TechStuff Looks at Kickstarter

We're gonna talk about Kickstarter today, and Kickstarter is UH in case you are not familiar, it's a way to crowdsource funding a creative project. So in a way, Kickstarter is not you could argue Kickstarter in itself is not a tech stuff topic, but it is UH funded through a website. So there's your tech stuff there. A lot of tech projects have been funded through Kickstarter, so there's

another connection. And there's some interesting projects that were UH in various stages as of the recording of this podcast, and I should get that out of the way first. We're recording this show on Friday July. That's important because some of the stuff we're gonna talk about is related specifically to information that's available today. So by the time you hear this, that information is going to be out of date. But we wanted to let you kind of have a snapshot of what's going on right now. Yeah,

it's funny. We were recording these on July thirteen, I mean Friday the thirteenth, and we haven't but get Yeah, okay, no, I'm kidding. Um. Yeah, Jonathan wanted to talk about a couple of projects on Kickstart, and I said, you know, I'm not sure everyone understands what it is. Um, it is the kind of of I guess it's safe to call it a company organization anyway that that really wouldn't

exist in its form without the Internet. Um. Yeah, the Internet enables Kickstarter and and kickstar or enables other organizations to do their thing. Um. Kickstarter does make some money off of these projects. Yea, so um basically what they do. Uh. In the nutshell sense, somebody says I have this idea, I need to raise money for this idea. I would like to post this on your website and publicize this

idea to raise money. And Kickstarter says okay, and they like your idea, We'll post it on our website, and they provide all the necessary pieces for you to be able to do that. So let's say, let's let's just go ahead and make an example. Okay, okay, And I'm going to make an example that's going to be uh just generic. Okay, all right, So let's say that. Let's say that Chris, you, Let's say you have got a new band together and you want to you want to

do an album together. You guys have you guys have played together for a while. You've got a unique sound, You've got something you want to say. But you don't want to go through the the traditional route of trying to get a record label to sign you on that kind of stuff. You want to do it yourselves. But that cost money. It's gonna require studio space, You're gonna

have some production costs. You're gonna have if you want to if you want to press a physical medium like a CD or a vinyl disc, that's gonna cost money. So you need to be able to fund this, right yep. And without a without a record label to fund that, that's all going to come out of my pocket or go on my credit card. And you may not have the available credit or money to do this, so what you would do accurate. Let's say, so then you go to Kickstarter and you say, all right, here's what my

project is. And you have to have very specific parameters for your project for you to be able to get an approved Kickstarter campaign. So I would need to say something like I want to press five thousand copies of my desk, or even you could even go so far as to say I want to record an album. You can say it that way and not even have the the required amount of like how many disks you plan

on pressing? If you if you're all to specify this money will go toward the production of an album, the album is by this band, and and you're able to give enough information you submit that the Kickstarter. You say, I I estimate that I am going to need and I'm just throwing out the number ten thousand dollars. I'm gonna need ten thousand dollars. I want to have two

months to raise ten thousand dollars through Kickstarter. Kickstarter gets your request, they review it if it meets the requirements that Kickstarter has put into place, uh, which we'll get into a discussion about that in a little bit. But let's say if it meets those requirements. Kicks are then will approve your campaign. They feature it on their site

somewhere so it's searchable. Sometimes they'll actually feature feature it so it's right there on the front page and you can see it right there if you're lucky enough, that's where it is, which means a lot of eyeballs are going there. But generally you'll promote this through other means like social media, Facebook, Twitter, that kind of thing. UM. Then what happens is people can go and they can contribute money toward that project. They're not donating their contributing,

they are investing in that project. It's very important part of this. So when they invest, they're using an Amazon payment method to transfer money to this or to pledge money really to this project. And it's not unless the project actually meets its goal, that that money gets pulled

from the contributors. Right, So, if you say, say somebody is asking for ten thousand dollars from fans for example, like like this record that we are talking about UM, and people contribute say five dollars each, and they only raise eight thousand, five dollars over the two month period, it doesn't go then you're not out five dollars or whatever you keep. You keep your money. The project does

not get funded, you keep your money. Kickstarter does not make anything, So it's actually in the Kickstarter's interest to make sure to do as much as it can so that these projects get funded, because that's how Kickstarter makes money. So if that ten thousand dollars did go through, let's say that you know that you you just hit that ten thousand dollar mark within the time frame, you would get ten thousand dollars minus Amazon payments cut and Kickstarters cut.

