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How Kickstarter Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:13
Speaker 1: Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over
0:16
Speaker 1: there and we're ready to kick this episode off. For
0:21
Speaker 1: just one dollar, you can contribute to Stuff you Should Know. Yeah,
0:26
Speaker 1: can they know we're a pre podcast. That's why I
0:30
Speaker 1: get less patient with complaints. Yeah right, it's a trade off. Yeah,
0:34
Speaker 1: it's free. Get some ads here and there, love with it. No,
0:38
Speaker 1: but I'm just kidding. We don't fundraise or crowdsource or crowdfund. No,
0:42
Speaker 1: we just to put stuff out. We have corporate sponsorship.
0:47
Speaker 1: Not everybody does, though not all creatives do have corporate sponsorship.
0:51
Speaker 1: And so luckily, since what two thousand nine, there's been
0:57
Speaker 1: something to help people like that out, artists, creatives who
1:02
Speaker 1: want to get a project underway but can't do it,
1:06
Speaker 1: called Kickstarter that don't have the funds. I'm a big
1:09
Speaker 1: fan of Kickstarter. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I remember when
1:12
Speaker 1: it came out, I was like, this is gonna revolutionize
1:16
Speaker 1: um independent artists because one of the problems if you're
1:19
Speaker 1: an independent artist and you don't want to cow tow
1:22
Speaker 1: to the man is to just do your own thing,
1:25
Speaker 1: because it's the future is now as far as um
1:29
Speaker 1: accessibility to equipment, and you can you can make a
1:34
Speaker 1: movie right there in your in your own neighborhood and home. Right. Yeah,
1:39
Speaker 1: there's been a d I Y spirit. Well, yes, if
1:42
Speaker 1: you have the skills, it's important. Well there's always been
1:44
Speaker 1: that d I Y spirit. But it's just the accessibility.
1:46
Speaker 1: This equipment is like never before. Right, It's it's they've
1:50
Speaker 1: caught up to one another. Yeah, it's cheaper, it's you
1:52
Speaker 1: don't have to get film developed. You can edit off
1:55
Speaker 1: your laptop. Um, it's all there for the taking, except
1:59
Speaker 1: that it's still cost some money. Yeah, actors didn't come free. Nope,
2:03
Speaker 1: that's one thing. Wardrobe like craft services. Sure, you gotta
2:08
Speaker 1: have some peanuts and coffee, and that's just for you know,
2:11
Speaker 1: a movie. There's also like theaters. Um, there's music. Yeah,
2:16
Speaker 1: I want mine. I want to do mine. I want
2:18
Speaker 1: to travel the world and photograph all the remaining rhinoceros
2:24
Speaker 1: rh I I don't know. I think rhinoceros is. It's
2:27
Speaker 1: a photo book. It's a photo project about the rhinoceros
2:31
Speaker 1: in felt and I want to do that. You can
2:34
Speaker 1: do that. That's an art project. You can get funded.
2:36
Speaker 1: You can if everybody thinks that that's a good idea,
2:40
Speaker 1: Which is the cool thing about Kickstarter, that's right, So Chuck,
2:43
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about this, right. Kickstarter is crowdfunding,
2:48
Speaker 1: which is a a play on crowdsourcing, which is originally
2:52
Speaker 1: basically just tapping into the hive mind. Yeah, thanks to
2:55
Speaker 1: the Internet. Right, there's a lot of people out there.
2:58
Speaker 1: If you take their collective brains or allans or thoughts
3:00
Speaker 1: or efforts together, put them together through the Internet, you
3:04
Speaker 1: can do massive, awesome things like Wikipedia's Originally there is
3:09
Speaker 1: an original, great example of crowd sourcing. That's right. Now,
3:13
Speaker 1: if you take all those people and say, hey, just
3:15
Speaker 1: hold on to your time, hold on to your volunteering,
3:18
Speaker 1: hold on to your effort, just give me money instead. Yeah,
3:21
Speaker 1: that's crowdfunding, and Kickstarter is one of the better examples
3:26
Speaker 1: of it. But it's not the first. No. No, it's
3:29
Speaker 1: called micro patronage if you want to get specific, and
3:32
Speaker 1: it's been around since the mid nineties. Uh Kiva dot org. Yeah,
3:38
Speaker 1: we've done a podcast on micro ending and we have
3:40
Speaker 1: our own Kiva team. We've got a killer Kiva team
3:42
Speaker 1: that just surpassed a hundred thousand loans and we're coming
3:46
Speaker 1: up on three million dollars in loans made. That's right.
3:49
Speaker 1: So if you if you're interested in helping out, I
3:52
Speaker 1: know we talked about it a lot, but it's been
3:53
Speaker 1: a little while. If you're interested in helping out a
3:55
Speaker 1: business owner, either in the United States or abroad, you
3:59
Speaker 1: can do so. Ats off you sure, Keiva dot org,
4:01
Speaker 1: slash teams slash stuff. You should know, that's right, and
4:04
Speaker 1: you can do it as as a team. It's just fun.
4:07
Speaker 1: So Kiva is one great example. Um donors two dot org.
4:10
Speaker 1: I remember when that started when teachers started posting projects
4:15
Speaker 1: where their school because schools are ridiculously underfunded and teachers
4:20
Speaker 1: had to like ask the public to help pay for
4:23
Speaker 1: a field trip or something. Yeah, you know, I've seen
4:25
Speaker 1: Waiting for Superman Man. I saw seen that. It's been
4:30
Speaker 1: on my list for years. Very rarely have I seen
4:33
Speaker 1: documentary that just got my hackles up like that one.
4:36
Speaker 1: It's really well done. Well that's because can anyone make
4:39
Speaker 1: an argument that education isn't worth funding and supporting? Uh No,
4:44
Speaker 1: But this, this, this does just a great job of
4:47
Speaker 1: like getting all sides of the issue out you got it.
