I’m sure that many of you have your websites which you usually browse around on to waste time waiting for a class to start, the train come or just for the day to end. One website that I myself visit rather often because of boredom is based on an idea that other people have ideas, but a lack of financial support. I’m sure that many of you have stumbled upon this before but for you who have not, -The idea is called crowdfunding and the website in particular is www.kickstarter.com…
A newly created idea which has not yet reached the market and has not been presented to investors can be a delicate resource of the innovator, and makes him/her in a position to decide how the next steps for this business possibility will act out. Will the idea need financial support and do you need strategic help to get started? If the innovator has a smaller idea which most likely is too small to attract investors or if one just do not want any engagement from large companies, banks or powerful people there is a different way to raise money to your idea, – crowdfunding. The number of successfully funded projects, only through Kickstarter has now reached over 100 000 and the total amount of money funded to all these projects is today 2.27 BILLION dollars (https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats). The numbers are impressive, but if you had a really great idea, would you share it with others and use Kickstarter for financial support?
Lets say that you have invented something that you really believe in and that hopefully will revolutionize a whole market. –Would you use Kickstarter or any other crowdfunding community? Probably not, because an idea good enough will most likely attract venture capitalist firms or business angels, that hopefully will serve you with great advice and a lot of money. One problem here is that the entrepreneur need to know how to contact and approach these investors to inquire about financial support and help. If one completely lack information or ambitions to reach out to investors, then crowdfunding probably can appear as a good idea.
Another reason that I see the crowdfunding solution as suitable could be if it is used as a marketing trick, so one idea can gain attention from the existing web traffic on the website itself (in this case www.kickstarter.com) without the need of creating a popular website or social media account of its own. But this could also be an issue as I feel that many inventions asking for funding could benefit from a more serious approach. Appearing on kickstarter, just a click away from the opportunity to fund “naptuckets: the world first pants designed for napping”or “Erotic colouring books for adults” could exclude more traditional and serious investors
My impression is that crowdfunding is not for everyone, but could be an easy way to gain financial support for a fun or interesting idea at start and there is always an opportunity to move on to more serious discussions with possible investors when you already know that there is a market for your idea. The idea in itself is very interesting and it has really gotten my attention since I visit the website every once in while to look for exciting ideas or outrageous inventions. So if you are a disbeliever of the crowdfunding phenomenon, just give it a chance and at least visit www.kickstarter.com and help an entrepreneur with funding or just get some inspiration from other ambitious persons!
Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with kickstarter or the naptuckets…