It's no secret that Kickstarter is radically changing the way people think about launching new products. They are on a such tear helping projects get funded by the crowd (the latest being OUYA, an open gaming platform, which has raised $5mm so far, 5x its goal), that it's no surprise that the model is spreading. Kickstarter didn't invent the "tipping point" model of organizing group action (my first recollection of it was from a site called ThePoint, which ultimately became Groupon -- here's an archived shot from 2008), but they've definitely taken it mainstream. Now you see the basic model being replicated everywhere (for example, Rally for causes and Thunderclap for massive group tweets), and I'm sure VCs can't stop the phrase "it's Kickstarter for ____" from ringing in their ears. What's interesting to me is that in addition to these new Kickstarter-like platform, we're also seeing the Kickstarter model being attempted in the wild -- independently by projects looking for launch funding. I'm calling this approach the "Kickstarter Protocol" model. For instance, here is App.net's Kickstarter-like page:
And here is the launch page for the Internet Defense League, which launches this week (we're hosting the NYC launch party on Thursday, complete with Cat Signal)
Both of these read closely from the Kickstarter playbook, including tiered support levels tied to creative rewards. It will be interesting to see how this plays out -- I suspect that both projects have a good chance of reaching their goals (particularly IDL w/ it's more modest number), in part because the organizations behind them have big networks already. If this approach starts to work, I suspect we'll see more of these, for a few reasons: 1) control of identity -- the IDL launch site is in situ, which helps bind it more tightly to the campaign; 2) for cost savings -- as expensive & time consuming as it is to build a website like this yourself, if you're hunting big game, saving the 5% that Kickstarter takes is meaningful; and 3) for routing around restrictions that some funding sites impose on which projects are allowed to use the platform. I don't see this kind of thing having a meaningful negative impact on Kicksktarter's business, but it does raise some interesting questions about the value that the Kickstarter platform and audience network bring to the table. For smaller projects, where project leaders don't have the skill or resources to go independent, it's clear. But for larger projects, where success is more about internet-wide buzz building off of existing networks, you could make the argument that Kickstarter the platform & network provides less value. Relatedly, here's a nice infographic diving into Kickstarter's data on fundraising and product delivery (as opposed to fundraising).
I haven't been following the story of the Digg acquisition too closely, and have no perspective on the economics of it, but it does seem kind of awesome in a way. In that, the acquirers of the various parts of digg seem to have each gotten something uniquely valuable (to them) and likely have the potential to do something cool with it. From the TechCrunch story:
According to a familiar source, the Washington Post ended up paying $12 million for the Digg team. Around the same time, career social network LinkedIn paid between $3.75 million and $4 million for around 15 different Digg patents including the patent on “click a button to vote up a story”. Betaworks picked up all the remaining assets today, including the domain, code, data and all the traffic for between $500k and $725k
And from the Betaworks blog post:
betaworks has acquired the core assets of Digg. Digg is one of the great internet brands, and it has meant a great deal to millions of users over the years. It was a pioneer in community-driven news. We are turning Digg back into a startup. Low budget, small team, fast cycles. How? We have spent the last 18 months building News.me as a mobile-first social news experience. The News.me team will take Digg back to its essence: the best place to find, read and share the stories the internet is talking about. Right now. We are going to build Digg for 2012. More to come…
From an outsider's perspective and without really knowing anything about this deal, it seems kind of perfect. The Washington Post acquires a team who really knows something about being creative with news -- if that works right, then they'll have a shot a solving the Innovator's Dilemma and building something new and disruptive inside their world. LinkedIn, now a for real Big Boy Company, gets to bolster its patent portfolio like all the big boys do. And Betaworks gets to reinvigorate a classic, once-awesome brand, while at the same time, handing their new product, News.me, a big bootstrap. This last part reminds me of when Delicious' co-founders bought the company back and gave it new life -- which has been awesome for the product so far. So, who knows if this is a good thing, or was a good deal for any of the parties involved. But it does feel like a win on a number of levels.
As I write this, I'm sitting on the platform at the Back Bay Amtrak station in Boston, waiting for the train to New York. At 9am (6 minutes ago), I got a text message prompting me to write a blog post today. It said "Get your blog on! It's a good thing". The text message, of course, was sent to my by myself. I've got a little robot in the cloud whose job it is to help me be a better person. In this case, it's helping me be more consistent and less stressed about writing here, on this blog. The service I'm using is called IFTTT (If this, then that), and it's a very simple way of wiring together events from across various web services ("channels" in their parlance). In this case, I have the SMS channel triggered to send me a text every day at 9am. I also have a 10pm text which prompts me to write to my journal (that one says: "Take a 5 min break and post to brain [the name of my journal blog]. You'll thank me later." Last night when I got that text, I said to myself: "Self, you're right -- I will thank you later". And I wrote the post. And here I am this morning. I've been thinking a lot recently about the difference between being organized vs. being disciplined, and I've been putting a lot of energy into increasing my discipline factor. Who knows if this will end up sticking, but I hope it will. At this point, it surely sounds like another exercise in yak-shaving, and knowing myself I'll let that stand as a possibility. But I really do like the idea that it's possible to get more effective by doing less yourself and recruiting more help from others (in this case, from robots). And in this particular case, there's something particularly nice about being able to make up the wording yourself, knowing exactly what will push your own buttons and get you motivated. I really like IFTTT and will surely find more ways to use it. There are other services out there too, like Happiness Engines and I'm sure many more. At this point, I prefer the flexibility and straightforwardness over IFTTT to the slickness of Happiness Engines, but I'm looking forward to seeing where both go, and to experimenting w/ other ways to recruit robots to the cause.