4:50
Speaker 1: It's one of the best documentaries ever made. Yeah, I
4:52
Speaker 1: need you to see that. And that wasn't on my
4:53
Speaker 1: top documentary list because I haven't seen it. I got
4:55
Speaker 1: to see it. Oh, and also feedback on that. I
4:58
Speaker 1: want to say thank you very much to all the
5:00
Speaker 1: people who rode in with suggestions in answer to my
5:03
Speaker 1: complaint that I've seen all the good horror movies. Oh yeah,
5:06
Speaker 1: apparently I was wrong. Boy, we got a lot of
5:08
Speaker 1: good suggestions. Yeah. I can't wait to see some of them. Yeah,
5:10
Speaker 1: most of them are foreign. It seems like, hey, they're
5:13
Speaker 1: making the takes the whole world. Takes a global village
5:16
Speaker 1: to scare jows. It does, uh, indie go go and
5:20
Speaker 1: sell a band or a couple of other other early
5:23
Speaker 1: crowdfunding sites um for music and movie making. I think
5:28
Speaker 1: indie go Go does lots of projects now, though it's
5:32
Speaker 1: not just movies anymore. Kickstarters emerged as like the go
5:36
Speaker 1: to site for what what's supposed to be creative projects. Yeah, well,
5:43
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about this. Uh. In two thousand two,
5:46
Speaker 1: co founder Perry Chen said, I want to do this
5:49
Speaker 1: concert here in New Orleans, but it costs a lot
5:51
Speaker 1: of money to throw a big concert, and UM, let
5:55
Speaker 1: me talk to my partners Yancey Strickler and Charles Adler
5:59
Speaker 1: and see if we could and figure out a way
6:01
Speaker 1: how to do this. And they said, you know what,
6:03
Speaker 1: we know we can get people to donate a little
6:05
Speaker 1: bit of money to this thing, a lot of people.
6:08
Speaker 1: But how can we do that? You know? I think
6:10
Speaker 1: they met Perry Chan was waiting tables and was one
6:15
Speaker 1: of the other guys waiter and they struck up a
6:18
Speaker 1: conversation about it. I believe that's how kickstarter got started.
6:21
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. Yeah, So they had the idea obviously
6:24
Speaker 1: based on um like we said, Indigo Go and some
6:27
Speaker 1: other h crowdfunding sites out there, to start kicks Starter
6:31
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine. But they said, you know what
6:33
Speaker 1: we're gonna do exclusively creative projects. You can't um raise
6:39
Speaker 1: money to like pay your rent or pay off your
6:41
Speaker 1: house or anything weird like that. And it wasn't you
6:45
Speaker 1: can't just do like a vague plan or something like that.
6:49
Speaker 1: It had to be here is what I'm going to accomplish,
6:53
Speaker 1: here's my project, here is the end result, this is
6:56
Speaker 1: what it's gonna be here's the timeline. I want to
6:59
Speaker 1: get this done within and this is my Kickstarter project. Yeah,
7:04
Speaker 1: this is what I'm gonna hopefully go get funded my campaign. Yeah,
7:07
Speaker 1: but it's creative. Yes, that's right. And uh, they you know,
7:11
Speaker 1: they wanted to different differentiate themselves and be unique, and
7:15
Speaker 1: being creative only was one of the ways that they
7:18
Speaker 1: did that. Another way they did so was two And
7:20
Speaker 1: I thought this was a stroke of genius. It's all
7:23
Speaker 1: or nothing. Yeah, this this makes sense. Now unless you
7:26
Speaker 1: get of your funding, um, you're not going to get
7:29
Speaker 1: any funding. And Kickstarter is only going to collect of course,
7:32
Speaker 1: they make money by collecting a little piece of it
7:35
Speaker 1: five percent commission only if you reach that funding goal though,
7:38
Speaker 1: which uh sets it apart from the crowd And I
7:41
Speaker 1: think it's pretty genius. The whole reason is genius is this.
7:44
Speaker 1: If you are a creator and you have a project,
7:48
Speaker 1: and you get halfway to your goal, your monetary goal,
7:52
Speaker 1: and you take that money, you are obligated still to
7:56
Speaker 1: those people who gave you just half of the money
7:59
Speaker 1: you need to create something. But what you're going to
8:03
Speaker 1: create is inherently inferior to what you would have created
8:07
Speaker 1: had you had all the money. You figured out you
8:09
Speaker 1: needed for this project, Sue. If you if you can
8:13
Speaker 1: take less than all, you're going to set yourself up
8:16
Speaker 1: to make something that you're not proud of. Yeah, Or
8:19
Speaker 1: if you don't get funded, you might think, all right, well,
8:22
Speaker 1: maybe that wasn't the best idea, or you know, maybe
8:24
Speaker 1: go another route, or say maybe that wasn't the best idea,
8:26
Speaker 1: let me try something else, which is like a crowdsourcing
8:28
Speaker 1: aspect of Kickstarter. You're also saying to the to the
8:32
Speaker 1: hive mind, is this a good idea? Yeah? And the
8:36
Speaker 1: other cool thing about the percent or nothing is as
8:39
Speaker 1: a as a donor or an investor, you're not you
8:43
Speaker 1: know that what you're going to end up with is
8:46
Speaker 1: this finished movie or this finished record album or this
8:49
Speaker 1: finished photo project. It's not just gonna be like, well,
8:52
Speaker 1: I just lost that five dollars to something that was
8:55
Speaker 1: thirty funded and I don't even know where what I'm
8:58
Speaker 1: going to get out of it. Now, you know, you're
9:00
Speaker 1: just basically like through a five dollar bill into a
9:04
Speaker 1: buskers um guitar case or something, you know, which is
9:08
Speaker 1: something you should do to. Yeah, there's nothing inherently wrong
9:10
Speaker 1: with that, but the point of kickstarter is there's a
9:12
Speaker 1: project that this person has approached you on and you
9:15
Speaker 1: have said that is worth five dollars of my money,
9:19
Speaker 1: even if I don't get anything back. Sure, I feel
9:22
Speaker 1: good about this project. Not the fact that you're an
9:25
Speaker 1: artist in general or you're a musician in general. This
9:28
Speaker 1: is this project that I'm investing in. That's right. Another interesting,
9:34
Speaker 1: uh facet to kickstarter is that they do offer rewards.
