A Look at Kickstarter Projects: The Pros and Cons of Crowdfunding

By emeadows
August 22, 2012

Kickstarter launched four years ago. It began as a clever idea intended to generate crowdfunding for projects proposed by designers, artists, philanthropists, etc. It has since grown into a very successful enterprise.
“The service, which takes a 5 percent cut of the funding that pours in, has exploded. Along with scores of modestly backed projects — from $100 for a puppet-show adaptation of “King Kong” to one woman’s $15,000 quest to develop a bionic eye for herself — piecemeal investment has yielded multi-million-dollar hits,” details the Wall Street Journal.
But as this article notes, while there are plenty of wonderful examples of success on the site, there are just as many examples of “ill-conceived projects.” Many of these, both good and bad, revolve around tech product design. The article lists examples of the best and worst.
One good example is the Pebble watch, which links to your smartphone and receives incoming texts and updates via its e-ink face. A bad example is the now-famous i+ Case, an iPhone case that ended up interfering with cell reception and Wi-Fi connections.
The good and bad examples should remind us that sites like Kickstarter are investment tools for proposed products and services, sometimes yielding quality and other times not.

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