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How to Fail at Kickstarter — Even If You Get Funded

posted by cmn32480 on Monday January 23 2017, @12:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the flush-that-cash-instead dept.

Fnord666 writes:

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?

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  • (Score: 1) by YeaWhatevs on Monday January 23 2017, @01:51PM

    by YeaWhatevs (5623) on Monday January 23 2017, @01:51PM (#457624)

    I've always been amazed at the campaigns that are funded. I look at them and say to myself "There's no way in hell that bunch of guys are going to pull that off". But the money goes to the one who can best hype their products and recklessly abandon any sense of reality all in the name of disruption apparently. I would like to think that less exciting but nonetheless worthy projects would get funded now, but I don't think that's what will actually happen. Character is destiny, and I think instead there will just be more hype in a different form, maybe a new crowdfunding method or maybe not, but hyperbole will remain the norm.

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Thexalon on Monday January 23 2017, @02:45PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday January 23 2017, @02:45PM (#457643)

    But the money goes to the one who can best hype their products and recklessly abandon any sense of reality all in the name of disruption apparently.

    Why should that surprise you? After all, somebody who could best hype their product and recklessly abandon any sense of reality in the name of disruption just became president of the United States. P.T. Barnum has again and again been proven right.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.