It's no secret that Kickstarter is radically changing the way people think about launching new products. They are on a such tear helping projects get funded by the crowd (the latest being OUYA, an open gaming platform, which has raised $5mm so far, 5x its goal), that it's no surprise that the model is spreading. Kickstarter didn't invent the "tipping point" model of organizing group action (my first recollection of it was from a site called ThePoint, which ultimately became Groupon -- here's an archived shot from 2008), but they've definitely taken it mainstream. Now you see the basic model being replicated everywhere (for example, Rally for causes and Thunderclap for massive group tweets), and I'm sure VCs can't stop the phrase "it's Kickstarter for ____" from ringing in their ears. What's interesting to me is that in addition to these new Kickstarter-like platform, we're also seeing the Kickstarter model being attempted in the wild -- independently by projects looking for launch funding. I'm calling this approach the "Kickstarter Protocol" model. For instance, here is App.net's Kickstarter-like page:
And here is the launch page for the Internet Defense League, which launches this week (we're hosting the NYC launch party on Thursday, complete with Cat Signal)
Both of these read closely from the Kickstarter playbook, including tiered support levels tied to creative rewards. It will be interesting to see how this plays out -- I suspect that both projects have a good chance of reaching their goals (particularly IDL w/ it's more modest number), in part because the organizations behind them have big networks already. If this approach starts to work, I suspect we'll see more of these, for a few reasons: 1) control of identity -- the IDL launch site is in situ, which helps bind it more tightly to the campaign; 2) for cost savings -- as expensive & time consuming as it is to build a website like this yourself, if you're hunting big game, saving the 5% that Kickstarter takes is meaningful; and 3) for routing around restrictions that some funding sites impose on which projects are allowed to use the platform. I don't see this kind of thing having a meaningful negative impact on Kicksktarter's business, but it does raise some interesting questions about the value that the Kickstarter platform and audience network bring to the table. For smaller projects, where project leaders don't have the skill or resources to go independent, it's clear. But for larger projects, where success is more about internet-wide buzz building off of existing networks, you could make the argument that Kickstarter the platform & network provides less value. Relatedly, here's a nice infographic diving into Kickstarter's data on fundraising and product delivery (as opposed to fundraising).
I haven't been following the story of the Digg acquisition too closely, and have no perspective on the economics of it, but it does seem kind of awesome in a way. In that, the acquirers of the various parts of digg seem to have each gotten something uniquely valuable (to them) and likely have the potential to do something cool with it. From the TechCrunch story:
According to a familiar source, the Washington Post ended up paying $12 million for the Digg team. Around the same time, career social network LinkedIn paid between $3.75 million and $4 million for around 15 different Digg patents including the patent on “click a button to vote up a story”. Betaworks picked up all the remaining assets today, including the domain, code, data and all the traffic for between $500k and $725k
And from the Betaworks blog post:
betaworks has acquired the core assets of Digg. Digg is one of the great internet brands, and it has meant a great deal to millions of users over the years. It was a pioneer in community-driven news. We are turning Digg back into a startup. Low budget, small team, fast cycles. How? We have spent the last 18 months building News.me as a mobile-first social news experience. The News.me team will take Digg back to its essence: the best place to find, read and share the stories the internet is talking about. Right now. We are going to build Digg for 2012. More to come…
From an outsider's perspective and without really knowing anything about this deal, it seems kind of perfect. The Washington Post acquires a team who really knows something about being creative with news -- if that works right, then they'll have a shot a solving the Innovator's Dilemma and building something new and disruptive inside their world. LinkedIn, now a for real Big Boy Company, gets to bolster its patent portfolio like all the big boys do. And Betaworks gets to reinvigorate a classic, once-awesome brand, while at the same time, handing their new product, News.me, a big bootstrap. This last part reminds me of when Delicious' co-founders bought the company back and gave it new life -- which has been awesome for the product so far. So, who knows if this is a good thing, or was a good deal for any of the parties involved. But it does feel like a win on a number of levels.
As I write this, I'm sitting on the platform at the Back Bay Amtrak station in Boston, waiting for the train to New York. At 9am (6 minutes ago), I got a text message prompting me to write a blog post today. It said "Get your blog on! It's a good thing". The text message, of course, was sent to my by myself. I've got a little robot in the cloud whose job it is to help me be a better person. In this case, it's helping me be more consistent and less stressed about writing here, on this blog. The service I'm using is called IFTTT (If this, then that), and it's a very simple way of wiring together events from across various web services ("channels" in their parlance). In this case, I have the SMS channel triggered to send me a text every day at 9am. I also have a 10pm text which prompts me to write to my journal (that one says: "Take a 5 min break and post to brain [the name of my journal blog]. You'll thank me later." Last night when I got that text, I said to myself: "Self, you're right -- I will thank you later". And I wrote the post. And here I am this morning. I've been thinking a lot recently about the difference between being organized vs. being disciplined, and I've been putting a lot of energy into increasing my discipline factor. Who knows if this will end up sticking, but I hope it will. At this point, it surely sounds like another exercise in yak-shaving, and knowing myself I'll let that stand as a possibility. But I really do like the idea that it's possible to get more effective by doing less yourself and recruiting more help from others (in this case, from robots). And in this particular case, there's something particularly nice about being able to make up the wording yourself, knowing exactly what will push your own buttons and get you motivated. I really like IFTTT and will surely find more ways to use it. There are other services out there too, like Happiness Engines and I'm sure many more. At this point, I prefer the flexibility and straightforwardness over IFTTT to the slickness of Happiness Engines, but I'm looking forward to seeing where both go, and to experimenting w/ other ways to recruit robots to the cause.
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