They both get a cut of that. It can be up to as much as ten percent, So it might be that you only get nine thousand instead of ten thousand because of the cuts that Amazon and Kickstarter make. But and Amazon's amount is dependent upon where you are and other factors, so it can't really give a solid figure on that. But Kickstarters is five percent, so at

least five percent it's gonna be taken out. Uh, So you need to take that into account when you set your goal because you're you're like, all right, well, if that's how much I really need, I'm going to get five percent less than that if I just meet this goal. Now you can make more than what your goal is and of them have. Yeah, and it's and you don't get access to that money until the period is up.

So if it's a ninety day period and at the end of ninety days you have uh more than five times what you were asking for, that's when you get it all. And of course that that appeals to Kickstarter too, because they take that five percent off the total, not off what the goal was. So if your goal was ten thousand, you make fifty thousand, they get that five percent off the fifty thousand, not the ten thousand, which great business for Kickstarter. Uh So, I mean it is

a business. You know. They're not completely altruistic, nor should we expect them to be, because it would cost money and resources to run this site. So I'm not I'm not trying to cast dispersions on Kickstarter for trying to make money. If they didn't, this thing wouldn't exist and a lot of people who have had projects get funded would not have had that money, right and uh, you know, of course it's it's paying the bills and it's paying for people to to work at the site, so that's important.

So uh, we're talking about how they're contributors, not donators, um, the contributors. Part of that, part of that relationship is that when you contribute, you should be able to expect something in return, right, So, if you contributed to the release of my faux band's new album, you should get a copy of that record, assuming your contribution meets a certain level. You can think of it kind of like and and it's only in the sense of if you

contribute a certain amount, you get a reward. You know, like when a pledge drive happens on something like NPR or PBS, where if you pledge a certain amount of money you get rewards in return. It's similar to that,

except again you're not donating your contributing. So if when you create a project, if you want to create a project for Kickstarter and have a Kickstarter campaign, part of what you have to do, besides setting a time limit and a cash goal, is you have to set up rewards for contributors at different levels, and ideally those levels should relate to the reward should relate to how much

money is being donated. So in other words, uh, if if you donate twenty five dollars to Chris's project, and that would get you a a special version of the CD that has maybe a track on it that the normal c D doesn't have, so you get a bonus track for twenty bucks. Let's say that you do fifty bucks. Well, you wouldn't want just to have two copies of that CD.

That might not be a great reward. But perhaps it's a copy of the CD that's autographed by the entire band, and maybe some other swag like a poster or some stickers or stuff. And depending upon the complexity of the project, the size of it uh and the the ability of the the person who's running the project to deliver upon

these they can get pretty elaborate. Like I've seen ones where if you contribute a very large amount of money towards a big project, you end up getting You might get a producer's credit on something like let's say that someone contributed a thousand dollars to your band's project. You might include their name in the liner notes for the the album saying this is a producer for this album, because essentially they are they're they're they're contributing a significant

amount of money. Yes, that's gosh. I love them producers. I love you. Get in touch for me anyway. So the MP three, you'll have my digital signature. I can't imagine how that could go wrong. So so anyway, Yeah, that's that's the whole basic idea of Kickstarter. On the on the project leaders side, you have these returns that people get in in uh uh as a result of them contributing to you, and if you get the you don't have to worry about giving out the rewards unless

