Getting a Jolt from Kickstarter

Bloomberg Businessweek Oct. 2011

I wanted to write a little more about Kickstarter and what it has to offer.  For starters, the Oct. 24th issue of Bloomberg Businessweek has a neat little graphic about "The New Venture Capital" aka Kickstarter.  And its headline states that the site helped entrepreneurs raise $8.8 million in September.  That's a lot of people interacting with a lot of projects.  And many of those projects raised more than their goals.  


Here's one of their innovative concepts: you take your idea and use Kickstarter to help you find an audience.  If enough people like what you're proposing, they'll give you the money. And by contributing, they'll also hold a stake in your creative concept.  So when it's completed, you already have a supportive audience to build on.  Which makes the whole process more democratic and offers more opportunity to anyone with a great idea and a plan for making it happen.

Nora and one of the kids

An abandoned lot in Brownsville

Which brings me to Nora Painten's Brownsville Student Farm Project.  She wants to turn this empty lot into a working farm to teach city kids about food, nutrition, teamwork, farming, the discipline and benefit of work, and the joy of growing your own food.  

This is Nora's Garden Plot

She lays it all out in her video on her Kickstarter page.  Of course her concept is very appealing. Who wouldn't enjoy an urban garden, especially one run by an experienced farmer with a mission to bring her love of the land and farming to city kids.  And many years ago I taught third grade in Brownsville.  Back then, it was mostly ruin and rubble.  So her effort to reclaim the land caught my eye.  And after I saw her video, I was curious about who might support her project.  So I picked one at random on her list of backers.   

And I found that one of her backers is Katherine Ferrier, who had her own Kickstarter project, Cultivate, to bring dancers, designers and musicians together as a creative community to perform in a small New Hampshire town.  And she has her own blog about dance-making, collaboration and the creative process.  


I love how exploring this site sends you on a journey.  Starting with an innovative idea to fund the creative process, moving to introducing kids and the local community to growing their own food and moving to a dance-maker with a vision of growing her own creative enterprise.  Each reaching out, sharing their experiences and creating community via the web.  It's all about connections, and I love how one leads to the next and the next.  And before you know it, you're discovering people and ways of seeing the world and living in it that you would never encounter, save through this amazing catalyst for innovation and vision, the Internet.

Kickstarter: The Power of a Simple Idea

Plenty of people have that really cool idea percolating inside them that they'd like to make happen.  Maybe a music project or a film or a great new art project. Whatever.  And what holds them back?  Well lots of things.  But one of the biggest obstacles is lack of cash.  Fundraising takes forever, accompanied by lots of rejection -- a path full of potholes.  Very few of us have rich friends or relatives.  And while sweat equity can take one fairly far, more often than not it's the lack of money that starves great ideas.  So while pluck and luck may have been a recipe for success in the last century, these days for the arts to thrive, creativity needs cash.  

Which is why Perry Chen's idea is so profound.  A concept that wouldn't be possible without video and the Internet.  And with the help of both, he and his colleagues created a new way for artists, designers and other creatives to connect with their audience and potential funders.  It's called Kickstarter.  And it's a kind of incubator for the arts.  With a personal touch.


For a quick insight, there's a short print interview with Perry at the Economist's culture blog Prospero here.  And watch Perry do a great job of explaining it all at Gel here. I want to write more about what I've found there, but that will be in a future post.  For now, just watch the video at Gel and you'll see how this simple idea has generated something truly powerful.  And Gel is pretty cool too.