Incentives

[countertorque]

I've been assigned to read "Drive" by Daniel Pink as homework for work. I've made it through Chapter 1 so far (go me). But, it has reminded me of a couple problems with incentives that I have encountered recently.

I backed my first project on Kickstarter, Lex Laser Saves the Galaxy, Again. I think Kickstarter is a cool way to use the internet

Comments

[firstfrost]

I did put some money into kiva - and yeah, I think of it as a charity, not as an investment. The main way in which it is not as lame as giving them the money, is that after they pay the money back, I loan it to someone else. So instead of giving one person the money I could spare, I've loaned five people the money I could spare.

But yeah, as far as "why not just give the money", I do some of that too. :} I don't think any one thing has to be the only answer.

[merastra]

Ah, firstfrost, this makes kiva make more sense. It also makes sense for people who would like to give like the Gates' but don't have as deep pockets.

But countertorque, I agree with your analysis that KickStarter projects are geared towards that friends-and-family or "pre-order" model and less towards an actual big-time investor. I assume the KickStarter site is ok with this, as in that's their whole premise. It does make it feel a little weird though to see kickstarter projects then ask for 10% or other huge investment levels.

[kirisutogomen]

I'll note that Pink has never done any research himself; he's a lawyer and a speechwriter with no science or engineering training, and it shows

[rifmeister]

But it partially depends on what "big" is right? The Veronica Mars Movie raised $5M. Ryan North raised $580K for a Choose Your Own Adventure. On the manufacturing side, the Nomiku guys raised over $500K. I agree that probably nobody can raise $50M, but a bunch of the projects are bigger than I thought they would be when I first head of kickstarter.

[firstfrost]

I assumed that Cael meant "an individual person can only sanely grow their contributions by funding multiple projects" not "an individual project can't grow very big". Admittedly, I only started to assume that after writing a rebuttal myself. (Individual projects grow really really well when the thing they're producing has a negligible incremental effort; they seem to sometimes swamp the project runners when the incremental effort is high, but that's sort of a different issue.)

[kirisutogomen]

I assumed that Cael meant "an individual person can only sanely grow their contributions by funding multiple projects" not "an individual project can't grow very big". Admittedly, I only started to assume that after writing a rebuttal myself.

Communication is hard. I even went back and added words before posting to avoid that particular misinterpretation, but apparently I didn't add enough of them.

Also, I don't think rifmeister is responding to me at all.

[ricedog]

Another model for Kickstarter is to use it to demonstrate a market exists for your product, and then get funding from a real investor.

[bakedweasels]

KS is a huge event in the hobbyist board game industry, it seems. Many high-profile board games (in that little community) are using it. As a pre-order model, I think it works fine and provides a better "up or down" for projects than the typical pre-order model common in the wargame space ("P500", a system where people can order the game and once they hit 500 or some other threshold, they do a print run 2-5x the size and make the game--this can take many years). I agree that the huge sponsorship levels are kinda funky, but there's enough money in the world that you may get people who REALLY want to see a certain artistic endeavor get undertaken and are willing to pay lots extra for it in exchange for the tote bag and a shout out