the project hits completion. Now let's talk. I'm sorry you're about to say something. Well, I was gonna I was gonna say that just in the in the general outlining of of what Kickstarter is, um Jonathan mentioned that it's for creative projects, and yes, that's that's pretty much exclusive,

semi exclusively what it is. I mean, going alphabetically on the website, you see art, comics, dance, design, fashion, film and video, food, games, music, photography, publishing, technology, and theater and tech is really sort of the standout odd uh category. I mean, most of these are most of these are intangible and in the sense that you know a film, you know it's it's you would have the film, or you would have a copy of the video, or the

copy of the comic book. It's also interesting that the Tech one has the single largest funded campaign in Kickstarter history to date. Although well, no, it'll still be tech but I think that there might be a there's a contender to take over the helm on that, depending on how much more momentum it as. But we'll get into that. Yeah, you don't. You don't see the kind of stuff that you see advertised on TV, the as seen on TV

type things. Uh. Technology is is the the category where you know they have come up with an idea for this invention. Yeah, it's kind of this whole like crazy prototype stuff that can that can get funded through this Um. The company was founded by Perry chen Yancy Strickler, and Charles Adler, and it's located out of Manhattan. That's in New York. There you are, Perry, There you are, Perry. Um, I'm not gonna do it. I keep on wanting to go into duven Sharts every time. Curse your Patty, that

Kickstarter founder. Um. So they they've created this company. Uh, here's some some things to keep in mind with Kickstarter. Um, because this is a service that they're running, they've done some work to protect Kickstarter from problems. But there there are things you've got to keep in mind with Kickstarter, and and this is not to cast dispersions upon the

service or upon anyone who uses it. Well, one of the things that you mentioned early on in this podcast was these projects have to meet a series of requirements in order to be considered. And that's part of it. These these requirements you have to be uh, you have to at least have you know, as far as they can tell. You know, there are people who have to

vet these things to make sure that they're legit. And because Kickstarter doesn't want to get burned, and they also don't want to lose their credibility, and it is important, um for them to go, Hey, we've checked these guys out and they appear to us to be real enough for us to post them online. If it looks like if people got burned by enough scams on Kickstarter, no one would go there to find projects. And for Kickstarter, that's that's bad news. First of all, because people will

stop using the service and go away. And second of all, I mean they really want to help people. I mean, that's the really the point, um. And without making sure that there for real um, you know, than uh, than Kickstarter fails. Yeah, yeah, and so, but that is one thing you've got to worry about, is the fact that

with yourself in their shoes. Yeah, with with a Kickstarter campaign, if you're looking at funding one, keep in mind that there's nothing that legally binds that project leader to use the money for what they say it's going to be used for. So if it's like, hey, this sounds like a really cool project, I want to be a part of it, and you put money towards it, there's a chance that even if it gets funded, that project never

actually happens. And that could be for multiple reasons. It might be that the person swindled you, which is awful, it's a terrible thing. Hopefully that doesn't happen because, as you said, Chris, if it happens frequently enough, no one uses Kickstarter and then we lose this this service, which

I think is very valuable. Uh. Or it could be of much simpler and more innocent but naive problem in that the person who was the spirit that this was spearheading this project underestimated how much money it was going to take in order to make the project become a reality. So it may be that they say, oh, oh, I could do this for ten thousan dollars and they get the ten thousand dollars and they find out as they work that it's way harder than they expected, and the

ten dollars runs out and the projects not complete. Yeah, they they use the money, they start working on a prototype. The prototype doesn't work exactly the way they thought it would. It's gonna need some re engineering. They're going to have to build a new prototype. And meanwhile they're burning through the money. Yeah, and they take it to somebody, and it's going to cost more than they thought it was going to to manufacture. So you get to a point

where you're just like, well, crap. That just means that we, uh, we we've burned through. And this happens with companies, whether they're crowdsourced or not. So so this is not unique to kick starter projects, but you know, sometimes that happens where a project ends up being I always tell people overestimate how much you're gonna need, because stuff is gonna happen that's going to eat up money that you did

not expect. Well, let's let's compare it really quickly, because we want to talk about some actual projects, but really quickly, let's compare it to let's say another a regular type tech project. So somebody has an idea and they take it to a venture capitalist and the venture capitalists gives them two million dollars. So the venture capitalist is putting forth all of the money for this project to go forward.

