
Crowdtilt launches Crowdhoster, a WordPress for crowdfunding - justin
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/22/crowdtilt-launches-crowdhoster-a-wordpress-for-crowdfunding-to-let-anyone-create-and-customize-their-own-campaign/
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christiangenco
Such a strong move. Crowdtilt is doing a lot of things right.

James really needs to do an AMA of some kind - his story is awesome. His
original idea was a microloan site for impoverished areas, but the tightened
regulations around the 2008 market crash made that idea completely infeasible
and he lost ~$20k in software investment. He pivoted to this as a way to re-
use his (horribly messy, and - as he would later find out - completely
unusable) codebase he'd paid so much for.

I still have the picture of the cup of coffee he bought me when explaining all
of this and asking if I would be employee #3...

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aram
Sidenote: it's interesting to see Perl out there in the wild. Crowdtilt
website is built on Dancer [1] which is a Perl web framework.

[1] [http://perldancer.org/](http://perldancer.org/)

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mtgx
I was excited at first because I thought it's a WP plugin, and it could allow
anyone with a Wordpress site to integrate it into their site and ask their
readers to help them build certain features/products/areas of the site that
they would like, and get them to donate for it. But apparently it's not a WP
plugin.

~~~
tchock23
I thought the same thing. WP plugins do exist already - here is one example of
many: [http://ignitiondeck.com/id/](http://ignitiondeck.com/id/)

I think I would trust the Crowdtilt version more for some reason. A lot of
these crowdfunding plugin providers seem "shady" and I guess I trust a YC-
backed company more in this case (not sure why)...

~~~
nhangen
Co-founder of Virtuous Giant, creators of IgnitionDeck here. We're not shady,
I promise.

We've been doing this for 2+ years, built the platform that Chris Roberts used
to raise 13+ million for Star Citizen, and have a few additional case stories
on our blog:
[http://ignitiondeck.com/id/blog](http://ignitiondeck.com/id/blog)

We believe that self-hosted crowdfunding is the future, are aware of the
concerns with self-hosted cf, and are working hard to address them.

The only reason we're here is because we wanted to raise money in a way that
didn't require a KS application, and we funded the plugin with itself. Believe
me when I say that we are heavily invested in the success of DIY crowdfunding.

~~~
tchock23
My apologies - I didn't mean to insinuate that IgnitionDeck in specific was
shady. In fact, yours looks to be the least shady of the bunch that I have
seen (which is why I mentioned it in my original comment).

I was just trying to point out that in my past searches for WP crowdfunding
solutions I came across a fair number of "questionable" looking plugins from
people seemingly looking just to capitalize on a trend.

~~~
nhangen
No worries, thanks for linking us, and appreciate the sentiment.

You're absolutely right that there are a lot of people jumping in for other
than noble reasons. When we first started, there weren't any other WordPress
plugins doing what we're doing, and now it seems like there is a new one every
day.

The downside to this is that it hurts consumers and builds resentment and
distrust, but it's my hope that eventually, the buzz will wear off and the
field will settle.

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paulgerhardt
Crowdtilt (and by extension, Crowdhoster) sets the standard for crowdfunding
_commercial_ projects and represents a maturation of the of crowdfunding
movement.

When we launched the Lockitron campaign last year we had no idea if going off
platform (i.e. not using Kickstarter) would work. What we found is using a
self-hosted crowdfunding solution has a number of benefits which make it a
better option than using Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

1) You capture long tail traffic. Launch day press directs to your site, and
you can continue making sales after your campaign closes. For customers not
willing to provide payment information you can still capture leads with an
email signup. I won't disclose numbers here but this is hugely significant.
There is a reason it is point number 1.

2) Order creation dovetails nicely into account creation. Managing shipping
and payment information after a campaign closes is hugely stressful but can be
even more so if you have to go through an intermediary that limits access.
Getting people to create an account independently and as a second action
months after they purchased the product but before it ships is unnecessarily
painful.

3) You control look and feel. Not just important for establishing brand, but
also for A/B testing, retargeting, and meaningful analytics.

4) Mitigate risk. You select your payment processor or can use multiple if
necessary. A handful of crowdfunding campaigns have been torpedoed for both
legitimate and illegitimate reasons. Kickstarter capped Lifx's raise a few
days into the campaign after a few negative media pieces saying the company
could not deliver what it promises, citing Phillips $5 million R&D
expenditures as proof. At this point in time it appears Lifx is on track to
deliver, but it is unfortunate that they had their knees cut out from under
them. It is not unimaginable that your own campaign could be threatened by a
spurious patent troll.

