ion Kickstartingnovat n Caroline McCarthy

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In a world that’s moving faster and faster, co-founder Yancey Strickler’s advice to the industry is to slow down, dig deep, and craft a story about what truly matters.

For someone who’s made it possible for thousands project must be adept at using videos, essays, and of creative people to race against the clock in photography to the attention of strangers campaigns to fulfill their dreams, Yancey Strickler and persuade them to back an idea that doesn’t yet is strikingly slow-paced. Soft-spoken, with exist, and perhaps never will. a shock of dark hair like a patch of unmowed lawn, The short version of Strickler’s story Strickler is sitting in a makeshift ‘conference is that he found Kickstarter’s HQ on Craigslist. room’ in the hundred-year-old former millinery The long version is that he spent nearly a decade in Manhattan’s bar-strewn Lower East Side that as a music journalist until, one day in 2005, he was houses his company, Kickstarter. Behind a graffiti- sitting at a restaurant in trendy Williamsburg, scribbled door and up a narrow staircase that feels Brooklyn, where he was a regular, when one like it isn’t far from collapsing, he’s telling the of the waiters told him about an idea for a company story of how he got here. that could help creative projects gain the financial Stories are precisely what make Kickstarter and emotional support they needed to get off tick. It’s a service that allows artists, musicians, the ground. activists, and would-be civic leaders to raise That waiter was Perry Chen, who’d previously money for projects by soliciting donations from worked as a day trader, a preschool teacher, the masses. Some of its most famous projects an art gallery owner, and a musician as he drifted have included independent films, iPod accessories, back and forth between New York and New restaurants, novels, and community gardens. Orleans over the course of several years. Chen It operates by a system of threshold pledges, was in constant contact with the struggling in which individuals can promise to donate any creative upstarts who sparked his initial idea and sum of money but won’t have to pay it unless the are now the people whom Kickstarter is aiming project reaches a concrete financing goal by a date to empower. He and Strickler joined forces, that is determined at the start of the fundraising and in April 2009 they launched Kickstarter process. Traditional marketing won’t necessarily with the help of third co-founder Charles get people on board. To be successful, a Kickstarter Adler. “Basically, Perry and I didn’t have any

THINK PEOPLE 44 Quantify: People

Recommendations from other people account for 60 percent of all video clicks from the YouTube homepage.11

technical skills whatsoever,” Strickler not interested in people selling that resembles a wristwatch, existed explains of Adler’s involvement. a product on Kickstarter. That, to us, is only in an artist’s rendering before “Charles, to us, was the internet, not what’s interesting about a product. its designer, Scott Wilson, turned because he knew certain acronyms that What’s interesting about a product is to Kickstarter. He said that all pledges we didn’t know.” how you got to it and how you’re going over $25 would count as pre-orders, When asked what the key to to make it. So if you’re just looking at and put forth an impassioned call for succeeding on Kickstarter is, Strickler this as a sales channel – as a storefront donors who wanted to support not just is emphatic: “It’s not a marketing plan, – you’re in the wrong place.” another iPod accessory, but ‘a collection it’s not a branding layout of what Yet running an effective Kickstarter that was well designed, engineered, it is that they’re making; it’s a story campaign is marketing – albeit an and manufactured from premium of them, a story of the individual innovative, narrative-driven breed of materials that complemented the coming to this thing and why they’re marketing that captures the energy impeccable quality of Apple products, trying to make this thing happen of enthusiasts and their desire not just clipped on a cheap strap as and what that quest is and what the to be part of something rather than just an afterthought.’ The TikTok raised goal is,” he explains, putting forth a passive consumers. A concept called over $940,000 on Kickstarter and distinct anti-corporate vibe. “We’re the ‘TikTok,’ a case for the iPod Nano is now sold in Apple retail stores.

