Kickstarter has collected more than $20m in pledges

The Q&A: Perry Chen, Kickstarter
Oct 22nd 2010, 16:48 by More Intelligent Life, H.D. | NEW YORK
ARTISTS in need of paint money once had to rely on the largesse of benefactors. But social networking and new models for supporting creativity have turned the web into a modern horn of plenty. Kickstarter, created by Perry Chen, Charles Adler and Yancey Strickler, is the largest website dedicated to crowd-funding creative projects. People use the site to pitch specific project ideas, usually using a short self-made video, and aim to collect a target amount of funding over fixed time period, usually about a month. Because the process is free and open to anyone with a project that fits under the company’s inclusive set of guidelines, the diversity of ideas on display is wild.

Kickstarter has collected more than $20m in pledges for people in creative fields such as music, film and design, and has also found success among innovators in food and other areas. Perry Chen, a co-founder of the site, talked to More Intelligent Life about why Kickstarter works and what it means for a growing community of DIY artists.

Kickstarter is a start-up based in New York. What kind of influence does the city's culture have on the company?

Well, I'm born and raised in New York. I’ve lived between New York and New Orleans for the last 16 to 17 years. Other than having a little dream of having a New Orleans office one day, we’ve never considered having it anywhere else. I met Charles and Yancey, my two other co-founders, in New York. New York is also our biggest location for projects. There is definitely a Downtown-New York-Brooklyn creative community that is very much a part of who we are, and also helps us grow out of New York.

What makes Kickstarter different from other crowd-funding platforms?

I wonder if people really know what the definition of crowd-funding is. Or, if there’s even an agreed upon definition of what it is. We haven’t actively supported the use of the term because it can provoke more confusion. In our case, we focus on a middle ground between patronage and commerce. People are offering cool stuff and experiences in exchange for becoming backers of a creative project. People are creating these mini-economies around their project ideas. So, you aren’t coming to the site to get something for nothing; you are trying to create value for the people who support you. We focus on creative projects—music, film, technology, art, design, food and publishing—and within the category of crowd-funding of the arts, we are probably ten times the size of all of the others combined.

You must receive a huge number of proposals a day. What’s your selection process like?

I would say we receive between one or two hundred new proposals a day, and we have a whole team of people who personally read every single one of them. They will either grant permission to start their project, or give helpful tips, or sometimes say that Kickstarter is not the right place for that specific project. There seems to be a bit of mystery around how our process works, but we’re not making any kind of aesthetic judgments about the quality of the music, or photography, for example. When we decline a project, the overwhelming majority of times it’s because the creator has ignored our guidelines. The system is open. We just ask to have a quick conversation with you beforehand. I don’t even know of the last time we rejected someone who wanted to make a film or record an album. For the most part, if you read our guidelines and your project fits, you’ll get a yes. We’d love it if everybody had a Kickstarter project. I believe that everyone has some kind of creative project that they think about—whether it’s something small they’d like to do over a weekend with friends, or it’s the film they’ve always wanted to make, whatever. Our goal is to meet everybody at his or her level.

Once funded, are creators obligated to report the progress of their projects? Does accountability to the crowd of backers seem to be a source of concern or motivation?

Just like eBay or Etsy, you are obligated to do what you say you’re going to do—fulfil the limited edition, or create the event or experience that you promised to create—in exchange for someone opening their wallet and backing your project. The interesting thing is that these projects are funded by dozens, hundreds and in some cases thousands of people, but it is never completely anonymous. Within those backers are friends, long-time fans, family members, classmates, people in the gardening club with you. So there’s already a social fabric that’s brought into Kickstarter. The accountability is strengthened because those people are there. When you haven’t finished your book, your friends will buzz in your ear. So it’s two things really: the number of people—a large number of people holding you accountable, and the fact that some of those people are people that are close to you. I think it’s stronger than a feedback system based on scoring, which is not to say those things don’t have value. They do. But we’ve found that this [approach] is so unbelievably powerful.

In a recent study about philanthropy at UC Berkeley, psychologists found that people became more generous when exposed to empathy-eliciting video. What kind of role do you see video playing in Kickstarter’s success?

Video is so primal. When you can hear a person talking about the project, and can see his or her passion, it is unbelievably powerful. I don’t want to make it seem like projects without a video fail. Video projects have higher success rates, but we’ve had amazingly successful projects that don’t include video. What’s important is having a critical amount of supporting material. Without video, maybe you’re linking to your website or portfolio, or maybe you have a strong base of fans or connections within a community. What’s great about video is that it allows you to connect especially with people that don’t already know you. It’s an amazing introduction. So, it’s a more important component for people who want to reach new audiences.

Diaspora, a new open-source social network, has been Kickstarter’s biggest project to date. Their impending launch has been well publicised. What kinds of pressures exist for a business that is crowd-funded?

Well, Diaspora is an interesting project. In general, we don’t allow the funding of businesses. There are food trucks and iPhone apps, but we consider those projects. The creation of a business is an extremely high-risk, long-term event and I think it’s something that we’re staying away from. But Diaspora really fit for us because it’s an open-source project. They had a spectacular amount of press, the kind most people would kill for. Most projects are hidden away and that’s one of the things that attracts people to Kickstarter. It’s not just about the funding; it’s also a way for people to spread the message about their work. I'm not sure whether the number of backers really matters. But the important thing is the expectations that they’ve set. If you go out and create something and say that you’ll give it your college try, I’d like to think the people who supported you would be happy with that. People are quite reasonable when you’re clear about what you’re setting out to accomplish.

Is there potential for Kickstarter to become a place where people come to discover talent, like on YouTube? Any Justin Biebers yet?

No Justin Biebers yet. But apparently, from what I hear, studios and agents have been adding us to lists of sites to check out when looking for talent. And we’re definitely not opposed to that!

Are there any Kickstarter projects that you’re really excited about right now?

There are a few. One is still in funding called Eyewriter. There is a well-known graffiti artist who is now paralysed after being diagnosed with ALS. So a group of people have collaborated to create this head-mounted, eye-tracking device so that he can write digital graffiti with his eyes. They’ve already exceeded their goal of $15,000, but still have a few weeks to go. Another project that just finished raising funds is called Musopen. They are recording and releasing free music without copyrights. They set out to raise $11,000 and ended up raising close to $70,000. The idea just spread like wildfire.

This last project ended back in June, but is especially close to me because of my relationship with New Orleans. It’s called Grassroots Mapping of the Gulf Oil Spill. For one reason or another, it was very difficult to get aerial photos of the spill. So this guy, Jeff Warren from MIT, created a kit for taking pictures using kites and balloons. The software he created pieced together all of the photos, creating an evolving map of the oil spill.

What’s next for Kickstarter? Has the ‘crowd’ pointed the business in any surprising directions?

There are always surprising categories of new projects—very creative open-source software and hardware, and lots of food projects. In general, we’re trying to keep doing what we’re doing, and just doing it better. And in the next year, we should hit $50m pledged through the system, which will be a huge milestone for us.
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