Personal View site logo
Make sure to join PV on Telegram or Facebook! Perfect to keep up with community on your smartphone.
Crowdfunding
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    This topic will be about various crowdfunding realted skills, etc.

    Interesting related information

    Crowdfunding Bible book: http://www.crowdfundingguides.com/The%20Crowdfunding%20Bible.pdf

    Interesting aricle: http://nofilmschool.com/2011/09/how-i-raised-125000-on-kickstarter/

  • 19 Replies sorted by
  • kingmixerkingmixer

    Thanks Vitaliy, I was wondering about a subcategory in this site for people here to post a campaign with details?

    Like, there's a subcategory for color grading, lenses, news, showcase, marketplace... campaigns, maybe?

  • ReinoutReinout

    Don't know if it's useful to reply to this older post but crowd funding is actually a pretty recent thing for me to worry about and it feels like a very relevant topic these days. Are there people in Europa who have experience with crowd funding their projects?

    To me it seems like a theoretically cool idea that in practice mostly results in projects being funded by family and friends. At least, I've seen several projects of friends of mine being funded with help of mostly friends and family.

    I know Kickstarter is big in the US, and is also opening up in the UK, but is there another good platform in Europa that has worked for some of you (or people you know)? Curious!

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @Reinout

    Thing is, all Kisckstarter is doing - it is attracting people to see your project page, as prooject number is growing this effect fades fast.

    So, no one prevents you to make your site with simple paypal button. But you need, somehow, attract people to it.

  • kholikholi

    There's also the legitimacy factor that goes into it, which actually does instill more comfort, enough to get people to part with pledge funds.

    It's pretty difficult to Kickstart a large sum without very specific criteria, we barely raised our 17.5K and that wasn't even the total budget of the feature.

  • ReinoutReinout

    good points. It is interesting to see how slowly the strategy is shifting from attracting audiences to attracting investors. Maybe it's a big bubble waiting to pop, but there is some logic to it; people are less and less motivated to pay for consumption, so maybe attracting them in another stage of the production could circumvent the issue of not getting money from your audience.

  • arnarfjodurarnarfjodur

    @Reinout I think it's undoubted that big portion of the contributions come from family and friends - but not necessarily the majority. I worked on a feature this summer that was crowd funded - it's definitely happening although you always need to be skeptical with the hypes.

    I'm personally part of a new crowd funding platform ...

    At the moment it's a pretty standard pledge-based platform. But we want to develop it to try to minimize some of the problems we see in crowd funding today, such as by:

    • Having creators come up with and display a plan and budget that backers can access before and after pledging
    • Show milestones and todo lists that get ticked off as the project that was backed develops
    • Not release all the money at once, but according to the milestones

    Of course, there is no perfect system that can solve all the potential problems 100% - but I think allowing and encouraging transparency is one key to making online collaboration work better.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @arnarfjodur

    Can you show me some papers that have clear consequences for creators if they can't keep up with their plans?

    Like 10% fine going back to backers if they did not keep up first goal (>4 days), 30% if this happened second time (or >8days), 100% if it happened 3 times (or >3 weeks total delay), and 500% if it happened more times or dalay is more than one month.

  • arnarfjodurarnarfjodur

    @Vitaliy_Kiselev

    No, I can't. First of all, as I said, the platform right now functions mostly as any other crowd funding platform, with very little of the extra features.

    Secondly - the intention is not that the admins of the platform act as police or judge - that is very difficult to implement (i.e. verify if a milestone has really been met). The cost of doing this would probably be too much. Also - truth is that all project need a certain flexibility - no one can ever predict the whole process.

    Most probable implementation is that the creator can request a release of certain amount of the funds, and states that a certain milestone is finished (put up some pictures or updates, etc). If the plans change, and they need more time, they can explain that, etc. If they take all the money out at once, and show no progress - then of course it looks suspicious. But you can see how much money they have taken out, and what there plan is and what they say is the status of the project.

    The goal is not to solve bad management or scams once and for all - but to make a platform where you can more easily understand what the plan is and how it is going - before and after you part with your money.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @arnarfjodur

    I have certain policy here. I restrict any linking to crowdfunding sites, unless they have clear control and consequence for creators. Btw, it can be clear advantage of your solution.

    About partial fund release - also good idea, but in many situations it won't help.

  • arnarfjodurarnarfjodur

    @Vitaliy_Kiselev No problem.

    Out of curiosity - do you know if there are any crowd funding websites that have clear "clear control and consequence for creators"? If someone knows about experiments out there to implement this I would be curious to learn about them.

  • jleojleo

    Film & Video has had the largest number of projects launched -- 17,808 -- and a success rate of 40%. Music projects, which number 14,501 so far, have had a 54% success rate. Music projects have posted the greatest number of successes so far: 7,378.

    The category with the highest success rate was Dance, at 69%. The one with the lowest success rate was Fashion -- just over 1 in 4 of those projects have reached their goals.

