Spring 2016

Kickstarter

Online Support Group

Sarah Schmidt

Kickstarter is an online platform for artists, filmmakers, designers, and other creators to seek funding, support, and resources to bring their ideas to life [i]. Kickstarter officially launched on April 28, 2009. Over 10 million people from all over the world have funded a Kickstarter project. Over $2.2 Billion has been collectively raised for Kickstarter project [ii]. 100,445 Kickstarter projects have been successfully funded. As of February 2016, there are 5,751 projects that are currently looking for funding.

This innovative and well known website’s main goal is not profit, but to help those who don’t have the inside connections or resources they need to fund their project. As of 2015, Kickstarter has become a Benefit Corporation. A Benefit Corporation is a type of for profit company that is obligated to consider how decisions they make affect society, not only their shareholders. Kickstarter is a small, independent company of 135 people, based in New York City.

How does Kickstarter work?

Anyone can start a Kickstarter project. All they need is an idea for a project and information to present the idea to the Kickstarter community to seek funding. Some creators make informative videos; others spend weeks setting up their project page to make it as appealing as possible. Every project is encouraged to create rewards: incentives for backers. Backers may be more likely to give more money to a project if they will receive a reward based on the amount of their contribution. Rewards may be tangible (usually items related to the project) or intangible (e.g. credits on a film or video).

If a project does not meet its original funding goal, no money is collected from the backers. Close to two thirds of Kickstarter projects fail to launch due to funding shortfall. Fifteen percent of proposed projects do not receive any pledges and 39% receive pledges for less than 20% of their requested funding.

Kickstarter success stories

One project which successfully launched is “Prepd Pack – The Lunchbox Reimagined”. As of February 26, 2016, 12,268 backers pledged $1,405,875, well over the original funding goal of $25,000 that was reached in 6 hours.

This project involved creating a one of a kind lunchbox and a smart recipe app to “kickstart your healthier lifestyle”. They called this futurist lunchbox, the “Prepd Pack”. To avoid buying takeout, which can become expensive, Prepd Pack encourages packing a lunch, healthy eating and portion control [ii]. The Prepd Pack consists of a modern design case, a system of removable containers, and magnetic cutlery. The containers are leak proof and made of high quality materials. The Prepd Pack comes with an app (available for both Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, and free for all backers) to make it simple to plan and prepare lunches for the upcoming week. It includes a large range of recipes designed to suit different types of diets and health goals. All recipes are designed to fill the containers provided, making meal preparation easier and eliminating food waste. The food app also provides detailed shopping lists so the user knows exactly what to buy at the store. The app also includes calorie counts and detailed nutritional information for each recipe.

Monument Labs successfully funded a project to create a device called Monument that stores and automatically organizes photos by location, faces, time, and the subjects of the photos [iii]. It takes away the struggle of organizing thousands of vacation, graduation, and family photos that many people face. Monument is a box (148mm x 148mm x46mm) about the width of an iPhone. It is a personal cloud device for photos and videos that can be accessed from tablets, smartphones, and televisions via the Monument App. It will automatically sync photos and videos over Wi-Fi or can import them through a Secure Digital Memory (SD) card. Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms are implemented to organize content. The user can search for a specific person based on their face. All photos can be displayed on a map based on where they were taken. The user can also search for specific content that might be in several photos: for example, the user can type in “dance” in the search bar and the app will automatically display all photos related to the word “dance”. No tagging or organizing is required by the user; the AI does that all automatically. This next level organizing system is an efficient device for those who dread organizing thousands of photos, but enjoy capturing the moment!

Kickstarter is a great platform for new ideas and creative people. Ideas can even come to mind when browsing through other creators’ projects. There may be projects that you are interested in backing. A great feature about becoming a backer is that, most of the time, you will receive these new products before they are available to the general public. Be a part of something great today, and become a backer to help kick start someone’s project!

Back to Spring 2016 Home