9:39
Speaker 1: As a backer, They require people to offer rewards. So
9:43
Speaker 1: it's not just hey, you're gonna feel good about yourself
9:46
Speaker 1: for supporting the arts in my finished movie. Um, you're
9:49
Speaker 1: gonna get a copy of the D D D or
9:51
Speaker 1: the c D may be signed by the artist. Maybe
9:54
Speaker 1: it's a poster. Maybe it's a pin or a button
9:56
Speaker 1: for a two dollar donation, right, or maybe it's lunch
9:59
Speaker 1: with me if you kicking a hundred thousand dollars, or
10:01
Speaker 1: maybe there the executive producer if you kick in all
10:05
Speaker 1: the money. Right. Yeah, we're not all the money. But
10:07
Speaker 1: you know they have different tiers set up and different
10:09
Speaker 1: rewards that align with those tears. Yeah. The thing is
10:13
Speaker 1: that there's rules with this, like you can't offer a
10:16
Speaker 1: financial stake in the project or equity you can't say
10:20
Speaker 1: you kick in twenty five dollars. Now you'll get fifty
10:23
Speaker 1: bucks back when I sell this thing to you know,
10:26
Speaker 1: Carol co Film. You know where'd you come up with that?
10:34
Speaker 1: That's the go to of mine, Carol Go. Yeah, haven't
10:36
Speaker 1: they been out of business for like twenty years? They
10:38
Speaker 1: had a good logo glowed, I believe. And then the
10:42
Speaker 1: other So when this, when this stuff is all done
10:46
Speaker 1: and up on Kickstarter, the the basically the creative has
10:50
Speaker 1: said I'm responsible for two things. One, I will complete
10:54
Speaker 1: this project if I get funded. Fully, that means this
10:57
Speaker 1: project has to be done. I can't just take the
11:00
Speaker 1: money and rotten. No. Legally I think they can, yes,
11:05
Speaker 1: but I think the public shaming that would insue it
11:09
Speaker 1: would just not be worth it. That would be your
11:10
Speaker 1: only Kickstarter project exactly. And then secondly you have to
11:14
Speaker 1: fulfill whatever your rewards were. Right, and we'll get into
11:17
Speaker 1: the nuts and bolts about actually creating a Kickstarter project
11:21
Speaker 1: right after this. Okay, so we said it has to
11:33
Speaker 1: be a creative project. What does that mean, Josh? I
11:36
Speaker 1: think if I uh far at the Star Spangled banner
11:39
Speaker 1: on YouTube, that's a very creative project. I can't believe
11:41
Speaker 1: you just use the F word. Uh, you know what,
11:45
Speaker 1: you probably could get that funded pretty easily, could um.
11:50
Speaker 1: And the key is that Cooper would pay her that
11:52
Speaker 1: by himself. By himself, he would liquidate everything he has.
11:57
Speaker 1: Just as long as you did that, you were right.
11:59
Speaker 1: The thing is to get onto Kickstarter site, you have
12:03
Speaker 1: to get past the Kickstarter staff. And it's actually not
12:07
Speaker 1: just any Joe Schmo can come along and be like,
12:10
Speaker 1: I define creativity And as a matter of fact, there
12:13
Speaker 1: are definitions for what makes a creative project. And then
12:17
Speaker 1: on the other end of that is the staff that
12:20
Speaker 1: has to look over a proposal and say, yeah, this
12:22
Speaker 1: meets our standards. Yeah. They define it on their website
12:25
Speaker 1: as art, comics, dance, design, fashion, film, food, games, music, photography, publishing, technology,
12:33
Speaker 1: and theater and um. They they admit that it is
12:38
Speaker 1: an ever evolving definition because creative people are kind of
12:43
Speaker 1: wacky and they'll submit things that they that walk the
12:45
Speaker 1: line that they'll have to decide. Hey, this Chuck Bryant guy,
12:49
Speaker 1: he's gonna be a big podcaster. He wants to fart
12:51
Speaker 1: the star spangled banner um on the front lawn of
12:54
Speaker 1: the White House. Oh man, that sounds pretty good to me.
12:57
Speaker 1: You could very easily get onto the front lawn of
13:00
Speaker 1: the White House these days too. Yeah, you just jumped
13:02
Speaker 1: the fence. And so the thing is, I think in
13:07
Speaker 1: that sense, on that end of the spectrum, they're a
13:10
Speaker 1: lot more liberal. Like I don't think the Kickstarter staff
13:14
Speaker 1: is interested in saying that's art or I don't agree
13:17
Speaker 1: with that art, so that's not really art. What they're
13:20
Speaker 1: more concerned with is having basically becoming an as seen
13:24
Speaker 1: on TV website. So the author of this article is
13:28
Speaker 1: Dave Ruse. He puts it like, um, it's not it's
13:32
Speaker 1: it's a proposal for a project, not for a finnished product.
