For some projects, it’s not just about raising cash. Hardware creators on Kickstarter are looking for ideas, too.
Kano
Kano
When James Proud began his Kickstarter campaign for a sleep tracker called Sense, he didn't have just money in mind.
His company, a San Francisco-based startup called Hello, had already raised $10.5 million in financing from investors — and, make no mistake, the $2.4 million from Kickstarter helped. But beyond just the pre-orders that were placed during the campaign, Proud and his team were actively sifting through comments and messages to incorporate feedback for the device.
"Trying to convince people to come onto your site and stay engaged with you over months is pretty hard to do," Proud said. "Kickstarter, the most valuable thing they have are these millions of people, who want to be engaged with these products. So now we have 20,000 people who are interested in tracking our progress, for us that community aspect was the most important thing. We listened, and said, 'that makes sense, and we can find a way to do that' — so our engineers found a way to do that."
Hello's experience showed a side to Kickstarter that goes beyond raising funds or securing early orders. The site can help build a passionate community around a product that helps shape its development -- a feature that money can't buy, and which makes the service useful even for startups that have already secured millions of dollars of venture capital funding.
Alex Klein and his team behind Kano, a lightweight computer kit built around the $35 low-budget Raspberry Pi computing system, had a similar experience. It changed the design of the housing for the Raspberry Pi unit — which is otherwise just an exposed computer board with a few ports attached to it. The team also incorporated a Bluetooth radio in the keyboard after requests from the community, as the original build had just a USB radio.
Klein, too, has raised outside financing, and the Kickstarter project that would go on to raise $1.5 million. Now, after shipping 18,000 computers, Kano is widely for sale for $150. Many project organizers are finding the community, home to plenty of technically-savvy early adopters, is often a well of ideas.
"Projects aren't set in stone when they're being funded on Kickstarter — they're often at the earliest stages of development and the creative process can take twists and turns," Justin Kazmark, a spokesperson for the company, said. "We do our best to foster a community that values creative independence and creators of all stripes can bring their ideas to life on their own terms. Projects are at their best when creators are transparent and update backers along the way."
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