This post is about two related phenomena. The first is crowdsourcing, the second is just about a
really cool new product!
Crowdsourcing is hardly new. It has been employed in the business world as a means of presenting challenges in design, drug development and related issues and associating creative and useful solutions with financial gain. InnoCentive, for example, posts challenges on its website for people to solve with a price tag for the best solution. In today's list of challenges the top four are:
- Irreversible Low Temperature Indicator
- Selective Ascorbate Scavenger
- Oligodendrocyte Precursor Immortalized Cell Line
- Shelf Ready Display Cases (Packaging)
Kickstarter brings people with ideas and products forward seeking investors to help them fabricate and bring them to market. So it's a marketplace of people with ideas needing investors, and rather than go to the VC world they're asking you to help. Investments can be as little as $1 USD or higher. The product that I fell in love with is the TikTok which until Dec. 15 has a minimum investment of $25 USD (after that the fundraising is closed).
The TicTok and it's more permanent companion the LunaTik are thoughtfully designed wristwatch holders for Apple's new iPod Nano. When Jobs announced the product he mentioned that one of the member's of Apple's board of directors was planning to use it as a wristwatch. Scott Wilson, the 'father' of a small design firm called Minimal, posted their design idea for making a wristwatch holder for the iPod Nano on the Kickstarter website. They hoped to raise $15k to get the process going. As of Sunday, Dec. 5th, they have gotten investments from 8,192 people (at the minimum of $25 but some have pledged $500 or more), raising $582, 221 so far! That's only 38 times more than their original goal.
Watch the video and see what you think. This is an exciting way for the public to get involved in bringing to market products that we want. I remember when Netscape was going public. I was sailing up the Long Island Sound at the time and Maryann and I were coming into Greenwich Yacht Club to pick up a mooring for the night. This was back in the early 90's (well Aug. 9, 1995, to be exact). I like anyone who was deeply involved in technology back then knew that this was going to be a huge deal. We were walking up through town and I saw the ticker on the bottom of the screen of CNN tracking the market and watched in amazement. The offering price initially was set at $28 a share. It rocketed up as high as $75 that day and closed at $58. This might not seem like much in light of the more recent Internet bubble/bust cycle, but in 1995 it shook markets and investors to the core, a wake-up call that something fundamentally different was happening. But the average Jane couldn't really participate. Places like Kickstarter give all of us a chance to support and help bring to market things that we really think are valuable, useful, and sometimes just plain cool. In this case, TikTok ticks all three boxes.
-- pdl --
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