13:36
Speaker 1: So it's not hey, by my DVD, it's hey, invest
13:40
Speaker 1: in this project and you'll get a DVD when it's finished. Yeah,
13:45
Speaker 1: that's a huge distinction because if not, it would just
13:48
Speaker 1: be an online marketplace. And Kickstarter suffers a lot of
13:50
Speaker 1: criticism because it's evolved in that way. But apparently they're
13:55
Speaker 1: cool with that to a certain degree. Yeah, there was
13:57
Speaker 1: one case, Um, I think it's a couple of years ago, uh,
14:01
Speaker 1: for a watch band that held the iPod nano. I
14:04
Speaker 1: remember when that came out they wanted to raise fifteen
14:06
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and they raised a million dollars. That's the
14:10
Speaker 1: other cool thing about Kickstarter. I don't think we mentioned
14:12
Speaker 1: if you go over then great, good for you. Um.
14:17
Speaker 1: But basically what happened was your twenty five dollar donation
14:21
Speaker 1: got you that watch band that you can now get
14:23
Speaker 1: online or Apple stores for forty bucks. Uh. And they
14:28
Speaker 1: did take you know, they took some flak for that,
14:30
Speaker 1: saying isn't this just a way to buy something before
14:35
Speaker 1: it comes out? Pre order? Yeah? Pre order? Is that
14:38
Speaker 1: what it's called? Preorder this thing? Yeah? I know. Right now.
14:41
Speaker 1: I think the biggest um success they've had is that cooler,
14:44
Speaker 1: the coolest cooler. Have you seen that thing? Thirteen point
14:47
Speaker 1: to eight five million dollars and I think their original
14:51
Speaker 1: goal was like fifty Yeah. I mean I remember when
14:54
Speaker 1: I first saw the uh, the little ad for this
14:57
Speaker 1: thing on Facebook. It was awesome. I was like, man,
15:01
Speaker 1: that is one cool cooler. Yeah, it has like bluetooth waterproof,
15:05
Speaker 1: bluetooth speaker, has a ice crushing blender built in. It
15:10
Speaker 1: is a cooler to um. And again, like we said,
15:13
Speaker 1: like this is the crowdsourcing aspect of it, Like these
15:17
Speaker 1: people came up with the coolest cooler and the world said, yes,
15:21
Speaker 1: that product needs to come into existence, and they voted
15:24
Speaker 1: by saying, here is way more money than you need.
15:27
Speaker 1: And now yes, it's basically a pre order. Not only
15:31
Speaker 1: that this company now can sell out to whoever they
15:35
Speaker 1: want to and sell coolest coolers for the rest of
15:39
Speaker 1: eternity or somebody right, because it's not a gamble at all.
15:43
Speaker 1: It's already proven itself on the in the retail market,
15:48
Speaker 1: so there's no gamble whatsoever. So they can they can
15:51
Speaker 1: just keep making them themselves, or they can expand and
15:53
Speaker 1: attract outside capital. And it's all because Perry Chin and
15:58
Speaker 1: his fellow co conspirators created this website that has all
16:02
Speaker 1: these dimensions to it. Even though it's so simple, when
16:05
Speaker 1: placed into the context of the Internet, it has complications
16:11
Speaker 1: but also expansions. It's pretty cool. Even though there are
16:17
Speaker 1: products like that. Um over six products that are successfully
16:22
Speaker 1: funded are music, film, and video. So I that's a
16:26
Speaker 1: little I mean, that's that's true, but it's flip flops
16:29
Speaker 1: them apparently. So this article, I think it was two
16:32
Speaker 1: thousand eleven from what I saw, the most popular by
16:36
Speaker 1: far as as far as funded projects go as film
16:41
Speaker 1: and video, then music, then publishing, then art, and then games.
16:48
Speaker 1: Got you like, what was games mean? Well, there's a
16:52
Speaker 1: lot of role playing games that get created on Kickstart.
16:56
Speaker 1: It's another thing too, it's a it's a great um
17:00
Speaker 1: it's a great marketplace for non traditional stuff. Like yeah,
17:05
Speaker 1: you probably think of going on to Amazon to look
17:07
Speaker 1: for that, and you might find something too, But you're
17:09
Speaker 1: not going to find a game that doesn't exist yet
17:12
Speaker 1: on Amazon. I don't know. You just blew my mind.
17:16
Speaker 1: I got a few more stats for you. These are
17:18
Speaker 1: current as of today. UM one point three eight is
17:24
Speaker 1: that a billion billion dollars pledged to projects, almost seventy
17:29
Speaker 1: three thousand successfully funded projects. By the time this comes out,
17:32
Speaker 1: it will probably pass that UM eighteen point five million
17:40
Speaker 1: total pledges. I'm having trouble with my commas today, but
17:45
Speaker 1: that's basically the public saying we believe in donating small
17:50
Speaker 1: amounts of money to projects that we believe in. And
17:53
Speaker 1: I think that's great. I do too. I think it's
17:55
Speaker 1: a pretty neat concept. And so we were talking about, um,
18:00
Speaker 1: how odd Kickstarter can get. Sometimes there's like no dearth
18:06
Speaker 1: whatsoever of very weird kickstarters that have resulted in some
18:11
Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff like Zach Danger Brown's potato salad. Oh
18:15
Speaker 1: that guy. He was looking for some money to just
18:17
Speaker 1: make potato salad one day and got wildly funded, well
18:22
Speaker 1: past his goal and ended up holding potato stock in
18:26
Speaker 1: his town of Columbus, Ohio. And he made something like
18:29
Speaker 1: three fifty or four d and fifty pounds of potato salad.
18:32
Speaker 1: So like, if you donated, you could come and eat
18:35
Speaker 1: this potato salad. That was a hit. That was the kickstarter.
18:39
Speaker 1: If that's not conceptual art, I don't know what is.
