Kickstarter - Funding Creativity and Invention

This past weekend I had some time to watch a movie, and I checked out the Steve Jobs biographical film . It is an interesting story about how Jobs and Wozniak got started on their quest to create their vision of the personal computer, which eventually led to the creation of Apple Computers. In the beginning of the story the biggest hurdle these young entrepreneurs faced was finding money to make their idea a reality.
Jobs

Luckily they were able to get some funding which they used to start their company. It got me thinking of how hard it can be to find financial support for ideas people would like to make into a business or product. In the movie it showed how Steve Jobs was forced to call countless potential investors on the phone with almost no success. How many great ideas have been thought up, that have never been put into production because the innovators behind them could not afford to make their dream realities?

There has been a huge paradigm shift with the way innovators can find funding with the growth of crowdfunding. Instead of a company deciding on whether an idea is worth putting into production, inventors and artists can figure out how much money they will need to get their product made and seek support from the masses. Using sites like Kickstarter, they are able to showcase their ideas and get funding from thousands of sources depending on how popular their idea is.

This Democratic-Darwinian model allows the ideas that people like to become a reality, and those that do not fare so well head back to the drawing board. Some projects seek only a few thousand dollars, while others can be for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. With millions of people investing, it is possible to raise capital with many small investments instead of one large one.

The site is full of inventors, writers, artists, film makers and more. Each has an idea they are looking to make a reality. They create a description of the product and show what investors will get with their contribution. Smaller donations usually get some sort of token of thanks while those closer to what the product is going to sell for will actually get the product if they are able to reach the investment goal. If the idea you invest in does not reach its goal in the amount of time set to gather start up money, they do not get charged a cent.

Here is probably one of the coolest things I have ever seen, and it is an product someone pitched on Kickstarter. It is a kit to turn a paper airplane into a remote control, powered vehicle that you can control through blue tooth on your phone! It is called the PowerUp 3.0 and it costs $30.


The inventor, a New Yorker named Shai Goitien, was looking for about $60,000 dollars to get started... he raised nearly $600,000 from over 10,000 backers!

There are some other products that are making a name for themselves now. The Pebble is one of the first interactive watches made to work with your iPhone, and it was started through Kickstarter funding. It has raised over 10 million dollars. (For best effect, read that number with your best Dr. Evil voice.)

There is a $1000 underwater robot kit being shown on TED this week that was made possible by funding gathered on Kickstarter by two guys that never thought they would own an underwater robot making company.

 I think this is a great resource and opportunity for our students to make the ideas they dream up a reality. It is also a glimpse into the economics of the future and how some businesses will take off. Instead of small businesses starting off in a store front in a town, they will be created online with crowdfunding. Ideas that capture the eye of the masses will receive the funding they need to start up, with an instant customer base that was not possible before.

This is a great opportunity to connect business, computer, economics, and technology classes for students. Student innovation and projects can be created and tested in the real world with a tool like Kickstarter. Design, marketing, pricing, and numerous other real world skills can be covered in lessons that can help many of our future entrepreneurs get started.

I know I will be ordering on of those PowerUp 3.0 kits!