Um and uh, he or she is is basically the loan stakeholder other than the person who came up with the idea in the first place. Um, so you or I here about it. They bring it to c E s they go, you know, Jonathan talks about it in the blog and says, look this, and you go, man, that would be cool. I'm going to buy one of those when it comes out on the market. While all of this stuff happens, they find out it can't be

done for that much money. The VC goes, I am not giving you anymore dough because you can't make this happen in a cost effective way. There's no sign of the burning through cash ever ending forget it. I'm done. And and because of this, the person can't get any more funding and they go back to their job working in a computer store. In Kickstarter, the people funding this project are you and me, and we've all contributed a hundred dollars each. We're like, we're like venture cabalists on

a fraction of what a venture cabalists actually does. Yeah, and so we've donated money and we are contributed money. Yes, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm in my head. So we are are contributing our share of the money. There are a few hundred of us or a few thousand of us who all want to make this project succeed instead of just one person and the enture capital donating it all. So none of this is behind the scenes. It's all out here on kickstarted out on the table, and we

all are waiting for our thing. That we have contributed money towards rewards, because that's because it happened. There's no there's no guarantee that the rewards that are promised are going to come out either. So it may even be that the project gets funded and it happens, but that the person who was leading the project flakes out and never sends out whatever the rewards were supposed to be. That's also danger. So one of the things you should look at is when you're funding one of these projects

of thinking all right, am i am I? All right? With the notion that if I contribute to this project, there is a chance, depending upon the reliability of the people in charge of this project, that I will not get the reward promised me. If that means that the project still funds and the thing still becomes a real thing, because sometimes that might be all that's important to you. You might not. You might say, oh, the reward is nice, and that's cool and all, but I really just want

to see this thing become a real thing. So if you're all right with that, then you might not. That might not worry you at all. But if you're if you're more like, look, I am contributing, and at the level that I'm contributing, I'm expecting to get this thing.

That's another thing to keep in mind. You know, it's also helpful to talk to people who have funded various Kickstarter campaigns and just talk about their experience about you know, did you did you actually get the rewards you were promised,

was it timely? What what should I expect? And keep in mind their experience may not at all apply to yours, because these are all different people who are applying for these campaigns, so you never you know one person's experience with one project is totally different from any other project that's out there. That being said, I was going to talk about the other problem that can happen, and this relates to one of the stories that wanted to talk about.

If that's okay, let's let's do that. A specific story is as the recording this podcast. A big story in tech is this uh yeah, gaming console. And the gaming console is the concept. It's going to be a nine dollar gaming console running on essentially an ARM based processor

uh Android operating system derivative. The idea being that it could run various games that were originally designed for mobile platforms, but to do it on a television, and it could also emulate or run an emulator to run other types

of games as well. And beyond that, the game model is the ideas that you would you would download games or stream games, so you are not buying lots of physical media, You are buying stuff through the internet, and you would be able to play a lot of these games, at least on a trial basis for free, so you wouldn't just be buying stuff blind. You get a chance to play this. Uh. This resembles all other game systems

that are have similar business models, like on Live. It's not a whole lot different from that, although in this case it's not a subscription based service. You're buying a console and then you're buying into the dual games. Uh. They launched a Kickstarter campaign in July with a goal of nine hundred fifty thousand dollars. I think after the

second day they had more than two million dollars. As of the recording of this podcast, it is currently funded at four million, nine thousand, two d seventy eight dollars with twenty six days left to go. More than thirty four thousand people are backing this project, so they've already more than met their goal. You know, their goal was less than a million dollars. Now they've got four million dollars, so their their their project is funded. Uh. They won't