18:43
Speaker 1: Is that how he categorized it. That's how I categorize it,
18:46
Speaker 1: because food is a category too. Maybe it was both
18:48
Speaker 1: a straddle of the line, the food art project. Uh
18:52
Speaker 1: they do. Um, there are some tips we can give you, though,
18:54
Speaker 1: um kickstarter successful kickstarter, kickstarters, kickstarters, what do they call themselves? Kickstarters, kickstarters,
19:03
Speaker 1: kickstart people, kickstart people. They say that, Um, obviously you
19:07
Speaker 1: have to start with a very catchy, unique, fun, and
19:11
Speaker 1: or inspiring IDEA potato salad is pretty inspiring. Um, well,
19:14
Speaker 1: that can be fun or catchy at least. Uh. They
19:18
Speaker 1: say you should have a good story, because what you're
19:21
Speaker 1: gonna do is you'r you don't have to, but you're
19:23
Speaker 1: encouraged to make a video pitching your idea. And if
19:26
Speaker 1: you've watched some of these, they're all usually just kind
19:29
Speaker 1: of off the cuff and tongue in cheek and fun
19:31
Speaker 1: and low budge. You know, you don't want to, like
19:34
Speaker 1: look like you have a lot of money, probably by
19:36
Speaker 1: making some big production um. And you want to appeal
19:39
Speaker 1: to someone if you've got a great story about why
19:42
Speaker 1: you're doing your project, and that's certainly gonna help you
19:44
Speaker 1: get funded. Yeah, And that's one of the things about
19:46
Speaker 1: Kickstarter two is that you hear about the potato salad
19:50
Speaker 1: thing that became basically an internet meme. It became so popular,
19:53
Speaker 1: the coolest cooler you could find out about on Good
19:56
Speaker 1: Morning America. You can really count the number of of
20:00
Speaker 1: Kickstarters on both hands. Maybe if you had a third hand,
20:03
Speaker 1: that would be helpful that you've heard about if you're
20:06
Speaker 1: not like a Kickstarter donor don't really go to Kickstarter,
20:10
Speaker 1: but that leaves seventy thousand and change that you've never
20:13
Speaker 1: heard of. And that's the thing with Kickstarter. You create
20:17
Speaker 1: your Kickstarter Projects page and the first thing you do
20:20
Speaker 1: is send it to family and friends say hey, want
20:23
Speaker 1: to invest in this, And then you take it out
20:25
Speaker 1: to your social media context. And then if if it
20:29
Speaker 1: is a really good idea, theoretically it should take off
20:33
Speaker 1: on its own. It should just spread by word about.
20:35
Speaker 1: Somebody should say this is really cool and I'm going
20:38
Speaker 1: to share it, And Kickstarter makes it easier for you
20:41
Speaker 1: to share. Well, I just sounded like I was pitching Kickstarter.
20:44
Speaker 1: I was just thinking, man, they should like it in
20:46
Speaker 1: touch with us. But that video aspect, that in and
20:48
Speaker 1: of itself is very sharable. So if you can come
20:50
Speaker 1: up with a cool video to put on your Kickstarter page,
20:54
Speaker 1: then that could easily be shared. And that's a really
20:57
Speaker 1: good way to to make the rounds on social media too. Yeah,
21:00
Speaker 1: they say that, Um, every successful campaign begins with an
21:03
Speaker 1: anchor audience, is what they call it. Uh. It doesn't
21:06
Speaker 1: necessarily mean you have to have a popular podcast, although
21:10
Speaker 1: we could probably get something funded if we wanted to,
21:13
Speaker 1: especially your idea. Yeah, exactly, the f word. Your anchor
21:17
Speaker 1: audience could be, uh, just your social circle, your friends
21:21
Speaker 1: in your family, uncle, Yeah, your rich uncle. I just
21:24
Speaker 1: got him first before I even went to Kickstarter. I
21:26
Speaker 1: see what happens. Um, but you should have a good
21:29
Speaker 1: anchor audience. If you're not on social media, if you
21:31
Speaker 1: don't have a solid support group in life, then unless
21:36
Speaker 1: you really catch on somehow, you're probably not gonna get funded. Yeah. Well,
21:40
Speaker 1: it's well, you should be relying on your idea and
21:42
Speaker 1: the catchiness of your pitch anyway. Yeah, but the fact
21:46
Speaker 1: that you have access to social media is probably a
21:49
Speaker 1: pretty big leg up over somebody who doesn't know how
21:52
Speaker 1: to use Twitter or Facebook at least. Um, You're not
21:54
Speaker 1: gonna be left alone in your experience though, because once
21:57
Speaker 1: you do get approved, you will be working with Kickstarter. Um,
22:01
Speaker 1: they're gonna have a representative get in touch with you,
22:04
Speaker 1: and they're gonna work with you and say, you know what,
22:06
Speaker 1: you might want to think about these rewards, or your
22:09
Speaker 1: rewards aren't great, or maybe you should have these price points,
22:12
Speaker 1: uh to tie into these rewards there there. They want
22:15
Speaker 1: you to succeed because they make their five percent if
22:18
Speaker 1: you succeed exactly. And then you know, I'm sure they
22:20
Speaker 1: want to encourage the arts too. That's how it started,
22:22
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. But we're gonna talk a little bit
22:27
Speaker 1: more about those reward levels and a little bit of
22:30
Speaker 1: math and some more controversies right with this break math
22:38
Speaker 1: maths and say say in England, and we used to
22:41
Speaker 1: say it here too until I think the nineteenth century,
22:45
Speaker 1: and then we started saying, why are we saying it
22:47
Speaker 1: like that when you say math that Hodgeman Hodgman always
22:50
Speaker 1: his math. Yeah, he's he's got a little bit of
22:52
Speaker 1: the British in him. He likes to think so um. Alright,
22:57
Speaker 1: So the math of rewards levels, they've done a little
22:59
Speaker 1: bit of tinkering just to kind of find out what
23:02
Speaker 1: succeeds and what doesn't. The pledges the most popular, about
23:07
Speaker 1: eighteen point four percent of pledges are in the twenty
23:11
Speaker 1: five dollar range. Fifty bucks is the next most close
23:15
Speaker 1: to UM. And you know that's if you set your
23:20
Speaker 1: levels like you can have a dollar be your lowest
23:23
Speaker 1: donation level. Yeah, if you want, but you you're going
23:26
Speaker 1: to count on You have to think about your audience.
