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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: 4, Interesting) by DutchUncle on Monday January 23 2017, @02:20PM
It's a matter of expectations: It's not a pre-order, it's artistic patronage. I have backed dozens of things, all new projects from a source I was already familiar with; new board games from publishers and/or designers I already like; new DVDs from musical and entertainment groups I had heard (at least online). All creative works where the funding (the "interest free loan") was for physical publication. All of them finished but one (which offered a refund, and for the amount I told them to forget it). Some of them were ridiculously later than original projections, but in most cases they made regular updates on progress (a famous one, Ogre from Steve Jackson Games, actually hired an additional staffer to manage the project and the online communication).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @04:34PM
However a patron still expects something in return for their investment, even if not a physical good. A lot of arts patronage was by the church to create art that met their agenda and extended their influence while the Medeci were famous for using their patronage of the arts as a form of money laundry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:40AM
I use Kickstarter to donate money to Erfworld comic. It works.