Have you heard of Kickstarter? Of course you have. If you use the Internet, have some friends on Facebook or follow somebody on Twitter there is no way you never saw somebody sharing a marketing campaign of another will-be-superb-in-the-future product. It is even quite likely that you thought about one or one of your friends talked with you about financing a startup using Kickstarter, am I right? I bet I am.
Simultaneously they launched a website with PayPal donations and gathered another $3.000.000. The main goal of this campaign was to get a proof for publishers and investors that a space simulator game has its place on the market. They were so successful that instead of cooperating with an investor Chris Roberts, the CEO of Cloud Imperium Games, the company behind Star Citizen, they decided they would create this project just by themselves. And it was a beginning.
To produce AAA computer game you need much more then they gathered so they continued to raise funds. Right now, three years later you can take a look at their website and see their revenue, which is at $94.000.000, and will break soon with a daily income over $30.000 (status for 1st November).
What was the key to their success? I believe the super star names and a brilliant trailer, which made viral. Chris Roberts is a creator of very popular, old school space simulator series Wing Commander. Besides, he worked as a Hollywood producer working on such films as the Lord of War. And just recently they have announced the cast for voice actors who will perform main roles in the game - Gary Oldman (James Gordon, Sirius Black), Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Andy Serkis (Gollum) or Gillian Anderson (Dana Scully). We all know these names.
An earlier mentioned Star Citizen had an initial delivery estimated for November 2014. Because they raised more money than they ever imagined the scope of the project changed drastically and right now in November 2015 we are still waiting for anything more then a technologic demo. The expectations are very high and nobody knows if they will be delivered. At the moment we can only hope and wait while we are teased with new images and trailers like this one featuring aforementioned Gary Oldman.
Kickstarter vs. Crowdfunding
What in fact is crowdfunding? According to WordSpy.com the term was first used in August 2006 but the idea is much older. With ease we can go back a few centuries and notice that projects like the Statue of Liberty were in fact crowdfunded, or fund raised as this term was in use these times.Crowdfunding became popular with the launch of ArtistShare in 2003 and later with emergence of IndieGoGo (2008) and Kickstarter (2009). Right now Kickstarter probably is the most popular crowdfunding platform supporting projects of any genre ranging from electronics to martial arts, board and computer games to furniture. Some of them have raised millions of dollars. And not all of them have delivered their promises.
Statue of Liberty - Wikipedia
Star Citizen - the most crowdfunded project
If you play computer games or you are a science fiction fan, then you probably heard of Star Citizen. If not, then in short it is the most funded (modern) crowdfunding project. It raised just over $2.000.000 in its initial Kickstarter campaing but it wasn’t the end.Simultaneously they launched a website with PayPal donations and gathered another $3.000.000. The main goal of this campaign was to get a proof for publishers and investors that a space simulator game has its place on the market. They were so successful that instead of cooperating with an investor Chris Roberts, the CEO of Cloud Imperium Games, the company behind Star Citizen, they decided they would create this project just by themselves. And it was a beginning.
To produce AAA computer game you need much more then they gathered so they continued to raise funds. Right now, three years later you can take a look at their website and see their revenue, which is at $94.000.000, and will break soon with a daily income over $30.000 (status for 1st November).
What was the key to their success? I believe the super star names and a brilliant trailer, which made viral. Chris Roberts is a creator of very popular, old school space simulator series Wing Commander. Besides, he worked as a Hollywood producer working on such films as the Lord of War. And just recently they have announced the cast for voice actors who will perform main roles in the game - Gary Oldman (James Gordon, Sirius Black), Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Andy Serkis (Gollum) or Gillian Anderson (Dana Scully). We all know these names.
Star Citizen Kickstarter Trailer
Will it ever succeed?
Can we be sure that a project will ever succeed? Unfortunately we can’t. Kickstarter and most other crofwdfunding do not give any guaranties that money you invest will give you a product of quality you were told to get. Or anything at all. You have to take a leap of faith and hope that invested money will be spent well and will result in a great outcome.An earlier mentioned Star Citizen had an initial delivery estimated for November 2014. Because they raised more money than they ever imagined the scope of the project changed drastically and right now in November 2015 we are still waiting for anything more then a technologic demo. The expectations are very high and nobody knows if they will be delivered. At the moment we can only hope and wait while we are teased with new images and trailers like this one featuring aforementioned Gary Oldman.