23:29
Speaker 1: If you think I've got lots and lots of people,
23:32
Speaker 1: but they may not want to throw up a bunch
23:33
Speaker 1: of money, throw in a bunch of money, um, then
23:38
Speaker 1: maybe I should do the dollar level. Well. Plus also
23:41
Speaker 1: you should sit down and think about exactly how much
23:44
Speaker 1: you need to achieve your project. They say the minimum
23:48
Speaker 1: amount that you need, and you really need to sit
23:50
Speaker 1: down and crunch the numbers. This you need to crunch
23:54
Speaker 1: the numbers, know the minimum amount you need, because even
23:57
Speaker 1: if you threw a number out, you might find down
23:59
Speaker 1: the road like, oh and this isn't actually enough. So um,
24:02
Speaker 1: you want to take that number and then add they
24:05
Speaker 1: suggest at least the five percent commission that they're going
24:08
Speaker 1: to take from it. Oh yeah, I never thought about that, right.
24:10
Speaker 1: But say your project is to eat a Chipotle burrito,
24:16
Speaker 1: a chicken burrito and then describe its deliciousness on a graph.
24:21
Speaker 1: You need eight bucks for that. And some guy did that.
24:23
Speaker 1: He set his goal for eight dollars. He made way
24:26
Speaker 1: more than that. I think he he got like he
24:28
Speaker 1: exceeded his funding by, which is the record holders still.
24:33
Speaker 1: And he created a graph of the deliciousness of Chipotle
24:37
Speaker 1: chicken burritos and sent him out to like all two
24:40
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy donors. Yes see, naysayers will say that's
24:44
Speaker 1: just a waste of everyone's time and money sexual art,
24:46
Speaker 1: and you should donate that to some like important cause.
24:48
Speaker 1: But you know what, it's their money. If people want
24:50
Speaker 1: to donate a dollar for that, then that's they're right, right,
24:53
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, that's true. A hundred dollar
24:55
Speaker 1: pledges have the biggest impact UM on total dollars raised.
25:00
Speaker 1: It they make up less than ten percent of pledges,
25:03
Speaker 1: and they recommend you get super creative with your prizes,
25:06
Speaker 1: make them really personalized. You know, if you're um, a
25:11
Speaker 1: filmmaker and any kind of creative artists like a musician,
25:15
Speaker 1: it would really help if you personally, we're offering something
25:18
Speaker 1: like a signed copy or maybe a phone call, uh
25:23
Speaker 1: leaving your your voicemail outgoing message or you know, something
25:27
Speaker 1: silly like that a lot of people would donate to.
25:30
Speaker 1: And you put that and it's like the highest possible
25:33
Speaker 1: goal and they say that you don't. You're probably not
25:36
Speaker 1: going to get one of those, but why not put
25:38
Speaker 1: it out there in case somebody does want to show out,
25:40
Speaker 1: like fifty grand or something on something silly like that. Yeah,
25:44
Speaker 1: and a good idea is a good idea because of
25:46
Speaker 1: successfully funded projects exceed their goals, So that means if
25:51
Speaker 1: you're onto something, then you're gonna get get that money
25:54
Speaker 1: plus some um. But there have been some controversies right
25:58
Speaker 1: there have So Veronica mar was canceled because a TV
26:02
Speaker 1: show that was canceled with stuff you shanellist Kristen Bell, right,
26:07
Speaker 1: and they brought it back. They said everybody wanted a movie,
26:11
Speaker 1: and uh, what's his name? Rob Thomas, the guy from
26:15
Speaker 1: from what Matchbox one? A different guy, the great uh
26:20
Speaker 1: Rob Thomas. He did the TV show Party Down, which
26:23
Speaker 1: is my like, I got you okay, top five all times? Cool,
26:26
Speaker 1: cool dude. Then so he basically said we're gonna make
26:29
Speaker 1: a movie and we're gonna use this Kickstarter thing to
26:31
Speaker 1: do it. And they did. They raised like five and
26:35
Speaker 1: five and a half million dollars for the movie just
26:38
Speaker 1: from Kickstarter. Uh and I think it's the fifth uh
26:42
Speaker 1: most funded project and Kickstarter history. Yeah, but there was
26:47
Speaker 1: some controversy with the way that they offered downloads. Apparently
26:53
Speaker 1: they use Flixer, which a lot of people were like,
26:55
Speaker 1: O don't use Flixer, I use iTunes or I use Amazon, Like,
26:58
Speaker 1: just give it to me through that. I gave you
27:00
Speaker 1: guys money to go make this movie. Give me the
27:03
Speaker 1: download the way I want to. So apparently he got
27:05
Speaker 1: in touch with them, the studio Warner Brothers. I think
27:10
Speaker 1: that's and they said, okay, well we'll make this right.
