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https://www.yahoo.com/tech/interviewed-kickstarter-co-founder-yancey-strickler-78987066804.html

Interesting mindset from the guy who runs the company. The full interview is on video, and a news story has a few highlights.

Bold statements. It's pretty cool that he feels so strongly about the potential benefits that Kickstarter can have.

@Guildsman:

I agree. It's nice to see a CEO who really believes in what his company does moreso than the potential individual profit it could bring him.

Well of course. Why would he want to make his cut smaller from every $1MM + project on there....

 cincydooley wrote:
Well of course. Why would he want to make his cut smaller from every $1MM + project on there....

This.

He makes more money keeping it private than he would selling the company or doing an IPO.

Agreed, I don't attribute much charity to Kickstarter. I'm very happy they exist, but their handling of their data breach was horrid, and their attitude is not very in line with their business model (i.e. they take people's money, and keep quite a cut of it themselves, but provide no guarantees whatsoever about the projects they promote).

I think the government will step in to regulate Kickstarter and other similar businesses at some point... there is obviously a balance, but I don't think his not wanting to make an IPO is purely ideological... that is a little naive, imo.

 RiTides wrote:
i.e. they take people's money, and keep quite a cut of it themselves, but provide no guarantees whatsoever about the projects they promote).

In fairness if they did provide a guarantee then KS would have very little on it, the entire point of KS is to fund 'risky' projects that are unable or unwilling to attract investment from traditional sources and some of these will fail, its simply the nature of the beast and everyone who backs a project but doesn't accept this is naive. Claiming money back from failed projects would also be an extremely difficult thing to do, even if KS wanted to.

 RiTides wrote:
Agreed, I don't attribute much charity to Kickstarter. I'm very happy they exist, but their handling of their data breach was horrid, and their attitude is not very in line with their business model (i.e. they take people's money, and keep quite a cut of it themselves, but provide no guarantees whatsoever about the projects they promote).

I think the government will step in to regulate Kickstarter and other similar businesses at some point... there is obviously a balance, but I don't think his not wanting to make an IPO is purely ideological... that is a little naive, imo.

That's exactly it.

A pretty much no risk profit generating machine that involves cobbling together some APIs on a web site. Why on earth would he want to go public?

sparkywtf wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Well of course. Why would he want to make his cut smaller from every $1MM + project on there....

This.

He makes more money keeping it private than he would selling the company or doing an IPO.

They also have 100% of the risk if things don't work out in the future due to changes in the marketplace.

They could get as much money in a single transaction (sale or IPO) than they would make in literally years of the business being open. I'll give an example: the quarter prior to Facebook's IPO, the company reported a revenue of just over $1 Billion USD (or, roughly $4 Billion USD/year). The company's value was estimated a about $15 Billion at that time. The IPO raised $90 Billion. Zuckerberg himself made $19 Billion from the IPO; that's roughly the equivalent of 4 full years of Facebook's total revenue (before expenses) prior to the IPO.

Now, Facebook is, of course, an extreme example, but the principal is the same. Most people who create start-ups hope to get to a point that they can cash in on all the work they've done and hit the big-time with a sale or IPO. I'm assuming that none of y'all actually watched the interview, because this is actually discussed.

Also, I did a bit more poking around on the internet, and Kickstarter's CEO is estimated to make somewhere between $250-$500 thousand per year. An IPO or sale would give them many years of their salary in one lump instead of waiting all those years to get it.

Why should he sell it? It's a license to print money for him.

What is more interesting to me in the long run for kickstarter is seeing projects like Star Citizen, who kickstartered a healthy amount of money, then dropped off and used their own structure/website to pull in tons more, leaving kickstarter out of the loop.

I see more and more computer hardware/games kickstarters setting really low goals, and using social media to make the kickstarter more a advertising platform, then soliciting money through their own website.

I wonder if kickstarter itself will eventually just vanish as companies use the model they pioneered but not the service.

I say that because KS doesn't assume any risk. I shop with Ebay sometimes because I know paypal and Ebay have my back is something goes bonkers, but do I need to give money to a project I like on kickstarter? Not really, it's all money in a hole either way, if it fails it fails and I see nothing, kickstarter as a middleman seems like it just takes money from the project I want to support, without giving much in return.


Back on subject:
In the end though, he'll sell or go public if the price is right. They all do. He has a price, no one has met it yet.

 Breotan wrote:
Why should he sell it? It's a license to print money for him.

For now. He's showing confidence that his service is here for the long term.

 Saevus wrote:
What is more interesting to me in the long run for kickstarter is seeing projects like Star Citizen, who kickstartered a healthy amount of money, then dropped off and used their own structure/website to pull in tons more, leaving kickstarter out of the loop.

I see more and more computer hardware/games kickstarters setting really low goals, and using social media to make the kickstarter more a advertising platform, then soliciting money through their own website.

I wonder if kickstarter itself will eventually just vanish as companies use the model they pioneered but not the service.

I say that because KS doesn't assume any risk. I shop with Ebay sometimes because I know paypal and Ebay have my back is something goes bonkers, but do I need to give money to a project I like on kickstarter? Not really, it's all money in a hole either way, if it fails it fails and I see nothing, kickstarter as a middleman seems like it just takes money from the project I want to support, without giving much in return.


Back on subject:
In the end though, he'll sell or go public if the price is right. They all do. He has a price, no one has met it yet.

But with the logic that they should assume risk then when I lost money in the stock exchange my stock broker should have to pay me back what I lost.

Kickstarter is about backing a project that couldn't be funded through normal channels. The risk is the same as investing in a normal matter. Instead of dividends or increased worth, we get a product instead.