I have patent clients that will need it.
- phineas 14y agoDid you make any progress with python? I'm not much of a ruby guy.
- mttsn 14y agoSpent the better part of an afternoon cloning the lockitron site a few days ago... you guys are fucking awesome. And I'm impatient. I'll share a python version when I have a chance to clean it up. Thanks for being awesome.
- freeslave 14y agoi'm guessing this is in response to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4625371 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4625371 in other words, OP delivered!
- erohead 14y agoAwesome work, guys! Thanks for sharing. I wish you went with my suggestion for bootstarter.js...
- andrewljohnson 14y agoA couple months ago, I had added "kickstarter widget for start-up websites" to my list of ideas that I never do, but think are cool. This is a really wonderful open-source contribution, so hat tip! We also ordered a Lockitron for our office already. We have keypads on our house, and we love them, and imagine Lokcitron will be even more love.
- ccamrobertson 14y agoI still believe there is room for a proper platform to manage crowdfunding for hardware - maybe with a distributed option as well.
- rdl 14y agoMaybe Amazon would be in the best position to do it.
- jkestner 14y agoGiven the new Amazon Lending program, I'm guessing they're starting to move in that direction. It's for sellers buying inventory now, but Amazon has a lot of data about what sells that can help it determine what's a good risk for investment. Cam, you rock.
- marknowotarski 14y agoAmazon has a "lending program"? Can you point to it. That's the magic that holds this together. Get prefunding that's only available when you are ready to ship. Secure a loan with the prefunding to go into production.
- rdl 14y agoAmazon Lending through Amazon Capital Services http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443493304578034103049644978.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044349330457803... (google "Small Businesses are Finding An Unlikely Banker: Amazon" to get around paywall)
- auston 14y agoDamn it! You just ruined my startup weekend idea!
- damncabbage 14y agoThere's plenty left to do: "We've kept Selfstarter really simple, but that also means that you should beef it up with your own authentication, administration and product management code."
- joelrunyon 14y agoI've had this idea for a while but lacked the skills to actually create it. Glad someone went ahead and made it happen.
- daenz 14y agoIs the "Fork Now" button supposed to go to a Lockitron preorder page? EDIT>> Apparently only the second fork button does this...the one I clicked after reading the page content :)
- Jarred 14y agoGood catch! I just pushed a fix.
- obilgic 14y agoI am a hardcore rails guy, but for some reason using sinatra for this app, would be a better option.
- loceng 14y agoThanks for releasing this. The design works well for single-product offerings, though would need to be modified for pledge-reward setups.. not too hard to do though.
- mck- 14y agoThis is so awesome -- have the Kickstarter guys contacted you? I wonder how they take this, and what this means for the entire crowd-funding space for that matter, especially the smaller ones that don't have the network effects of Kickstarter. I just did a project on Fundrazr last month. If only this was available then.. kudos!
- staunch 14y agoLooks like Kickstarter is going to end up being known as the company that (kick)started a phenomenon but didn't own it. They should have become a marketplace for projects, not an arbiter of what gets a shot and what doesn't.
- brackin 14y agoInterestingly they don't seem to want to own the whole phenomenon. Which could be a good thing for what they want to achieve. They want to focus on creative projects over being a platform to fund anything or a store with little accountability.
- loceng 14y agoThe attention and revenues they would generate from having bigger and more successful products (revenue size wise) would benefit the smaller creative projects IMHO.
- alexpenny 14y agoI think they thought this through. They probably realized they couldn't own all of crowd funding. Wouldn't it be weird seeing a "Fund my new convenience store" on kickstarter. Instead they do own creative projects, which is brilliant because that's where innovation happens.
- project23 14y agohttp://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1877926324/plenty-a-grocery-store-for-the-neighborhood?ref=live http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1877926324/plenty-a-groc... It's not the only one... Kickstarter's new policy is about them not wanting to act as an online store, not about taking away the "fund my new convenience store" vs creative projects. Its more about them not wanting to be used by anyone (creative projects included) as if they are there to basically be a selling platform. At least thats how I viewed it.
- alexpenny 14y ago
- noonespecial 14y agoOutstanding. I was going to try to contact you privately and beg for advice on how to run something similar. My hats so far off to you guys, it's on the floor in front of me. Can't wait for my Lockitron to arrive.
- ccamrobertson 14y agoThank you! We are no PR experts, this took on a life of its own.
- tonylampada 14y agoAwesome idea. You should consider adopting http://freedomsponsors.org http://freedomsponsors.org and http://gittip.com http://gittip.com as crowdfunding platforms for that - it just makes sense, recursively so. :-)
- moens 14y agoWhen they mentioned that they would open source their code, I started looking at payment gateways that did cool things. Here's my research so far: http://www.geekphd.com/lockitron-selfstarter-us-payment-gateways-that-allow-pre-orders/ http://www.geekphd.com/lockitron-selfstarter-us-payment-gate...
- ccamrobertson 14y agoThank you for doing the leg work with this. I think that anyone who wants to use this needs to look at payments very carefully so as not to run the risk of rampant chargebacks or getting shut down by your processor.