27:13
Speaker 1: Because he was saying refunds, I believe, because the idea
27:17
Speaker 1: was if you donated a certain amount, you got the
27:19
Speaker 1: movie within days of its theatrical release on your devisive choice. Yeah,
27:24
Speaker 1: and he had a pretty good blog post. And this
27:26
Speaker 1: is actually kind of a good indicator of what you're
27:28
Speaker 1: supposed to do on Kickstarter. You're supposed to post updates
27:31
Speaker 1: after you you reach your goal, Like that's not that
27:34
Speaker 1: you don't walk away and then come back when it's done,
27:36
Speaker 1: like you want to post updates about production, just keep
27:38
Speaker 1: people involved. He had a blog post um when all
27:42
Speaker 1: of this hubbub was going on, he said, you know what,
27:44
Speaker 1: like I'm really sorry, he said, more than anything else,
27:47
Speaker 1: I want this day to be perfect for you guys,
27:49
Speaker 1: because this is the day of the Veronica Mars movie
27:52
Speaker 1: that we've all wanted for so long. It gets released,
27:54
Speaker 1: so it's supposed to be a great day. So what
27:56
Speaker 1: if you guys need to just get in touch with
27:57
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers customer service and they'll set it right. So
28:00
Speaker 1: he he it's a good example of handling controversy through Kickstarter,
28:06
Speaker 1: but it also kind of underscores the ownership that people
28:10
Speaker 1: who invest in Kickstarter projects feel in the final product.
28:14
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, Like they're like, hey, man, I'm an
28:16
Speaker 1: investor in your your movie. I should be treated better
28:19
Speaker 1: than this. Yeah. And along with Zach Brath, who raised
28:24
Speaker 1: about more than two million dollars for his most recent film,
28:28
Speaker 1: which I was here. Um, he got a lot of
28:32
Speaker 1: flak because he raised, like I said, over a couple
28:35
Speaker 1: of million bucks and then got another like eight million
28:39
Speaker 1: or so from Worldview Entertainment, a film financier, and a
28:43
Speaker 1: lot of people said, hey man, that ain't cool. Like
28:47
Speaker 1: you basically said, you know, you don't have the money
28:49
Speaker 1: to do this yourself, so you're gonna raise the money
28:51
Speaker 1: via Kickstarter because you don't want to give up your
28:54
Speaker 1: final cut or your casting decisions to some film financers. Right,
28:58
Speaker 1: Like we understand that, Like you're avoiding the man and
29:01
Speaker 1: doing it all yourself. So here's some money, and then
29:04
Speaker 1: you go to a film financer and uh, they can
29:08
Speaker 1: give you completion funds or finishing funds because all these
29:11
Speaker 1: people have already proven they're willing to pay money for
29:13
Speaker 1: it to see this made. And he basically said, you
29:15
Speaker 1: know what, I'm not making some different movie. I still
29:18
Speaker 1: have final cut. Um. I never said that wouldn't happen. Um.
29:23
Speaker 1: And so he defended himself, I think fairly successfully. But
29:27
Speaker 1: a lot of people on the independent creation level here
29:31
Speaker 1: about Zach Braff making a movie and they're just ticked
29:34
Speaker 1: off about the whole situation. They're like, kickstarters should be
29:37
Speaker 1: for the really the starving artist, not the guy who
29:40
Speaker 1: made a ton of money on Scrubs who could either
29:43
Speaker 1: throw in his own money or get financing. And he
29:45
Speaker 1: already had financing lined up, he said, and he bailed
29:48
Speaker 1: on it because they did want final cut. So I
29:51
Speaker 1: kind of get both sides on this one. You know, like,
29:54
Speaker 1: good for Zack Braff if he can find a way
29:56
Speaker 1: to do it without giving up final cut. Yeah, but
29:58
Speaker 1: I mean he does. He does serve as a cautionary tale,
30:02
Speaker 1: like you don't change the terms after the kickstarters funded. Yeah,
30:07
Speaker 1: And he says that he didn't. He said the whole time,
30:09
Speaker 1: he said that he was going to take the kickstarter funds,
30:12
Speaker 1: some of his own money and then get um foreign
30:15
Speaker 1: distribution money to fill out the rest. And apparently that's
30:19
Speaker 1: what he said he did. Yeah, And again though people
30:22
Speaker 1: wanted to donate to see another Zach Braff directed, written,
30:25
Speaker 1: and directed film, then great. But that's a separate issue
30:28
Speaker 1: like if he if he wants to come to Kickstarter
30:30
Speaker 1: and use it, then yeah, he's not gonna if he
30:32
Speaker 1: shouldn't be, or if people disagree with that, they're not
30:35
Speaker 1: gonna fund it. If people do fund it, then has
30:37
Speaker 1: nothing to do with you, exactly. You know. So I
30:40
Speaker 1: found an interesting thing here from Cambridge University UM. They
30:43
Speaker 1: have some computer scientists that say they have found a way,
30:47
Speaker 1: may have found a way to uh direct your Kickstarter
30:50
Speaker 1: project to the right audience. They basically examined three months
30:54
Speaker 1: worth of worth of data from Kickstarter UM a researcher
30:59
Speaker 1: name just soon On and then plugged it into an algorithm.
31:03
Speaker 1: After they found two categories basically frequent investors and occasional investors.
31:08
Speaker 1: Occasional funders built an algorithm to say which projects attracted
31:14
Speaker 1: which type of funder, and what they came up with was,
31:18
Speaker 1: uh the following. If you are a frequent funder, you're
31:23
Speaker 1: more likely to UM fund projects where that displays good management,
31:28
Speaker 1: like if you, like you said, if you're frequently updating
31:31
Speaker 1: the page, if it's really well designed, UM and it
31:34
Speaker 1: makes sense kind of like someone who would invest in
31:36
Speaker 1: a company if they really look like they're buttoned up,
31:38
Speaker 1: they're more frequently going to invest um high stakes, they said.