get that money until the projects over. Of course, by the time this podcast goes out, it will be a lot closer. In fact, it may already have happened. Um. But they're going to get more money than what they asked for. That might not necessarily be a great thing. And the reason why I say that is because sometimes when you get more money than what you need to do, what you need to do you you might not behave in as careful a way as you would if you

had just the right amount of money. You're not thinking of all those lottery winners who blow all their money and up in bankrupt I'm thinking a lot of startup companies that got crazy amounts of venture capital balloon like the dot com crash. That was part of the problem

dot com crash. One of the many problems was that you had these startup companies that were getting lots of cash injections from venture capitalist angel investors, that kind of thing, lots and lots and lots of money, more money than they needed to conduct business, and so they grew way

too fast without anything to show for it. So they were doing things like buying lots of office equipment that they didn't necessarily need, hiring on people that they didn't have work for yet, you know, going like, well, you know, we were going to get a little office space at the bottom of this one building, but now that we've got all this cash, let's go for the penthouse that kind of stuff, and buying pinball machines and all kinds of other stuff. And you could, even even if you're

not going extravagant, all right. Let's that's let's telling you about you really lose sight of what you're doing and you're going for extravagance. Let's say that this company avoids that they don't go for this whole extravagant route, but instead what they do is they start developing this. They might be willing to pursue a less than ideal pathway longer than they would if they had less cash, because

they have cash to burn through. They have a safety net, right, so they can they can They have the luxury because of the cash, to make a bad decision longer than they would if they had less cash. So there is the potential that they can make some very very bad choices and stick with them longer than they need to.

And it's not ideal. Now that I'm not saying that will definitely happen, because the people at Uyah may have a real grip on this, and they might just make not just this cool game console, but be able to incorporate stuff they didn't even think of when they first launched this campaign. He could turn out that this project ends up being a wild success. The game console could end up being the best thing ever, and and everything works out. We don't know if that's the case or not.

I'm just saying that there are dangers to actually over funding. You might think more money equals good, it does not always equal good. Now that being said, that four million dollars with with a nine is not and that's still in process. That's not the biggest project that's been funded on Kickstarters so far. Before there was have you you've heard about the Pebble right, Yes to watch and e

paper watch ink and it. The idea is that you would connect this watch to another device, a smartphone, like through Bluetooth, right, and it would display various things on the watch that would let you see stuff that was coming through on your phone. So it's kind of like a phone watch phone without the but it connects to an existing device. And um they, the company behind it, launched a Kickstarter campaign where they were trying to raise a certain amount of money and boy did they. Uh.

I don't remember what there. I guess I could search, but I don't remember what their actual um uh goal was. Their original goals it Oh, they more than crushed it. Yeah, all right, I'm actually pulling up the site now. Okay, So their goal was one hundred thousand dollars. That was what they wanted to raise. They raised ten million, two hundred sixty six thousand, eight hut five dollars. Now that

is an overfunded project. To go from one hundred thousand to ten million, I can't imagine, like, what do you do with all that money, apart from make more of these pebbles once they're ready to go and send them out to the backers. That's the only thing I can think of, because we have ten ten million dollars. So I've seen people uh already criticizing Pebble and oh, yeah,

it's not really their fault. Well, I mean basically what they're saying is, hey, you may be funding these guys and they may not actually be scam artists, but it's gonna feel like a scam when nothing happens for you guys. And I mean that we're talking about people who are basically saying you've you just flushed your money and and or or without, which I feel is probably a little bit premature because everything I've seen says that both of

these companies are honestly intending to do this and they're sincere. Yeah, they're being sincere. They really want to accomplish their goal. They really want to make the Pebble Watch and the and the we Are game console. But the uh, the question is um and this I don't think that was the point of the columns that I've been reading was basically, Look, they don't know what they're doing. These are not seasoned professionals. Uh. You know, this is not uh Microsoft deciding it wants

