Kickstarter: A Success Story!

It started back in March, 2011. That's when I learned about the groovy "crowd sourced funding" platform called Kickstarter, dedicated to helping worthy creative projects get the kick start they deserve.

The Kickstarter platform enables artists, inventors and entrepreneurs to appeal to the "crowd" – family, friends, friends of friends, etc. – for the support necessary to make great ideas come true.

For some years already, I’d been working to produce an interactive StoryApp targeted to traveling teens and families. But the learning curve was great and the road unpaved and hardly straight and I was running out of dough...

In fall of 2010, my programming partner up and vanished off the face of the earth after six months of dedicated work. As it turned out, he was unable to handle the project, but unwilling to tell me so directly. It took me another two months to nullify our contract, with the help and expense of a lawyer, of course. So while I hadn’t paid my former collaborator in full, I had by now spent a tidy sum for code that was no good to me.

...As 2011 dawned, I was back where I started, unable to collect $200. I needed a kick (re)start. Bad.

But almost more importantly, I needed to raise awareness about my project to aid future marketing efforts. Yes, it was also beginning to dawn on me that the work ahead would not end once the app hit the App Store. Yikes! I needed to sell this thing!

Kickstarter offered me both a means by which to raise cash as well as consciousness about Beware Madame la Guillotine.

It’s pretty easy to set up a Kickstarter campaign:

• First, read and agree to the Kickstarter guidelines, then apply to post your project on their platform.

• Upon acceptance, Kickstarter gives you your very own page. You must create a promotional video for your project and upload it to your page along with any additional text explanation. You choose your campaign dollar goal and campaign duration, from 30 to 90 days. You choose your pledge levels and determine the prizes to match each pledge. Take your time; your project isn't public until you press "launch".

• Once you launch, the clock starts ticking and you're off! From this point, you can change anything but the campaign goal and running time. Now comes the hard part: Spreading the word.

But spread the word you must, for if you don’t then no one will know about your project.

And if no one knows about it you will not reach your goal.

And if you don't reach your goal, you get nada. That's how it works in Kickstarterland.

Crowd sourced funding is not investing. Contributions are not even considered tax deductible. But participation brings prizes and other advantages, such as free product releases and invitations to cool events. It’s also a way of saying to your fundee -- with a contribution equal to the cost of the bottle of wine you would no doubt bring to her next dinner party -- “You go girl! I believe in what you’re doing!”

In the best of all possible worlds, your immediate contacts will support your project and ask their immediate contacts to support it as well, taking your project idea viral. That’s everyone’s hope, anyway.

The focus of my Kickstarter campaign was the interactive StoryApp Tour, Beware Madame la Guillotine: A Revolutionary Tour of Paris.

Thanks to the enthusiasm of family, friends, colleagues and a few individuals as of yet unknown to me, we made our goal with still four days to go, finishing 120% funded!

I am grateful and gratified. And already back at work to produce the bilingual French-English version of the Tour.

And, looking VERY forward to getting it into your hands!

Images:

Kickstarter Logo 2009, found on Wikimedia Commons.

Kick-starter on a Peugeot motorcycle in 1920, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Shadow Karate Kick, as found on Wikimedia Commons.

Beware Mme la Guillotine promotional video, by Sarah Towle, all rights reserved, 2011.