- propercoil 14y agoi'm loving it
- ryanlchan 14y agoI'm curious to see what happens to Amazon FPS if these product based crowd-funding apps take off. We may be in for a bit of a Paypal style crackdown debacle. I actually spoke with the Kickstarter guys back in 2009 when I was considering branching off their idea specifically for product based ideas, thinking that it could be "Amazon for stuff that doesn't exist yet". We all agreed that the idea should happen, but Kickstarter didn't want to do it for two reasons: 1. Their goal is to help artists succeed. They're artists themselves, and the guy who started the site's been working on this for years. It means a lot to them to help the little one-man filmmakers. 2. The risk in having products that aren't delivered on time, in the same form as envisioned, or aren't even completed was just too high. They were terrified of having a backlash of backers who thought they were purchasing a product when in fact the transaction is structured as a donation. The second one is what makes me worried. What happens if, worst case scenario, Pebble goes bankrupt without producing any items? Who takes the hit there? Is it Amazon, Pebble, Kickstarter, or the backers? It isn't clear yet because we haven't had a high-profile failure yet. But it's only a matter of time.
- eichin 14y agoI'm surprised that the idea that anyone other than the backers are going to lose money keeps coming up; it's always looked pretty clear to me (even though I've gotten rewards delivered from around 30 out of 45 projects, mostly hardware, and the remaining ones are still pretty visible and active - past success doesn't feel like a guarantee on anyone's part, it's just pretty cool.) It's helped that I'm pretty well-qualified to judge these projects, though the only ones that looked unlikely to actually deliver have been really obvious (the "projector" that was supposed to be something mini-maglite sized that plugged into an iPhone headphone jack comes to mind) so it's not like it's actually taken all that much effort :-) It also seems like the small-donation structure should make it difficult for any individual to have cause for action; I see some of KickStarter's recent changes as not wanting to even get into that fight, but that's because even winning would be expensive (and as has been suggested elsewhere in the thread, they're actually in it for the indie films.) Or do you mean just the popularity risk, if enough projects don't deliver?
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- mmahemoff 14y agoSomething funny happened when I tried to share this on G+ (screenshot - http://goo.gl/VK404 http://goo.gl/VK404). Suggest the creators remove that hidden Latin div.
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- rkaplan 14y agoThis could start a trend towards moving away from Kickstarter. So far, the more famous projects that have pursued funding from a similar model without using Kickstarter itself (e.g. Lockitron, App.net) have done so out of necessity – they weren't allowed to use the Kickstarter platform. But if people keep succeeding without being hosted on Kickstarter itself, that 5% fee might look more and more unattractive to people starting large projects. How much value does being on Kickstarter really add to your project, and how much is simply due to the brilliant fundraising model?
- mey 14y agoConsidering all of the kickstarter things I have backed have come from my social graph, rather then kickstarter's discovery tools, I'm not sure it's discovery for the larger scale projects.
- eridius 14y agoCuriously, I'm the reverse. I've found a lot more interesting kickstarters through the "your friend has kickstarted X" emails that kickstarter sends out than I have through normal social connections (e.g. twitter, IRC, etc).
- treelovinhippie 14y agoI guess it depends on how viral and interesting your product offering is and how well you market it. Kickstarter has the benefit of a large user base with lots of traffic. Though as more projects are listed on KS it becomes harder to be found.
- marknowotarski 14y agoI've surveyed backers on Ouya (a runaway kickstarter game controller). They found out about it through precoverage on enthusiasts sites like gamitron. Very few of the backers came from Kickstarter itself. Lockitron did something very similar on techcrunch. That tells me that the key is promoting on enthusiast sites.
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- 31reasons 14y agoThis is how it should be. Most of the kickstarter projects get funded after doing lot of promotions and leveraging founders's own social network. Kickstarter taking % cut of the fund is completely unnecessary in many situations. They do provide some kind of project validation which is important in high-risk projects.
- Finbarr 14y agoNice job guys! This is pretty awesome stuff.
- dabit 14y agoWas working on something similar when this came out. https://github.com/crowdint/fundraiser https://github.com/crowdint/fundraiser Great job by the Lockitron team.
- xfernandox 14y agoThanks for sharing this with the community!
- johnx123-up 14y agoCan anybody share how it is different from other crowdfunding scripts like Agriya?
- keytovlad 14y agoThis is awesome thanks for making this open source.
- lelf 14y agoIt looks this way without flash installed — http://imgur.com/zcPSG http://imgur.com/zcPSG
- orange123 14y agoReally admire it! keep up sharing
- helen842000 14y agoExcellent! I was just about to look your site up again and see how you put your own crowdfunding project together. This is perfect! Thanks!
- jkeesh 14y agoThanks for open sourcing this. We are probably going to launch a crowdfunding campaign soon, and I am excited to check this out as an option.
- ommunist 14y agoThis is absolutely fantastic of you, guys to share an app like that. Most hardware makers cant make self-serving software like that, and you rock! I am sending the link to all of my engineering friends.
- francov88 14y agoBest idea ever! Great job to all involved - wonder how Kickstarter is going to take this?
- outdooricon 14y agoThis is really nice! If a project got accepted into Kickstarter, would it be better to stay with them or use this instead? The benefit of exposure to a large community as a Kickstarter project is pitted against the extra 5% that they take... How do you turn exposure into a monetary value for comparison? Pricing of ads maybe?
- gary4gar 14y agoNumber of tests(Unit,Integration etc) is 0!
- matthuggins 14y agoSo submit a pull request. ;)
- rohamg 14y agoNicely done guys. Someone fucked with the wrong hackers.