Kickstarter's Request For Projects

Our portfolio company Kickstarter published a blog post yesterday requesting certain kinds of projects in the Design and Technology category:

as part of our endless quest for projects, we’ve decided to try something new. Inspired in part by Y Combinator’s requests for startups, we’re going public with a list of the things we’d love to see more of on Kickstarter. We hope this inspires creators who are working in these areas to get in touch. If your project fits the bill, we can help make it shine and spotlight it for our community of 13 million backers.

The three areas they are most interested in are:

  1. Tools For Creating Things
  2. Boundary Pushers
  3. Delightful Design

If you are a creator who works in the Design and Technology category, please read this post and if you have a project in these areas, please consider doing a Kickstarter for it.

#crowdfunding

Comments (Archived):

  1. Marissa_NYx

    It’s good to see a call towards other areas of tech which may be more challenging to showcase as “wow” products if they aren’t hardware or bring along a significant crowd like games. Curating creator tools, boundary pushers, delightful design is a great start. Let’s hope some edtech can get up there through Kickstarter!. It would be a wonderful way for backers to support the whole modernization of. classroom curriculum and tools, giving students , teachers and parents a way of discovering and testing new innovatons and possibilities.

  2. William Mougayar

    Interesting and to be followed. Kickstarter seems to have their finger on the pulse of this segment so well, and ahead of others with moves like this.

  3. FAKE GRIMLOCK

    WORLD NEED MORE AWESOME.

    1. William Mougayar

      Where have you been! Anywhere sunny and warm? 🙂

      1. FAKE GRIMLOCK

        IT ALWAYS WARM WHEN SET PEOPLE ON FIRE.

    2. aminTorres

      This comments makes me happy in more ways than one. Great to see you around here.

      1. FAKE GRIMLOCK

        BEEN BUSY.

    3. jason wright

      i heard a rumour that Fred is considering getting rid of upper case.

  4. Vendita Auto

    Little off thread but worthy noting the format beats the early conference rounds: https://www.youtube.com/wat

    1. LE

      Don’t have time to watch the entire video (should be video of the week) but very interesting. At the start Draper challenges him claiming to ‘be the first’. “You probably shouldn’t say that since…” Why not? Legally permissible and a good PR angle that will do more good than harm.Interestingly though the person he is interviewing doesn’t challenge Draper.Later, Draper says ‘oh ok so that is why you are the first’. Proving that he actually has a leg to stand on for the statement. That said he didn’t even need that leg at all. Not a well known topic. Hence most people hearing it will believe it. Hyperbole like that is rampant in business. (Got someone elected President…) Not a loan application, job interview or tax return or client promise. Marketing exaggeration.

      1. Vendita Auto

        I like the format carried by Drapers intuitive experience the mindset questions everything without rejecting the premis.

  5. awaldstein

    I applaud the direction.I’m not clear what Kickstarter does to support them differently than any project anyone puts up.With an incubator, there is funding.What am i not understanding?

    1. LE

      I’m not clear what Kickstarter does to support them differently than any project anyone puts up.It’s in exchange for ‘promotional consideration’ as in:If your project fits the bill, we can help make it shine and spotlight it for our community of 13 million backers.The point being if you pick something on the list your are more likely to get Kickstarter to highlight the project and get it funded.While I’ve always thought that creativity comes from inspiration (and not from suggestion) it’s possible that people that are on the fence would be more likely to submit a project if they know it has a better chance of getting the spotlight.

      1. awaldstein

        Well said.In every KS campaign I’ve been involved with–quite a few actually, small and very large in the gaming world–the projects got funded not because of KS highlighting but because of the tools they have for the individual to plump their own communities.The KS community exists cross the web not on their site to my experience.

        1. LE

          Interesting.I am not familiar with how a project spreads in a community (other than the broad concept obviously). What I would like to know is the number of nodes and their size. For example does a project spread because there are larger influencers (say Fred) who talk about it and it’s then picked up by small influencers (say I tell my sister after Fred suggests a project) or is it primarily small influencers spreading the word? I tell my sister and she tells a few of her friends.Obviously I guess it’s a combination of both. Just curious about this concept since you raised it. Not saying you know the answer.The point is that a large influencers (like Fred) is like a gatekeeper. In the same way almost as David Geffen was a gate keeper going to clubs and deciding who he thought had talent and then taking on and promoting that talent. The old style middleman? [1] David’s business was based on what he did, Fred not the same.So I think what Kickstarter is able to do is simply seed the influencers by drawing attention to a particular project by giving it preferred ‘shelf space’.[1] My dad was a gatekeeper as a wholesaler. If he liked what you had you would get instant distribution. As such he would get free samples to all sorts of things unsolicited from small crafters hoping to get into retail stores.

          1. awaldstein

            i look at things differently I think.there are leaders not gatekeepers for communities in the networked world I work in.communities live cross the web and are often formed around an idea or cause or question for a moment in time.Its just a my way of thinking and plying my trade.

  6. Mac

    Wonderful products on the blog. Loaded with a lot of ‘Wow!’.

  7. Jed Melnik

    Perhaps it’s my game design background, but those three interests seem pretty generic, especially 2 and 3, which both sound like “we want more cool stuff on our site”. Not that it’s a bad thing (I’m a huge fan of kickstarter), but I would imagine almost anyone would use those adjectives to describe their project.

  8. Vendita Auto

    $5000 no idea. I was/am only interested in structure of the Draper series tired of noting conferences [fintech insurtech vctech] that should be sponsored by employment head hunters, I like the format carried by Draper.