Melissa Francis

O UTLINE Background Value Created Competition

B ACKGROUND

C O - FOUNDERS Perry Chen: CEO, Co-founder Charles Adler: Co-founder Yancey Strickler: Co-founder Launched on April 28, 2009 Based in the lower East-Side of Manhattan, New York.

W HAT IS IT ? It’s a crowd funding platform Mission: help realizing creative projects in the worlds of: Art and Comics Dance Design and Fashion Film and Video Food Games, Music and Technology Photography, Publishing and Theater They never curate a project but they can make it a “Staff Pick”.

H OW DOES IT WORK ? Creators pitch their product idea on the site and interested backers donate money to help fund the project. In addition to seeing a project of interest come to life, backers can receive non financial rewards from the creators. Each project is given an certain amount of time (usually 30 days) in which it must reach its fundraising goal. If it does not receive enough funds by the end of the time period, no money is donated. Kickstarter advises backers to use their own judgment on supporting a project. They also warn project leaders that they could be liable for legal damages from backers for failure to deliver on promises

S TART A PROJECT

K ICKSTARTER ’ S FEE Free sign up Kickstarter collects a 5% fee from a successfully funded project. Payment processing fees work out to roughly 3-5%. Creators never give up any ownership of their work to Kickstarter or backers. They keep 100% ownership and control over their work.

V ALUE CREATED

STATISTICS $1,155,809,319 total dollars pledged 63,331 successfully funded projects 6,358,233 total backers 1,896,115 repeat backers

In 2013: 3 million people pledged 480 millions $  1,315,520$/ day, 913$/min Backers came from 214 countries and all 7 continents (even Antarctica) 19,911 projects successfully funded

Some Projects: Pebble: E-paper watch for iPhone and Android OUYA: A New Kind of Video Game Console The Veronica Mars Movie Project The Dash: Wireless Smart In Ear Headphones Human powered helicopter

COMPETITION

B EST CROWDFUNDING WEBSITES Kickstarter: has become synonymous for crowdfunding Indiegogo. "Our platform is available to anyone, anywhere, to raise money for anything."  While its success fee is at 4%, it charges 9 % if you don't meet your goal. RocketHub: Initially launched with the arts in mind, it expanded to include science, education, business and social good projects. Fundrazr: raising money for anything from personal causes to nonprofits to entrepreneurial projects.