Kickstarter

Last week I discovered Kickstarter.^[1] I think I love it!

What is Kickstarter? It's a way to use the power of the internet to fund innovative, artistic ideas. It's a way to get a product started knowing before it has completed production that a market exists. As it says on its FAQ page:

Kickstarter is a new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors.

We believe that...

• A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide.
• A large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement.

Kickstarter is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.

I discovered Kickstarter for myself (amazingly enough) through a Facebook ad. I can hardly believe it. Almost every Facebook ad I see is pointless or annoying or even rude. But then, last week, Facebook posted an ad for a particular project being funded through Kickstarter.

The project itself is a gaming product, and somehow, between Kickstarter and Facebook, the targeted marketing algorithms figured I might be interested in it. And with just one glance, I knew I was interested. With just a few clicks, I knew I had to have the product, and had learned enough about Kickstarter to believe that this business model would be trustworthy.

The product I want will be funded on December 2, if all goes well. How long it will take to get the product to me, I'm not sure. But as I look around at other projects looking for funding, especially gaming projects, I am excited by the prospects of being able to get in on exciting new products from the beginning. And, yes, it even gives me hope that there might be a way to get one or two of my ideas published one day, too.


^[1]OK, I didn't discover it the way the Marie Curie discovered radioactivity. I realize plenty of people knew about it before I did.