Kickstarter’s founders Charles Adler, Perry Chen and Yancey Strickler have taken to the company’s blog to address controversy surrounding big-name projects on the platform such as the Veronica Mars project and Zach Braff’s latest film.
No ad to show here.
The massive amount of money made by the celebrity-led projects has generated some serious angst about who the crowdfunding platform is really for. Anyone who could conceivably get funding elsewhere, the doubters say, should not be on Kickstarter.
The founders say the aim of the platform is to bring creative projects to life, regardless of who is behind them. “We’re a tool available to anyone (in the US and UK, currently) to fund and build a community around their creative project,” they say. “Big or small, established or indie, serious or fun”.
Both the Veronica Mars and Zach Braff project fit that paradigm. Furthermore say the founders, those kind of big-name projects help other funding efforts on the platform:
The Veronica Mars and Zach Braff projects have brought tens of thousands of new people to Kickstarter. 63% of those people had never backed a project before. Thousands of them have since gone on to back other projects, with more than US$400 000 pledged to 2 200 projects so far. Nearly 40% of that has gone to other film projects.
They claim that this isn’t a once-off spike around big-name projects either and that they’ve previously spotted the phenomenon in the comics and games sections.
Ultimately they say that the maxim of “if someone is winning, someone else must be losing”, doesn’t apply to Kickstarter:
We see everyone getting to decide what projects they want to see come to life. We see more opportunity for creative freedom for everyone. We see more people participating in the creative process. We see more things getting made than ever before.
Kickstarter is a new way for creators to bring their projects to life. Not through commerce, charity, or investment — through a new model powered by a willing audience. The Veronica Mars and Zach Braff projects offered backers tickets to the premiere, cameos in the movie, access to the creative process, and other experiences in exchange for pledges. Fans were thrilled, and 100 000 people jumped on board.
Over a million people have backed more than one project on Kickstarter. Some have backed dozens and even hundreds. Together we’re building a new model for creating. One that all of us can participate in, and one that’s getting stronger every day.
Webcomic Penny Arcade has also come in for flak on the platform. Not because it’s well-known or because of the size of the pledges it received. It set a goal of just US$10 to resurrect its podcast section.
In response to the criticism, Penny Arcade business head Robert Khoo said, “we knew that whatever goal we set we would likely hit given the size of our audience, which meant that the goal # meant very little. As it stands, we’ve met that goal (woo!), so we’re absolutely committed to doing this now.”
“I think Kickstarter would tell us what Kickstarter was or was not for. The platform is an amazing way to gauge support for unreleased projects, and that’s what we absolutely are using it for. I’m sorry for those that are offended by this,” he added.