to create a tablet with its name on it. Microsoft knows about manufacturing because they learned with the Xbox. Um. You know, Google has already come out with a phone, you know, essentially working with other manufacturers. They know what kinds of things that they're going to have to deal with it. They want to come out with the Nexus seven tablet because they have worked with hardware manufacturing before. These guys are new to this, and so they're gonna

have to find out about all this stuff. And they're not going to end up with enough money even with these highly funded projects to do what they need to accomplish because they just they just don't know what they're doing. They're inexperienced, and you're gonna end up losing your money. To be fair, a lot of the people who are working on these projects have experience in the various industries otherwise, I mean clearly, like I would not started kick started

campaign for a game console. I have no experience developing one. I've played them. Yeah, that's about the limit of my experience. I think that's why I think the these these naysayers are probably being a little unfair there. I think they're being overly pessive this stick. But at the same time, it's good to check your expectations because things can go wrong. It could it could even be that the money is fine, that the money doesn't burn out. It's just that their

goal ends up being unreasonable, like they just can't. They cannot meet the goal that they had set. They're they're not not the money goal, but the project's goal. So sometimes that happens, and it's unfortunate when it does. But that's another thing that you need to keep in mind. Um whether or not these will be you know, cautionary

tales in the future, that remains to be seen. I'm hoping that both of them, both the Pebble and the end up being successful avengers, because one, I think they're both cool ideas and I think it's neat to see it, and too I don't want there to be this big red X over a Kickstarter because I think that it's such a valuable service. I don't want something like that

too negatively impact the service. Well, there are so many people with great ideas for projects, uh, they don't have the ability to raise the funding for them, uh necessarily on their own. And this also, I mean this not only gives them a chance to get funded, but it also gives uh, you know, the average person who doesn't have ten million dollars burning a hole in their pocket

to give to somebody with a cool idea. So you have twenty dollars, you know, Hey, I've got twenty dollars I can give you to make this project a reality. I know I can't fund you by myself, but I would love to contribute to to make this happen. Um where how can I do that? This is really a great tool to make that happen. Now, there are other projects that already exist, and they're they're somewhat controversial too, because this is I mean, for for these that we've

already talked about, they don't exist yet. Their their ideas uh, and they've they've maybe come up with a prototype or something that they feel like they can actually take and have it manufactured. Now, Um, the biggest one I can think of that that exists in this other world where it already is of something that they want to continue

funding for would be Penny Arcade. Now, this is a really controversial subject, and in fact, our site director Tracy Wilson wrote a blog post about this on the house Stuff Works blog where she shared her perspective, which I stuff on pop stuff stuff. Yeah, it used to be called fan stuff. It's pop stuff Now. I'm stuck in the past. So am I I have to keep reminding myself whenever I talk about it, But I share her perspective more or less her philosophy on this. Uh the

here's here's the pitch. So, Pitty Arcade is a well established web comic and entertainment company. Yes, they go beyond web comics now to other things, but web comic is sort of the heart and soul of what Penny Arcade is. That's how they started out. Yeah, and when they started they were funded completely by their audience. People would leave donations for penny Arcade that'll donate button, and that's how

they made money. And so some months they would make a pretty good amount of money and other months would be particularly tight, and that's how they operated for a while. They eventually supplemented there that with web ads and then eventually they got to a point of popularity where the web ads were enough to support the business and they now have lots and lots of of their Their audience

is huge relatively speaking for the Internet. Right it's one of the largest audiences on the Internet for for like an entertainment webcomic type of approach. Well, they decided to the Tycho and Gabe's that's their alter egos. Anyway, Tycho and Gabe decided to UH to try and operate the site going back to their roots by having a crowd sourced, crowd funded penning arcade which would allow them to get

