Things found on Kickstarter

"Hi, I'm Steve Haberman and I'm a professional Mentalist"

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1252253974/esp-intuition-and-the-power-of-the-human-mind-book?ref=city

Thought we could do with a general Kickstarter thread. It's a great idea but there is a lot of WTF there (and a lot of "fund my holiday" type opportunities)

it does strike me that it's v fertile ground for actually funny ppl to do joke pages, a la Craigslist, rather than the legions of inadvertently amusing feckless chancers that have leapt on it

It's curated in some way so I presume that keeps the jokers to a minimum. There are also some generally good things, though.

Some local hippies funded a grocery store for our neighbourhood, something it sorely lacks. In true style they were hopelessly over ambitions about how long it would take to open, They are already 3 month late and when I talked to them yesterday they said it was going to be another month and they only just had the electricians coming in.

I like the "fund the recording of my album type things", I did that with a couple of bands before Kickstarter existed.

I'm also really keen on getting this funded:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dynamodirk/magnic-light-get-new-energy

There is an awful lot of "give me $10,000 so I can take my van to burning man", "fund my wizard rock festival tour", "fund my vanity published mentalist ramblings' type stuff

I realize this is a general Kickstarter thread, but from the mentalist page:

Have you ever thought about someone, maybe a friend you haven't talked to the long time, and suddenly your phone rings and it ends up being that exact friend you were thinking about. Or have you experienced déjà vu? Have you ever been hungry for Chinese food and think about how great it would taste and just then your husband or wife walks in with takeout from the Chinese restaurant? Or have you ever had a bad feeling about someone, maybe a parent or grandparent, and you call them only to find that they were in an accident.

If any of these or similar experiences have happened to you, then you're not alone. Most people experience similar things in their life. Some just ignore these thoughts and go on with their lives, while others think maybe there's something more to it.

And they are assholes.

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_museum

Great idea but those muppets are doing it wrong. I was all ready to give 50 bucks or so but they have sold out of everything below $1000

this is pretty cool:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/democratech/sprout-a-pencil-with-a-seed

https://twitter.com/KickstarterTXT/status/245970612428877824

https://twitter.com/KickstarterTXT/status/246684820531462144

But really just follow that twitter account.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1828132368/uncool

Help fund a longform music journalism site with... no bullshit!

Feat. Jeff Weiss, Rachael Maddux, Amos Barshad, Simon Vozick-Levinson, Scott Tennent, Chris Ott, Jamieson Cox, and Daniel Kolitz

argh, "Uncool" was going to be the name of the coffee shop I open in Forest Hills Queens one day.

I'd rather they'd just posted some writing instead of making a mostly bullshit video.

Is there any website that hosts journalism and has a "click here to paypal $1 to the author" button at the end of an article?

it does sound like a good idea but so many magazines are launched with vague ambitions to be "different from all the other magazines"

so many all

That said, I'd walk a block to read a piece by Chris or Scott

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/415454318/yolo-clothing-you-only-live-once
5
Backers
$116
pledged of $20,000 goal
0
seconds to go
Funding Unsuccessful
This project reached the deadline without achieving its funding goal on February 1.

My son and I have designed a clothing line starting with t-shirts and stickers designed for everyone. We have created 5 shirts that have bright vibrant colors and our trade marked logo to emphasize to live life to the fullest! These shirts don't just send a statement but are also made of soft ringspun cotton and are tagless and super comfortable. We have teamed up with an awesome T-shirt production company (Customink.com) to help mass produce our 5 signature shirts and we need further capital to market and ship our shirts and stickers nationwide! We plan to use the funds from our kickstarter sales to open a marketing campaign to grow and expand the YOLO Clothing line!

Our logo has been trade marked which unfortunatley took every penny I had to do. My son was the inspiration for the shirts and every teenager I know has heard the saying "YOLO" and what it stands for. We are hoping to raise the $20,000 needed to mass produce the shirts and market the clothing line to major retailers. I stronlgy feel "YOLO" will be the "NO FEAR" brand of 2013! It's not just a brand but a deep rooted meaning for living life to the fullest! Please help support our cause.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/000/286/109/2f61ab82a433582679a47242288be29e_large.JPG?1354258982

The RoboRoach: Control a living insect from your smartphone!
by Backyard Brains

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/backyardbrains/the-roboroach-control-a-living-insect-from-your-sm

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/glennf/crowdfunding-a-guide-to-what-works-and-why

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CweAeshjObA

such EEG

"We envision a retail price of only $8800 per unit of No More Woof, placing it easily within the reach of extremely wealthy dog owners worldwide."

WICKER PARK — A 30-year-old webcomics artist who raised more than $50,000 on Kickstarter has burned the books his donors paid for because, he says, he ran out of money to ship them.

In late February, John Campbell, who lives in Wicker Park, told his fans on the online crowdsourcing platform that "It's Over" and published a video of himself burning 127 copies of his book, "Sad Pictures for Children."

