The Spaghetti Incident

Kickstarter is a great service, and a great innovation that funds…innovation. There’s a lot of project concepts out there that may leak into the public consciousness, but which were offered as “pie in the sky” proof-of-concept ramblings that inevitably ended with an implied sigh; “if only we had the cash to make it a reality…” Kickstarter is that cash-pipe, allowing people to funnel money not through a middleman, but directly to the people who are making the product or offering the service. We know that the money is going to be used for it’s stated purpose, and not for sending some executive to Aruba while The Team is forced to work 28 hour days to meet someone else’s promised deadline.

Lately, though, I’m getting the feeling that Kickstarter is inching towards becoming the “Craigslist for Projects” where people throw almost anything against the wall to see if it sticks. See, with Kickstarter, if you contribute money to the project, and they reach their goal, you’re charged for your pledge. If they miss their goal, your pledge is null and void, and you owe nothing – and receive nothing, naturally. This makes it a no-brainer for a lot of wacky projects because if they don’t get the funding, then everyone is off the hook. If they do reach their goal, then they have the the funding to make things happen…no matter how bizarre or insanely niche the project may be. Ideally, the funding target is chosen based on projections of what’s needed to complete the project and make good on the promises listed in the sidebar. I’m not entirely sure what happens if there’s some kind of roadblock between the success of funding and providing the finished product. I’d assume that Kickstarter: The Service is going to only be as good as the honesty of the people who use the service for the projects. If the project creators screw the angels, then Kickstarter will suffer through guilt by association.

Back when I was thinking about Universe, I considered Kickstarter to get some cash to hire someone to handle artwork, but I’m rather skittish about being on “the Kickstarter hook” (although it would be a suitable fire under my ass to get something done). Now that the name of Kickstarter has gotten around the Internet, there are gawd-knows-how-many projects being added to an already massive pile of people looking to get their projects in front of the right faces. Sadly, there’s only so many faces, and those faces can only really contribute so much money to so many worthy (or wacky) projects that I wonder how many projects on Kickstarter end up falling off their site without meeting their goals. Regardless, I’m glad that Kickstarter exists, partly to get the money to the people who actually do the work, and partly because it can be used for some really awesome stuff that might otherwise not ever see the light of day.