Kickstarter

Kickstarter kickstarter.com and is an American Internet platform for project financing through crowdfunding. The eponymous startup company based in New York is considered a pioneer and most successful provider of the financing type.

Addressed are artists and inventors from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, which may strive for very different things from independent films about music albums, journalistic projects, games and technology to projects with food reference for financial support and direct contact with fans and prospective.

In spring 2012, Kickstarter has received much attention in the media after quick succession several projects - especially the emphasis of the comic book The Order of the Stick and the planned development of the computer game Double Fine Adventure - the first time the threshold of one million U.S. dollars and at the same time the targeted financing sum exceeded by many times over.

Model

As a representative of a designated as " crowdfunding " or "swarm financing " new form of fundraising platforms promotes Kickstarter collecting funds from the general public and privately owned by a model that bypasses the usual long time investment opportunities. The capital seeker must register with Kickstarter to present his proposal on the page can and have a U.S. bank account. Kickstarter provides guidelines, which form approved projects. Select the project creator a minimum amount that has to be achieved, as well as the length of time that should be available to the project to achieve the financing sum. With the release of the project can register as potential donors with a sum arbitrarily chosen from a dollar every private person after registration on the Kickstarter website. If the required minimum amount is not reached within this period, the financing is considered a failure and it will be deducted any money or transferred. The collection of the funds provided via Amazon Payments.

Kickstarter charges a finder's fee of 5 % of the vested amount, Amazon claimed another 3-5 %. Unlike other fundraising or investment platforms raises Kickstarter not claim ownership of the projects and their products. However, all projects will be permanently archived, and remain accessible to the public. Is the financing completed, the project data and uploaded media files can not be changed or removed from the page.

Kickstarter does not guarantee the delivery of the promised benefits, or the appropriate use of the money promised by its members. Kickstarter advises all sponsors rather to rely on the selection of projects on their own judgment. Instead, all project initiators are warned that they could be liable for any damages of their sponsors, if commitments are not met. So collected in May 2011, a film student at New York University 1,726 U.S. dollars for its own film, but copied another movie. The student apologized afterwards publicly for the dispute was settled.

History

Kickstarter was founded in 2008 by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler. The Miami New Times wrote jokingly: " Kickstarter.com is one of the best ideas for a website since Al Gore invented the Internet. " Kickstarter has secured ten million dollars seed capital, among others, the New York venture capitalist Union Square Ventures and of business angels as Jack Dorsey, Zach Klein and Caterina Fake. The company is headquartered in the Lower East Side, Manhattan.

Up to joining Expert Labs in November 2010, Andy Baio acted as CTO. Leitentwickler since the launch of the website Lance Ivy.

Stand April 2012 recorded Kickstarter over 175 million U.S. dollars of guaranteed support (including ultimately not successful and therefore not debited financing actions) and more than 20,000 projects successfully funded. During the early years of the business activities were able to be increased significantly. In 2010, Kickstarter was able to announce 3910 successfully funded projects, 27,638,318 U.S. dollars in pledges and funding success rate of 43%. 2011, there were already 11,836 projects at 99,344,381 U.S. dollars money commitments and 46 % success rate.

On February 9, 2012 Kickstarter saw a number of companies records. A docking station of the industrial designer Casey Hopkins and his company ElevationLab for the iPhone reached the first project money commitments of over one million U.S. dollars. A few hours later, the game developer Double Fine Productions reached with his project Double Fine Adventure the same amount in less than 24 hours after publication of the proposed concept. It also concerned the first day at Kickstarter company history, in which more than one million U.S. dollars could be gained money commitments.

On February 19 passed a request for a reprint of the anthology comic book series The Order of the Stick as a third Kickstarter project, the barrier of one million U.S. dollars. It was at the same time to the first book and the first project of a single artist (as opposed to company projects ) that could reach this sum. On 20 February, the Double Fine Adventure passed as the first of the limit of two million dollars, on March 13, less than 24 hours before the end of the funding action, even three million U.S. dollars. On the same day started with Wasteland 2, another computer game project with the highest ever funding request of $ 900,000. This goal was achieved within 42 hours. The Design Pebble Project: E-Paper Watch passed already after eight days duration as the first 5 - million mark. Overall, the project more than ten million U.S. dollars could secure.

In March 2012, regardless of Kickstarter launched a statistic and project progress tracking project called kicktraq.com, which has been described as Google Analytics for Kickstarter. The website provides metrics and trend analysis on the term of a Kickstarter project and thus fixes a lack of Kickstarter.com.

In July 2012, Kickstarter announced that the platform will be open in the future for project applications from Great Britain. As a platform for the collection of funds continues to Amazon Payments to be used.

On March 3, 2014 reported Kickstarter 1 billion U.S. dollars of collected funds on its own platform. These were invested by 5.7 million people in the financing of various projects.

Highest successful project financing

The following table lists the ten highest successful completion of financing campaigns, measured at the final sum.

Other notable projects

• Blue Like Jazz - a film adaptation of the book of the author Donald Miller.
• The Price - An Animated film by Christopher Salmon, based on a short story by Neil Gaiman. It was the first project that asked for more than $ 150,000 and was successfully funded. The project is still in development. The project was supported by author Gaiman and his publisher Random House, and there were reports of Wired, CNN and the Tagesspiegel.
• Tick ​​Tock - short film by Ien Chi Korean-American filmmaker who won thus at the International Grand Finale of Campus Movie Fest, the world's largest student film festival, the award for the best film and best director. It was at this time also to the in the history of the Campus Movie Festival most visited and best rated film of all time. The film achieved through viral marketing well over a million viewers and has been an issue of The Guardian, Gizmodo and other media publications.
• Inocente - a short film that tells the story of a 15 -year-old homeless artist in San Diego. The film won the 2013 Oscar for Best Short Documentary.

Patent disputes

On 30 September 2011 ranged Kickstarter a suit against Artistshare and Fan Funded one owns the patent US7885887, " Methods and apparatuses for financing and marketing a creative work". Kickstarter justified this with the fear of his goal of a potential patent infringement suit. Kickstarter is suing for annulment of the patent or at least the finding that Kickstarter for patent infringement can not be held responsible. In February 2012, disagreed Artistshare and Fan Funded the complaints from Kickstarter and expressed that there was no threat of legal action for patent infringement, as alleged by Kickstarter.