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by jprete
823 days ago
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I agree with you! I have some visibility into this space through the lens of "high-end" boardgaming (big boxes, frequently lots of minis, very high production value, and usually high time commitment to learn and play). Crowdfunding's first use case was speculative investment in projects that might not ever succeed. I think this space has a big inherent trust deficit and Kickstarter can never solve it because Kickstarter will always have strong local incentives to not kick sketchy founders off of the platform, but Kickstarter is absorbing some of the loss of trust there because it's their platform. There is another use case for crowdfunding - coordinating preorders of products that need enough orders to be worth a production run, but that are otherwise low-risk. This model works pretty well but Kickstarter also has competition from Backerkit in the space. I think Backerkit is also more focused on the safer use case of preorder coordination and less on the "speculative product" case. |
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I understand where you're coming from; I believe the premise is that because Kickstarter receive their fee whether projects deliver or not, that it's profitable to not remove any projects. That's of course true in the short term.
But the cumulative effect of that myopia is that the projects seeking funding on the platform has plateaued for years. The resulting lack of trust in the system has culminated in fewer projects using Kickstarter, because fewer users trust Kickstarter to adequately police projects. Robust project policing would lead to greater trust, a greater number of projects reaching funding goals, and ultimately more fees for the company. It's emphatically in their interest to remove unsavory projects, regardless of the immediate fee loss. The increase in trust is a multiplier that'll far exceed any immediate loss.