Star Citizen Newest Trailer
Comments
It should be emphasized that most of the ideas promoted on the platforms crowdfundingowych is characterized by a high degree of risk. And some of the most popular platforms like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, do not offer to subscribers of shares, but only rewards. A large part of this project plays, books, movies, CDs - which shows how hard it was to raise money to artists so far.
I don’t really follow kickstarter campaigns but I’ve also heard there are some scams where people only want to gain money without giving anything back in return. I've recently heard about a case where someone had to give the money back (unfortunately I don't remember the name of the project) but there are also people like a youtuber Anita Sarkeesian who gathered 150,000$ on kickstarter for her videos (instead of 6,000$ that she wanted) and she didn't really provide the content she promised (at least that's what I've heard).
In my opinion crowdfunding is amazing idea :) It is really not a slight pain to donate like 50zł for a project, and if 1million people think the same - the result is amazing :) There is only one thing that I rather don't know. When does the project get money they got on the platform? I have heart that only if they get the amount they said they want (100%), how can we be sure what would they do with the money? Any idea guys?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/carpool/carpool-deville-the-worlds-fastest-hot-tub
This guy needed 12,000$ for making jacuzzi in old cadillac car! Absolutely pointless brilliant idea. Second project i wanted to share with you is a guy Larry Lessing, his famous for runing presidntial campain in US in 2016 by ... crowdfunding it! Take a look at this guy and watch about his idea.
https://lessig2016.us/
Cheers!
Of course, the best ideas are very popular as shown in the following article:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235313
And random people get 50 k $ for no reason.
But it also give produces of products independence. Even if you look at the star citizen, if it was regular investment it would had been closed long time ago.
Investors do not tolerate delays, most of times have no idea what the heck is the thing they're investing into and sometimes can be even proud of it. And if someone will tell them that oil investments are more profitable than games for example, they'll drop whatever they're investing into to go and make the best deal.
I have backed up a project that went viral some time ago, it was a pillow that you would put over your head to sleep comfortably in any given situation. It looked good on a demo and it is made with care and using high quality materials, even though everyone who puts it on looks so embarrassing. However it is SO comfortable that we use it as a regular pillow when we travel, we fight for it all the time. Here’s a link to the store – the kickstarter campaign was very successful and they managed to turn their idea into a business.
The other very successful kickstarter campaign resulted in a release of the movie “Kung Fury” – if you haven’t watched it you can do it here.
I like the ideas of raising money for charity or individual problems. Recently I donated some money for someone's brain surgery and some time ago - for animal shelter. It makes me feel good even if I get nothing from it.
I also think that a cure for the laziness Paulina wrote about are rewards promised for backing the project. Some of them are really symbolic ones, but I like receiving them anyway. For example, for backing Revolver, I got a postcard, handwritten by one of the makers, and for backing The Bill Nye Film I got a set of Bill Nye emojis, a T-shirt, some rare materials about him, and a possibility to see the movie once it's released. I think it's a fair deal. :)
I've also heard that it's best place to check if your idea or product can be profitable without high investments and results of such 'research' are crucial for getting money from other, huge investors.
One thing I don't like are stretch goals - it's like if people will donate half of the amount - you still have to pay money and instead of fully featured product you are getting some MVP.
Generally I’m a Kickstarter fan and I’m happy that it exists. It is very heartening that people support each other. It is great that although you don’t have money but you can create something, sell it and to be great.
It defenetely is a great option for startups, artists and creative people to achieve their goals and follow their dreams and for others to feel like they're contributing in something they would like to see happen.
However crowdfunding platforms are often abused, sometimes by people who just want to steal money from people, but sometimes because of bad planning or managment.
In my opinion crowdfunding is a very positive thing, but should be approched with caution and treated for what it is - not a shop but a place for investing money, and investments not always pay off.