31:42
Speaker 1: Frequent Kickstarter investors are more likely to invest in something
31:45
Speaker 1: with a high fundraising goal, not the eight dollar Chipotle graph,
31:50
Speaker 1: which makes sense as universal appeal um. They said, the
31:55
Speaker 1: local projects are more likely to get funded by UH
31:58
Speaker 1: infrequent investors. Long term investors are more likely to fund
32:02
Speaker 1: something with universal peel and if it's fast growing um,
32:06
Speaker 1: if they see a lot of people are investing the
32:08
Speaker 1: more frequent and most heavily investors heavy investors. Sure everybody
32:14
Speaker 1: wants to get in on that exactly. Um, But they
32:17
Speaker 1: did say in the end, it's really all about the quality.
32:20
Speaker 1: That's the one caveat of the project. At the end
32:22
Speaker 1: of the day, it still has to be a quality
32:24
Speaker 1: project or catch fire in a meme sort of way.
32:28
Speaker 1: Like meat soap. Exactly have you heard of that one?
32:31
Speaker 1: I already know what it is. Uh, And then there's
32:34
Speaker 1: one the Grizzly Coat. Well, what is meat soap. It's
32:36
Speaker 1: soap made from the fat rendered from meats. It smells
32:40
Speaker 1: like meat. It's basically bathing in meat meat. Uh. And
32:46
Speaker 1: then there's the grizzly coat, which is a coat with
32:49
Speaker 1: a hood that looks like a grizzly bear's head. It's
32:52
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Nice. Um, there's a lot of weirdness out
32:57
Speaker 1: there on Kickstarter. It's wonderful little marketplace of idea exchange. Yeah.
33:04
Speaker 1: I mean, if if I didn't have my if I
33:07
Speaker 1: didn't have my job doing what we do with our
33:09
Speaker 1: great uh company that we worked for, like paying the
33:12
Speaker 1: bills and keeping the lights on, I would definitely go
33:16
Speaker 1: this route. Like if it was around in the in
33:18
Speaker 1: the early nineties, I would have been all over this
33:20
Speaker 1: junk because I was out there on the streets making
33:22
Speaker 1: films panhandling for nothing and the result was indicative of that. Uh,
33:30
Speaker 1: you got anything else. If you want to know more
33:32
Speaker 1: about Kickstarter, go to kickstarter and follow all the rules
33:38
Speaker 1: you will be funded. You can also learn some more
33:40
Speaker 1: about it by typing Kickstarter into the search bar at
33:43
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and uh, that will bring
33:46
Speaker 1: up this article. And I said article, So it's a
33:48
Speaker 1: listener mail time. Yeah, I'm gonna call this that won't
33:53
Speaker 1: play in Peoria. Remember during our m p A a podcast.
33:59
Speaker 1: I don't think I could remember the name of the
34:01
Speaker 1: city or something like that. So we had quite a
34:05
Speaker 1: few follow ups, and this one is from Nate Malore
34:08
Speaker 1: and Nate said, um, so, Nate works in a temper
34:11
Speaker 1: as a temper in a greenhouse, which is interesting. And
34:15
Speaker 1: um he said, he's fallen behind lately, but wanted to
34:18
Speaker 1: reply about the mp A podcast. Chuck was struggling to
34:21
Speaker 1: remember the phrase that Willer won't play in Peoria. Someone
34:24
Speaker 1: who has probably let you know this, But if none
34:25
Speaker 1: has enlighten you as to the origins, I will. I'm
34:29
Speaker 1: told it was in a book at some point in
34:31
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds, but even before that, theater groups
34:35
Speaker 1: burlesque and vaudeville would use Peoria to workshop shows on
34:38
Speaker 1: the way to Chicago, as it is a fairly large
34:40
Speaker 1: city on the Illinois River. Um. When I was a kid,
34:43
Speaker 1: it was a test market. Even have you had Have
34:46
Speaker 1: you ever had a McDonald's pizza? I remember the Mick pizza?
34:50
Speaker 1: He says no. If no, then you're lucky because they're terrible. Uh.
34:56
Speaker 1: It's supposedly is representative of the Midwest, and according to
34:59
Speaker 1: my father, it was one of the most economically diverse
35:01
Speaker 1: cities in the Midwest, so Peory, I guess was just
35:04
Speaker 1: kind of that every place near Chicago, which explains the
35:08
Speaker 1: phrase exactly. Anyway, I love the show and your sister
35:11
Speaker 1: show stuff you missed in history class, which we also recommend,
35:15
Speaker 1: by the way, listen to every episode, even the pre
35:18
Speaker 1: Chuck era, except the ten or so I have to
35:21
Speaker 1: catch up with. So that is from Nate Malore and
35:25
Speaker 1: Nate's his ps. Every time you ind a commercial and
35:27
Speaker 1: say go to the search bar and type in stuff
35:30
Speaker 1: to get your whatever, it makes me want to go
35:32
Speaker 1: to whichever site you're plugging, type a bunch of random
35:35
Speaker 1: keys into the search bar and send you an email
35:37
Speaker 1: calling you jerks in my head using Josh's voice. That's
35:42
Speaker 1: what that means. I think it's that face value. Well, Nate,
35:47
Speaker 1: I think you've been in the tempting in that green
35:50
Speaker 1: household too long. What kind of greenhouse are you in there? Nate? Yeah?
35:54
Speaker 1: Is it in Humboldt County, California? Uh? Yeah, thanks a lot, Nate.
36:01
Speaker 1: That was very nice of you. If you want to
36:04
Speaker 1: get in touch of this, you can tweet to us
36:06
Speaker 1: at s Y s K podcast. You can join us
36:08
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com slash stuff You Should Know. You
36:10
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how
36:13
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at
36:15
Speaker 1: our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
36:23
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
36:25
Speaker 1: it how stuff Works dot com.