Posted 11.29.2010 @ 7:41 pm by Jen M.
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Have you ever had and idea and thought, “If only I had the money to make this happen…”? Well, thanks to social media, the internet, and an emerging company called Kickstarter, you may be able to turn your ideas into reality.
Kickstarter is a NY-based company that helps creative individuals kickstart their ideas. Anything from publishing, fashion, games, music technology, etc. Pretty much any creative idea you can think (within the guidelines) of can be put on Kickstarter. The idea behind Kickstarter is all-or-nothing pledging. If you set a goal of $5000 and don’t reach it by your goal deadline the project doesn’t get funded and all of the people who pledged to back you project won’t be charged their pledge fee. This helps ensure that people who create projects are serious about their project and also makes sure that an underfunded project doesn’t come to life with mediocre results.
Project creators set up pledge levels of support and give our rewards for each level. Typically this involves a sort of pre-order situation. For example, say you want to fund your band’s first CD. Your pledge rewards might include a copy of the CD, a signed and numbered copy of the CD, tickets to a show plus a CD, etc etc. It’s really whatever the creator wants to come up with.
To date, the most successful Kickstarter project isn’t even at it’s deadline yet. It is the TikTok & LunaTik watch kits for the iPod Nano. The project was started by the design firm MINIMAL who wanted to create a series of slick, well-designed watch straps to support the new iPod Nano. The company needed $15,000 to get started and to date have raised nearly half a million dollars. If you pledge $25 or $50 you will be pre-ordering a TikTok or LunaTik at a reduced price.
Other successful fun projects funded by Kickstarter include the Glif, and iPhone 4 tripod mount and stand, and the Lasersaur, an open source laser cutter. But there are a slew of even lower budgeted projects on the site. I encourage you to browse around. There just might be some really fun projects that you could find yourself getting into and wanting to help come to life. Or if you have your own creative idea that needs funding, post it on Kickstarter and put a link in the comments section to let us know about it.
