In the past year, we’ve heard more and more about Kickstarter, a crowd-funding site that helps lift ideas off the ground.
“Money is always a big starting block for people.” Kickstarter’s co-founder Yancey Strickler said. “Take your idea and turn it out to the world.”
His crowd-funding startup looks to eliminate the monetary barrier that prevents many of ideas from seeing the light.
Strickler opened up about the site’s philosophy and growth over the last year at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011.
The co-founder attributes much of his crowd-funding website’s success to the stories behind each project.
Makes sense. Remember Scott Wilson? The entrepreneur raised over $900,000 to create an iPod Nano wristwatch. People loved the idea, but they also liked his story. Those funding the project watched a video of Scott, heard about his background as former creative director for Nike and learned about his design company.
Strickler’s philosophy: “There’s this thing I want to do. It’d be a whole lot cooler if everyone did it with me too.”
So what’s Strickler’s story?
The co-founder met his partner at a restaurant in Brooklyn. He was a local, his co-founder was a waiter there. They started talking about an idea that would eventually become Kickstarter.
Since its launch in 2009, $60 million has been pledged to different ideas and 8,500 projects have been successfully funded on Kickstarter. Not bad. -Laurie
