When they see that something's selling, they put in, say, $100, like dangling a little bait. They're looking for hardware, the physical stuff that can cost a lot of money to build. He's supported a long list of Kickstarter projects, including Twine, Ninja Blocks and Pebble.įeld and other venture capitalists visit the site weekly.

Generally most of them will reach out right away, especially when they realize that I'm an investor,' Feld says. While the average person may not know it, the crowdfunding campaign is the site of a new mating ritual.īrad Feld, a venture capitalist with the Foundry Group, is familiar with the courting process.

'When you start your company with something like Kickstarter, that question is put on its head.'Īs Kickstarter grows up, its language is changing, from backers and creators, to customers and startups, pre-orders and mass adoption. 'Who's going to buy your product? How are you going to make money? Who's interested?' Jacoby says. Jacoby says online sales are a way to show you've got customers. There are so many 3-D printer companies on Kickstarter - such as Pirate3D, which raised over $1 million earlier this year - that they are competing with each other. 'I mean a few hundred thousand designers, a million designers.'Īll Tech Considered When A Kickstarter Campaign Fails, Does Anyone Get The Money Back?įormLabs raised close to $20 million in venture capital, Jacoby says. 'I don't mean a few designers,' says Sam Jacoby, FormLabs marketing director. The company hopped online to sell a 3-D printer and prove that designers, as a class, want one. 'Then about eight to nine months later, we raised another $2.5 million,' he says.Īnother Kickstarter venture, FormLabs, did even better. After raising over $1 million on Kickstarter, LIFX made a killing with professional investors, who put in an additional $2.1 million, Bosua says. The light bulbs blink when you get a text, along with other features. On the crowdfunding site, if you pledged $69 to LIFX you were basically pre-ordering a LIFX smart bulb, says LIFX founder Phil Bosua. Some investors visit Kickstarter in search of the next billion-dollar company.

Most of the projects on Kickstarter are quirky, small and artisanal - take the example of the glow-in-the-dark dog collar - but in one corner of the online bazaar, the projects are about the numbers. LIFX smart bulbs raised over $1 million on Kickstarter and a few million more from professional investors.

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