rid of their ads. So they talked about to decide how much money would they need in order to run their site add free for a year, and then came up with the figure of one million dollars. Uh. Now, their kick started campaign, if you were to go visit that is not for one million, it's for two hundred fifty thousand dollars. That's their goal, and that's their first goal. The goal if they hit two undred fifty thousand dollars. They are going to take off the leader ad that's

on the main page. It goes away that space gets reclaimed to the actual site um and then if they go over that, they have stretch goals at every so often and until you hit a million, where penny Arcade ends up being ad free for a year. As of the recording of this podcast, they have thirty three days to go on their campaign and they've raised two d nine thousand, six hundred twenty eight dollars, so they haven't hit the two fifty thousand yet, but it's they've got

they've got more than a month to go. Now, the controversy that's coming up here is that one paying our kide is well established. It already exists. It does not need this money in order to operate, in other words, because it already has a revenue generating model, it's got ads. It doesn't need to be kickstarted. It it is it. It's an establishment, right, it's not a it's not a startup. So that's one problem that people have. It is like, well, you're already there, Why do you need to go this way?

How does it meet the requirements of kickstarterblished. That's the other one is that they feel that this is not what Kickstarter is meant for. Therefore, this is a bad idea in the sense that it takes notice away from the stuff that Kickstarter is meant for. Also, it opens up the potential door for other sites that are ad based to try and follow suit, which, in the minds

of some people, dilutes the brand of Kickstarter. It it means that what Kickstarter is and what it's for gets diluted because something that was unintended pops up, becomes a success, inspires other people, and then you've got way more static, right because you're talking about you want to find the signal, you want to find the thing that you want to support within Kickstarter. This opens up the opportunity for all these other companies and organizations and individuals to approach Kickstarter

in ways that it was not intended. It becomes even harder to find the stuff that you would actually want to support within Kickstarter's realm. Yeah, okay, so there's that, and then it really comes down to to the people who run Kickstarter and having them make decisions on what appears and what doesn't. Precedent will approach them, and they can't say, well, we don't do this. They'll be able to say, well you did. Why is that different? Exactly exactly. Yeah,

that's a that's a dangerous thing. Is always setting presidents is always dangerous, Um, not presidents. I mean setting a president probably is dangerous too, but precedent the h So yeah, that's that's Those are the general objections to this. Not that penny Arcade wants to take ads off its site or go to a user funded model. There's no problem with that. I don't have any problem with that. I

don't think anyone does. The problem is using Kickstarter as the platform when perhaps there's a different platform out there that they could pursue that doesn't compromise what the at least perceived purpose of that service is all about. So that's a problem. Um. And again, it may turn out that it sends up being a non story and that after this no one cares, but it definitely opens up some potential issues. Um, I can see why people would be upset about it. Yeah, I've got some interesting stats

about Kickstarter in general. So again, as of the recording of this podcast, this is what you can find on the Kickstarter stats page about you know how many pain projects that there have been to date, Sixty three thousand, four ninety two projects were launched UH, with a success rate of just under forty percent, so more than half of these projects were not funded. UH. In fact, thirty three thousand, three hundred ten of those sixty three thousand,

four ninety two did not make it. Out Of those unsuccessful projects, UH, twenty thousand, two hundred seventy two of them raised between one and twenty percent of their goals, So they just didn't get off the ground, right, They didn't. They didn't even get the The vast majority of the unsuccessful projects did not raise more than of what they wanted, So it was pretty clear for those projects well into the campaign that it just was not going to happen

unless someone really opened up their wallet. The the heartbreaking stat is one seventy two unsuccessful projects got between eighty one and funded, so they were within that last twenty percent where they just needed that last little bit and they would have been funded, and they didn't make it

that much. Yeah, as for the successful ones, three thousand, one forty of the successful projects were aiming at a thousand dollars or less as their their goal, but eighteen thousand, one hundred fifteen were aiming at between one thousand and