THINK PEOPLE 45 Kickstarter itself has become offering up something that people love IT STARTED ON a sensation, backed by $10 million in through a story that resonates with the KICKSTARTER venture funding from some of the most creators’ enthusiasm, an exciting call prominent investors in New York’s for users to become a part of it, and an Detroit Needs Robocop flourishing start-up world. In July, implicit promise that the creators will [Detroit, MI] the company announced that 10,000 keep up that pact with the users. When Detroit’s mayor balked via Twitter projects had been successfully funded, “I think what [marketers] can at the suggestion that he erect a statue over half of them in the fields of music, learn is something that will, in fact, of Robocop, the ’80s sci-fi hero who fought film, and video. Among its roster be incredibly hard for them to recreate crime in the beleaguered city, internet of successes are ideas that had been – which I think is a good thing – and enthusiasts decided to take up the cause. brewing for years but which had been that’s authenticity,” Strickler says. A Kickstarter campaign brought in over $65,000 left to lie fallow because their creators “The power of an individual telling and multiple offers from property owners had no idea how they would raise a story about something they care willing to have the statue built on their land. the money. about, or is important to them, and One of them is + Pool, a water fil­ precisely defining how it is they go about Colonie tration system that permits floating doing that is exciting. As a backer or [Brooklyn, NY] swimming pools to be embedded in a spectator, I get the warm glow watch­ Intending to be used to fund standalone urban rivers, and which has taken ing that thing come to life, knowing creative projects rather than lasting a crucial step closer to fruition. that I have a piece of it in some way.” , Kickstarter had been lukewarm A Kickstarter campaign in the summer There are lessons to be learned in on Colonie, a proposed eatery and wine of 2011 funded + Pool with over how Kickstarter itself grew. This is bar conceived by three veteran restaurateurs. $41,000, thanks largely to beautiful a company created from passion and It initially rejected their application, but computer-generated images of a swim­ a keen observance of the world. It was changed its mind. Colonie opened to rave ming pool lying in New York’s East conceived by a pair of thirtysomethings­ reviews in early 2011, with the campaign River at the foot of the iconic Brooklyn better versed in the art of itinerant serving not just to raise money but also Bridge. Overheated locals, dazzled dreaming than in software development to generate locals’ enthusiasm for a new by the idea of a new way to cool off or management. Strickler neighborhood dining spot. outside, placed their bets on it – and and Chen didn’t want to simply ‘start told their friends to do the same. something.’ They built a business that Fresher than Fresh “They’ve had that idea for a while, was years in the making, something [Kansas City, MO] they’ve put it out there before, but meaningful but organic. More impor­ This ‘all-natural snow cone stand on wheels’ they’re getting buy-in, both literal tantly, they built a business that not had a successful run in the summer of and emotional, from a lot of people only has a story to tell but encourages 2009, but in order to keep going for another and it’s creating a lot of momentum everyone who uses it to do the same. season, its owners needed money to around this project,” Strickler says “We weren’t trying to find some­ repair the 1957 Shasta trailer from which it of + Pool’s trio of founders. Their work thing to make,” Strickler says of operated. After getting $7,500 in Kickstarter is far from done – the project faces Kickstarter’s meandering rise through funding, it was back in business. plenty of infrastructure and municipal a digital start-up environment rife hurdles now that its Kickstarter with fly-by-night successes and me-too 110 Stories phase is complete. “I’m curious to see entrepreneurialism. “It was just that [New York, NY] if it will happen,” he admits. this idea made sense. And it made sense On the surface, it’s an ‘augmented reality’ app Harnessing the energy of hundreds, because we looked at our lives, and the that superimposes the outlines of the former even thousands, of small donors isn’t lives of a bunch of our friends, and it was World Trade Center towers in mobile photos easy. Neither is great marketing. And like, ‘We would all try this.’” of the New York skyline. Dig deeper, and 110 a successful Kickstarter campaign Stories reveals itself to be both a work of civic is emotional marketing at its finest, kickstarter.com art and a memorial through visual storytelling.

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