    Film & Video easily wins for most money pledged total, at almost $72 million. Nearly $10 million of that was pledged to projects that failed to meet their goals and therefore canceled.

    http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/22/business/la-fi-tn-kickstarter-stats-20120621

    Why Kickstarter 'can't' and won't protect backers once a project is funded

    http://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/6/27/3099051/backers-rights-what-kickstarter-funders-can-expect-when-they-pledge

    Kickstarter's poor success rate shows crowdfunding risks

    9 out of 10 failed projects do not even reach 30 per cent of their funding goal. Less than five per cent of projects more than double their funding goal, and being featured by Kickstarter was the biggest predictor of success - 89 per cent compared to 30 per cent without being featured.

    http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=68325

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @jleo

    I remember one of the publications I linked, it mentioned that Kickstarter use special approach to hide all unsucessfull projects as fast as they can. We also do not know project they rejected or project that had been shutdown in the process of collection.

  • jleojleo

    Yes, if people knew the true failure rate, they might avoid crowdfunding.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    The Untold Story Behind Kickstarter Stats

    Via: http://www.appsblogger.com/behind-kickstarter-crowdfunding-stats/

    image

  • jleojleo

    Celebrities and stars are now onto crowd funding and raising millions in just a few hours or days....

    "The more that famous people take over Kickstarter, the less room or attention or money there'll be for small, plucky filmmakers with no name recognition who try to get their projects going the only way they can, through crowdsourcing." - Amos Barshad

    http://mashable.com/2013/04/29/has-kickstarter-lost-its-way/

    Kickstarter response:

    http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/who-is-kickstarter-for

    Amanda Palmer, set out to raise $100,000…. she got $1.2 million

    Amanda Palmer on the Art of Asking and the Shared Dignity of Giving and Receiving

    “It would be a terrible calamity,” Henry Miller wrote in his meditation on the beautiful osmosis between giving and receiving, “for the world if we eliminated the beggar. The beggar is just as important in the scheme of things as the giver. If begging were ever eliminated God help us if there should no longer be a need to appeal to some other human being, to make him give of his riches.” And yet, we live in a culture that perpetuates the false perception of a certain power dynamic between giver and receiver, and — worse yet — stigmatizes the very act of asking as undignified.

    http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/03/04/amanda-palmer-on-the-art-of-asking-ted/

    The Art of Asking Why We Hate Amanda Palmer

    Criticism of Amanda Palmer flies fierce and fast online. Some of it is related to her shocking ignorance of the class politics and context of her so-called crowdfunding revolution. Critics cringe, too, at her sheer volume; her acting out in public; her unapologetic attention-seeking. And again and again, they call her out for her entitlement – to attention, to a platform, to funding, to favors.

    http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/03/amanda-palmer-2/

    http://amyvs.weebly.com/1/post/2012/09/letter-to-amanda-palmer.html

    Veronica Mars

    Rob Thomas set out to raise $2million, ended up with $5.7 million

    http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/04/rob-thomas-interview-veronica-mars-kickstarter/

    Zach Braff

    set out to raise $2 million, raised $2.6 million plus $7.4 million studio, distributor funds

    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1869987317/wish-i-was-here-1

    Zach Braff Kickstarter controversy deepens after financier bolsters budget

    Traditional investment takes total backing for Wish I Was Here to $10m, raising further questions about $2.6m Kickstarter funds

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/may/16/zach-braff-kickstarter-controversy-deepens

  • OedipaxOedipax

    I'm not a fan of Braff on an artistic level at all, but I don't have a problem with what he did on Kickstarter. The people funding his Garden State follow-up are in no way the same people that might've otherwise funded the production of a new Matthew Porterfield film or the restoration of some obscure classic (e.g. Portrait of Jason). It really is not a zero-sum proposition in that sense.

    What Braff's doing might be scummy from the point of view of him (very likely) having the cash to do it all himself, but no one forced those people into giving him cash. And who knows, maybe a handful develop some taste, stick around, and fund stuff worth caring about. Or not. Either way, I don't really care.

  • robertGLrobertGL

    Braff can suck it.

    I've considered doing a kickstarter for my movie idea, but it's just that - an idea with an incomplete screenplay. I'm of the mindset however that it would motivate me to get the ball rolling due to having money from other people, but I would hate to disappoint, which would be of relatively high likelihood given my personality! Also i'm mired in projects that aren't related to content creation in addition to my lowly real job.

    Ultimately it's EZ money for those that make their goals, and there is not much consequence for subsequent failure either. It's a recipe for something good, and more-so for a bubble bursting

  • Mark_the_HarpMark_the_Harp

    Guys, really interesting stuff. Just about to launch one for a really unusual recording project which links the uk and Iraq (very modest funding of around £900 required for CD production). We are also tying in live performance, video, iTunes etc (that's already funded - but people still like live CDs for gigs). We intuitively knew that a video would be useful - we're also planning to offer some incentive deals for bigger contributions. We're lucky in that we already have goodwill and promises of radio play, we have already performed the music this month in London, and the mixing is nearing completion as is the video - but goodwill and promises don't fund CDs manufacture!

  • MikeLinnMikeLinn

Add a Comment