nine thousand, nine ars. So most of the successful projects were looking for more than a grand, but less than ten grand UH three thousand, forty three, which is almost as much as the The people who were wanted the smallest amount went for ten thousand to twenty thousand dollars or nine if you want to be specific. So a good portion of them we're looking for around twenty between ten and twenty grand as well. So that's kind of

interesting that those were the successful ones. UM that between one and and thousands seems to be the sweet spot for UH for ambitious projects, but that the ten to twenty is not outside the realm of possibility. I would I would wager that the majority of those successful projects that range between ten and twenty, I'd wager most of those are towards the ten thousand dollar mark, not the twenty UM. And we've seen, like you said, we've talked about oh yeah, and we talked about um UH the pebble,

both being projects that were overfunded. That can happen. I know there's one particular Kickstarter project that several of my friends supported I've actually got friends who have had Kickstarter projects which are really cool. But there's one in particular that my friends supported that I see all over the place now, which is Cards against Humanity. I heard about this not much. Okay, have you ever heard of the

game Apples to Apples? So in Apples to Apples for those of you who don't know, the way the game is played is that someone is a player, draws a card that is uh, some sort of descriptive, the word, like an adjective, like it might be um, it might

be fluffy. That might be the word. And then everyone else has words in their hand on cards that say, that's a noun, some sort of noun, and they all everyone plays a card face down, and the person who played the adjective word looks at all the nouns and decides which noun most fits the adjective they played, and then whoever whoever played that noun wins that round right.

Cards Against Humanity uses a similar idea, except they're all really really twisted and evil and nasty, and uh they show you how wicked your friends are and how twisted their minds are. So it's a huge hit, and my circle of friends I understand. I know a lot of actors and musicians, and we are a dark and twisted lot. Uh. And sometimes listening listening in on a game is just

as much fun or more than playing it. Um. There have also been some pretty some pretty nasty canceled projects on Kickstarter where Kickstarter has stepped in or the project has has stepped in and canceled the project once it

was revealed that not everything was on the up and up. Uh. There was one called the I three Camera Drone Helicopter UM and part of it was canceled partly because it was using photos that were copied from other projects and other products, so it wasn't original work, so that was raising some red flags. Also, it apparently the project had made some promises that were unrealistic. Uh. And here's another thing about the Kickstarter people. They may or may not be able to figure out what is or is not

a realistic goal. You know. It's kind of like, in a way, you can compare it to the problem that people in the patent office have, where they get a path for something, they may not be able to objectively tell whether that patent is realistic. So it's I mean, that's an issue, right you can't you know, So that that was one project that got originally what got the approval and then was canceled. Um. There was an adventure game that also got canceled because it was copying stuff

from intellectual property from other projects. So there are projects that have been canceled either by Kickstarter or the project leader because they did not measure up to kickstarters qualifications. So that can happen, and they Kickstarter does try to jump on those quickly because again, just like we were talking about in the beginning of the podcast, those negative

experiences can really impact the service as a whole. Yes, agreed, But by and large, I think, uh, it's it's going to turn out to be a very valuable uh forum for people to to get these projects funded when they might not be able to other wise. Um, and it will probably launch careers. I would think it already has. Yeah, it's yeah, it's still a fairly young service, but yeah, it'll be It'll be interesting to see over the course

of time what what sticks. Yeah, And I'm I should soon have an experience on my own with one of this and then I can at least tell you what my experience of using Kickstarter was like, I'm not going to talk about the project because that's not the place for it, but I will. I will at least at some point have an insider's view of what it's like to lead a project on Kickstarter, all right, So that'll be interesting to see once that turns out one way

or the other. Um, I honestly don't know what to expect. You never can tell. All right, guys, Well, that wraps up this discussion about Kickstarter. If you have any suggestions for things that we should talk about in the future episodes, please let us know. You can send as an email that address is tech Stuff at Discovery dot com, or send us a message on Facebook or Twitter. Are handled. There is tech Stuff h sw and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon for more on

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