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Gareth Everard has an interesting article on TechCrunch discussing what he believes crowdfunding will look like in the near future.
The golden age of irrational exuberance on Kickstarter has ended — Pebble is shutting down, marking the fall of crowdfunding's white knight after a string of other high-profile closures and failures.
Originally positioned as a medium for (especially arts-related) projects to garner modest seed funding from a diverse group of supporters, crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have obviously evolved since their respective launches in 2009 and 2008. Yes, crowdfunding has produced some inspiring success stories that have grown into innovative businesses, like Peak Design and Flow Hive.
However, it also has facilitated the transfer of significant sums of money to teams that ultimately proved themselves to be incompetent, leaving backers with nothing. Recent headlines have been chock full of projects that have declared bankruptcy or otherwise betrayed their early backers, exposing cases where founders' and companies' egos have simply overtaken their ability to reason, plan and communicate logically or truthfully.
Have the high profile failures doomed crowdfunding?
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Monday January 23 2017, @01:10PM
I think the thing to take away from your comment here is that you did your research and backed projects that have a good chance of success. Too many people just look at the intended product at the end of the road that they want and throw money at it like it's a pre-order. They do no further research than that and have no idea who the people are that they are backing or whether they have the slightest clue about what it will really take to manufacture their widget. Kickstarter, Indiegogo etc. have all adopted the Uber business model, distancing themselves legally from the relationship between backer and project. This means that all due diligence has to be performed by the backer before throwing money at a project, but too many backers do not understand that and get burned in the process.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday January 23 2017, @01:37PM
you did your research and backed projects that have a good chance of success
I donno. I think some of it is inherent in the market for that product.
At least in the RPG community its hard to find a kickstarter where they admit they're noobs. This morning I specifically researched two projects that are new to me "Ponies for Pathfinder" "This is not our first project. Our primary writer, David Silver, has published eight books already" and "Obsidian Apocalypse Campaign" "Over the last decade, Louis Porter Jr. has released over 500 RPG related products". There's gotta be a RPG/grognard product out there by a noob.
As for stuff I funded, "The Crossing" "This is not our first project. Our primary writer, David Silver, has published eight books already," "Trail of the Apprentice" which is a Legendary Games corporate account. I bought some DVG games, also a corporate account thats been around for 20 years. And some Dark Eye products from Ulysses Spiele (kind of like TSR in the old days but written in German long story)
Possibly its unhealthy for a marketplace to have everyone involved have 10+ years of shipping product experience. I "think" the noob farm for RPG products today is RPGNOW which is a print on demand operator. I've bought stuff from RPGNOW and have been mostly pleased. When you realize that most of the money is going to the POD operator, a buck for a campaign or some kind of source book is pretty fair deal.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 23 2017, @07:02PM
Possibly its unhealthy for a marketplace to have everyone involved have 10+ years of shipping product experience.
I disagree. The quotes you mention, if accurate, merely note that someone involved has the necessary experience, not everyone. And that's a typical business situation where some people have experience and others are new.