5) No arbitrary guidelines. In order to make an honest effort to be a donation
site and not a pre-order site, Kickstarter prohibits you from "selling" items
or offering "rewards" in bulk. These linguistic gymnastics get in the way of
clear communication and prevent you from capturing multiple purchases. Lifx
for example was only allowed to "reward" backers with a single lightbulb
rather than allowing them pre-order multiple as most people would expect to do
when buying lightbulbs.

6) Less risky than you would think. At this point there have have been a
number of $1 million+ self-hosted crowdfunding campaigns. See Lockitron,
Soylent, MYO, and Tile.

When people ask about building their own crowdfunding solution I point them at
Crowdhoster. They have taken the work we did when we released our Lockitron
crowdfunding code (Selfstarter) and turned it into the standalone solution it
needs to be.

If you are crowfunding a company which needs to capture long term users and
not launching a weekend project, self-hosting your campaign is the way to go.

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caiob
Do we need more of these?

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unz
Much more of this is needed, crowdfunding has a lot more potential to change
business but kickstarter and cohorts are getting fees while offering little
value.

The huge opportunity for startups currently is in planning, campaign
analytics, and prediction markets for campaigns. Crowdfunding needs to be
quantified like the financial markets so that information is more readily
accessible to buyers and sellers to drive efficiencies (as a buyer it's hard
to evaluate the trustworthiness of the seller, and as a seller it's hard to
evaluate what the unexploited opportunities are).

Eventually crowdfunding might overtake the ownership industry and we can live
in a real open source economy.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
"kickstarter and cohorts getting fees while offering little value."

If a site has a vibrant community with a popular (or even household) name,
handles funding transactions, provides a stable experience when you get
traffic, and basically lets you worry about the project itself more than the
technology of running a crowdfunding campaign, I believe that's worth a 5%
cut.

Saying: "Come fund my new project on Kickstarter/IndieGogo/other crowdfunding
site" has a lot more trust behind it than saying, "I set up crowdfunding on my
own website, donate here."

~~~
arkonaut
Does it provide a community effect? I know they say that, but they've never
really released convincing data that it exists. Over 50% fail, and the average
raised for successful campaigns is something like 105%. As for the funding
transactions, Amazon handles them, and when you speak to successful project
creators, their biggest gripe is that Kickstarter owns their customers and the
communication with them (my pebble updates still come from Kickstarter a year
and a half after the project ended), so I think there is a concern regarding
the technology.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
I agree with you arkonaut, there are advantages and disadvantages for
everything. But I think there's a reason why big names like Kristin Bell and
Zach Braff used Kickstarter. However a platform to build it on your own site
might make sense for some people.

While I don't know the exact stats, I'm pretty sure Kickstarter released stats
about the Blockbuster effect of big names bringing money to the platform
(bringing in X number of new backers who went on to back X number of other
projects).

I've only backed a few projects on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but I would be
much less likely to back those same projects hosted on their own site (because
I would be less likely to discover them or less willing to go out of my way to
fund them).

~~~
liuhenry
Celebrities and big brands already have the audience and distribution network
to spread the word about their campaign, so it would seem that advantages of
discovery through the Kickstarter community would be comparatively minimal
compared to the fees, branding disadvantages, and loss of ability to re-engage
those fans and backers post-campaign.

I've backed quite a few projects on Kickstarter, and most of the time I've
heard about them through press or because people I know backed them (not by
browsing through the listings on KS). I'd imagine that the vast majority of
people who ended up backing Kristen Bell or Zach Braff discovered them
similarly. Projects like Pebble, Ouya, and Double Fine experience the same
effect.

The "hosted on wordpress.com" approach would take care of the tech
stability/overhead while still giving those interested in more control a way
to self-host. Look at guys like Louis CK, who've been able to do millions of
dollars in sales through their site - a Crowdhoster type option seems much
more attractive.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
"loss of ability to re-engage those fans and backers post-campaign"

Agree with this aspect. You have more control self-hosting, and that might be
the differentiating factor for some people. However I disagree with the
promotional aspect. A lot of tech coverage happens because press likes to say:
"So-and-so is doing a Kickstarter" rather than "So-and-so is raising money."

