For many years, a good idea couldn\u2019t get you very far unless you knew the right people, or had a large sum of money.\u00a0 Of course there are exceptions, but most of these ideas got filtered into \u201cas seen on TV\u201d products and were either dismissed or failed to sell.\u00a0 That is not the case anymore.\u00a0 Crowdfunding has become a real option for inventors, artists, and engineers.\u00a0 Kickstarter.com allows for regular people like you and me to put their good ideas up on the site and request funds to design, develop, produce, and distribute the item.\u00a0 This could be anything from a video game, to a new piece of technology, or even the restoration of an old park.\u00a0 Anyone can donate to the project to help it reach its set goal, and in some cases, reach far beyond their original goal.<\/p>\n
In 2013, 3 million people donated $480 million to Kickstarter projects.\u00a0 That is $1,315,520 pledged a day, and works out to $913 a minute.\u00a0 That is a very active and giving community that is using Kickstarter.\u00a0 It is also a very diverse group with the donations coming from 214 countries on all 7 continents.\u00a0 This makes placing an item on Kickstarter a good marketing technique, simply due to the amount of people who will see it with the intention of putting money towards it.<\/p>\n
Some other facts:<\/p>\n
Kickstarter has certainly been responsible for some of the great releases and designs of 2013.\u00a0 The Pebble<\/a> Smartwatch lead the wearable market in quality, The Ouya<\/a> Android console was the first of its kind, and the Oculus Rift<\/a> brought virtual reality to gamers.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t just technology though.\u00a0 Students build classrooms<\/a> out of shipping containers, made a photo exhibition<\/a> on the berlin wall, and saved closing independent theatres<\/a>.\u00a0 Speaking of theatres, backers also brought the popular show \u201cVeronica Mars<\/a>\u201d back to life by funding a movie.<\/p>\n As you can see, there is no limit to what people can do when they care about a cause or there is demand for a product.\u00a0 I have personally backed probably about 15 projects on Kickstarter, and don\u2019t regret any of them.\u00a0 This has given innovation a much needed boost and brought the engineer out of all of us.\u00a0 Many great ideas lay dormant in people who felt they were unlikely or unable to go anywhere with them.\u00a0 For years they were right, but these new funding methods allow these ideas to reach the world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For many years, a good idea couldn\u2019t get you very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[508],"tags":[1129,1154],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}