Crowdfunding - A Rant

[Papa_Complex]

A couple of people here have already seen me post this on Facebook, but it annoys me enough that I need to share it. Everywhere.

A Very Long Rant Follows:

Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo; they're a source of funding for people who have an idea but no conventional funding source, nor a history that could be used to obtain a bank loan for it. I considered it, briefly, when I was starting my first photobook but it turned out to be too problematic and costly, for a project that small. Still, it's been a valuable source of start-up funding for indie movie production houses, for getting books published, and for starting up production of interesting hardware. The indie producers that I support are all on Kickstarter.

This model has its ups and downs. Surely there have been people who have funded campaigns and then just kept the money, without providing what they promised. These are, however, few and far between. By and large the model has been successful. Products like the 'Othermill' affordable desktop CNC machine are making it to maket specifically because of crowdfunding. I've got a stack of DVDs, of movies and 'online TV shows', that were produced through crowd funding.

Unfortunately there's a recent trend, that threatens the continuation of the crowdfunding model. People who have ready sources of investor cash are turning to crowdfunding to fund their projects. This is because they have to pay back conventional investments, or take a chance that their own not inconsiderable personal funds might not make a return, but people who give them funding through crowdfunding can typically be bought off with a t-shirt or autographed tchotchke. In other words, for them, it's essentially free money. They're poisoning the well. The recent Kickstarter projects for the "Veronica Mars" movie ($5,702,153.00) and Spike Lee's rather self indulgently named "The Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint" funding project ($1,418,910.00) immediately come to mind.

For comparison purposes Spike Lee's Kickstarter campaign offers, for a $50.00 investment, an autographed script page from "Jim Brown; All American." Over the weekend the Kickstarter campaign for " Space Janitors", a made-in-Toronto web series, offered autographed DVDs of all three seasons (the two previous and season 3) and access to their ongoing production blogs, including such things as the 3D wireframes that they used for their CGI.

I urge you to not support projects started by people who can clearly manage on their own. They give you nothing new. They give you little or nothing in return for your funding. They take what could be used by more innovative people. They destroy the funding model. The people who use the model responsibly realize when they're starting to outgrow the model. For example Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, who have produced a goodly number of projects through Kickstarter campaigns, have realized that they've become too large, to exclusively fund their projects this way and have created a direct subscription model called "Phase II." They will continue to fund through crowdfunding, but will now have stable funding with which they can keep production rolling, on a day-to-day basis.

TLDR: Support the little guys who give you something innovative and new. Ignore the big players who don't need you but will gladly take your money, giving nothing in return.