Kickstarter and Indiegogo Watch Out
Crowdfunding is one of the most recent trends that has had a more important impact than some people give credit. No longer do you have to go pitch ideas to Venture Capitalists or prominent business owners. Instead of telling VC’s how much consumers will like your product, you can show them by saying look at how many have already been funded on Kickstarter.
Individually the average consumer doesn’t have the extra capital to invest like your Chris Sacca’s, Mark Zuckerberg’s, and Elon Musk’s. This may be due to the fact that the average consumer thinks differently than those 3. But, if you group all the extra capital of average consumers it dwarfs those 3. Crowdfunding gives small business the ability to tap into this.
Before the widespread popularity of cryptocurrency, Kickstarter and Indiegogo had their corner of the market to themselves. Now you don’t have to be funded through those platforms. You can be directly crowdfunded through blockchain technologies. Ethereum has a tutorial for building a crowdsale token.
Now it would be easy for people to look at that and say, “Yes that’s a nice idea, but no one has successfully done it.” They would have been correct in terms of the mainstream notoriety of crypto-crowdfunding, until recently. One of my favorite artists, Gramatik, launched his own cryptocurrency coin.
Launched in early November, he sees it as a way to give ownership to anyone who owns any of his token. He gets to focus on his craft and give maximum value to his fans, by giving them direct ownership of his content. This is where it gets hairy for Kickstarter and Indiegogo. It’s only going to get easier to crowdfund this way. Kickstarter, Indiegogo, you’re becoming irrelevant. Time to make some powerplays.
Adaption is something that many people fail to do when they’ve “won”. Complacency is in human nature. Change is scary for everyone, especially those who try to prevent it.
This GaryVee quote encompasses the proper approach. So these businesses have “made” it! But, many aren’t trying to put themselves out of business. To expand on this, why aren’t companies trying to do things differently? Gary asked the example: “Why doesn’t BMW make razors?”, the common response is, “because they’re a car company.” Gary’s response would be “So what? I was a wine merchant and now I’m a CEO of a Marketing Agency.” If he hadn’t done things differently, he wouldn’t be where he is.
This is what I mean when I say, try to put yourself out of business. Don’t let traditional thoughts and boundaries hold your business back. If I were Kickstarter and Indiegogo, I would invest ALL extra profit in blockchain.
