The Web: Get Your Project Off the Ground With Kickstarter

Kickstarter is a website that went online on April 28, 2009.  The creators—Perry Chen, Charles Adler and Yancey Strickler—had gotten almost $10 million in investment funding from New York City based investors. 

Kickstarter is both a website and an app.  The company was made primarily for American use in the beginning but has since branched into the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most recently Norway. 

Basically Kickstarter is a website that you can use to get out your ideas about creative projects and seek others who are willing to help you out with funding.  You pick a deadline for the goal of money you set to be raised for your project, and if the funds are not met by the deadline, then there is no money collected from the investors. 

Kickstarter does, however, take five percent of the money that gets invested, and all payments must go through Amazon which takes another three to five percent. 

The success rate for projects to be funded is around 44 percent of approximately one hundred and ten thousand projects and around $717 million was raised based on statistics from 2012.  

There once was a project that raised over $13 million for the “Coolest Cooler,” (pictured) which was created by Ryan Greppler, an average man from Portland, Oregon.  The cooler has things like a built in blender, a USB charging port and a wireless Bluetooth radio built into it. 

To think that someone can raise $13 million for a cooler is utterly insane. 

There are also guidelines to help regulate what kind of projects are to be published to the public for funding, including the banning of genetically modified organisms and dramatizations of the product, including renderings or simulations of the product.

You also need a physical prototype of an item and also a manufacturing plan.  So what are you waiting for?  Maybe you have an idea that people are willing to back you up on, and who knows?  Maybe you could be the next Ryan Greppler and reinvent something like a cooler and raise $13 million for your project.