The book-burning coincided with Campbell's decision to remove 10 years of comics from his website, picturesforsadchildren.com, which is now a blank page.

"After a decade of putting personal work on the Internet in public for free and realizing I didn't have what I felt what I needed, my online persona committed suicide," Campbell said in an interview on Tuesday.

Campbell burned the books in response to more than 100 emails he received from backers wanting the books they had helped fund almost two years ago.

In May 2012, Campbell used Kickstarter to raise money to publish a book based on his online comic strip, "Pictures for Sad Children," which features two main characters who work in unfulfilling office jobs, "a ghost named Paul and a fella named Gary."

"I didn't expect it to be that successful," Campbell said of the campaign, which raised $51,615 from 1,073 backers in 14 days, exceeding his goal of $8,000 by 645 percent.

Before the campaign, the most money Campbell had made producing comics was $30,000 over the course of a year.

He said money, to him, is "a huge terrible joke."

Campbell said Kickstarter "gives you an old school charitable feeling but there is no value created outside of the perceived value."
http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140305/wicker-park/kickstarter-fail-artist-raises-51k-publish-books-burns-them-alley

money is a terrible joke, but this guy is a jerk

Can't find a thread for this anywhere else, so I'll put this here.

Sooooo, this happened.

"Bring Reading Rainbow Back for Every Child, Everywhere.
by LeVar Burton & Reading Rainbow"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8DLihxcj14

https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/002/063/730/af21275e87c3a16f5afe315b082559c4_large.jpg?1401228138

They asked for $1,000,000 USD.

Then it went viral.

Within like 11 hours, it was fully funded.

So they posted this vid:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/readingrainbow/bring-reading-rainbow-back-for-every-child-everywh/posts/858121

It's now at about ~200% funding, with 33 days left to go.

For extra fun, look how many of the high-priced/upper-tier pledge rewards are now gone. I caught a post about this on another board noting that, with the $250 personalized authographed headshot, "Star Trek might literally save the planet."

IndieGogo, not Kickstarter ... but...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbB9gEX8fuQ

I'm probably breaking some rule about promoting a Kickstarter, but I've been working on a documentary and we need a bit of help.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1808754869/parque-central

~Marketing~

http://kickended.com

The Dausage - a cross between a sausage and a doughnut

Cronut envy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/06/11/the-ftcs-first-crowdfunding-enforcement-is-over-a-failed-board-game-on-kickstarter/

But few, if any, supporters of the project ever received refunds, the FTC alleged in a complaint against Chevalier disclosed Thursday that accuses him of deceiving backers of the project. And instead of spending most of the funds raised through Kickstarter on making the game, he spent it on himself, the agency claimed. "In reality, Defendant never hired artists for the board game and instead used the consumers’ funds for miscellaneous personal equipment, rent for a personal residence, and licenses for a separate project," the complaint said.

Weird thing is that I found that I knew at least two of the parties involved in this just from volunteering at the HPL FilmFest in Portland for several years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/technology/kickstarters-altruistic-vision-profits-as-the-means-not-the-mission.html

nice one

what's the worst thing you've seen someone try to crowdfund?

i feel like i see really heinous stuff all the time - like people who've already accomplished a decent amount in their given profession just refusing to risk money to do a project.

far and away the worst thing i've seen is nuno mendes, a michelin-starred chef in london, doing a kickstarter to open his new restaurant.

Why's that so bad? Because he could have got conventional funding easily enough?

i guess so - and like it just seems weird to me that someone who's going to charge people vast sums of money for food is asking them to pay for the premises.

but i am open to being convinced otherwise.

I think it's equity crowdfunding - so you're investing in the venture with the aim of making a return on your investment (though of course you could potentially lose your money).

I don't think it's so bad myself - as long as people are aware of the risk.

i thought Kickstarter didn't do that?

I think he's using Seedrs?

ah maybe... in that case i'm wrong in his case.

Slight bit of self-promotion here: My ladyfriend wrote a children's book about a three-legged dog who has to learn to deal with bullying

It's called

The Tale of Martina McTripaw - a Story About Standing Up to Bullies and Being Proud of Who You Are

https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-prod-cld/image/upload/c_fill,f_auto,h_413,w_620/v1457677245/py7hyl0bft8vvmfkcvkj.png

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-tale-of-martina-mctripaw--2#/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aloe/aloe-app-gentle-self-care-reminders-from-yourself
"things like remembering to brush my teeth or drink water became really really hard"

https://www.buzzfeed.com/daveyalba/kickstarter-perry-chen-founder-worship-turmoil

the anti-union thing is very uncool

I was playing thru Thimbleweed Park tonight and saw the name “Yancey Strickler” in the in-game phonebook which sounded familiar, so I looked him up.

Funny what I found. Never connected it before. Amusingly, still lists him as “former music critic.”