
Ze Frank's Kickstarter post-mortem - revorad
http://zefrank.tumblr.com/post/20122841731/kickstarter-post-mortem
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mikk0j
Other than being an awesome exposition of a Kickstarter project, this is an
example of incredibly valuable feedback. Now thinking what I can do to
stimulate even a fraction of this level of customer feedback in my startup...

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notatoad
>Now thinking what I can do to stimulate even a fraction of this level of
customer feedback in my startup...

giving your customers $150k is probably a good starting point.

kickstarter is another of those online businesses that challenges the
traditional definition of customer and supplier. Ze Frank isn't really their
customer in this instance, he's more like a supplier, providing a service
worth a large amount of money to kickstarter's customers (the donors). that
much feedback from standard customers isn't really something you can expect,
but if your startup has any transactions of that scale it's not unreasonable
to ask for a meeting to get very detailed feedback as part of your contract.

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alexweber
Can I just say, I'm incredibly excited for the (new) show!

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citricsquid
> The $133,000 will be taxable income for this year in addition to any
> personal income I have.

I'm not sure about US tax, but wouldn't it make sense to incorporate a company
to handle the money?

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fusiongyro
He must have already filed at least as a sole proprietorship. The first
benefits to becoming an LLC or an S-corp is the liability limitation: it lets
you distinguish between your assets and the business's assets in a legal
sense, so you don't (for example) lose your house because your company gets
sued. The next benefit is business-related tax deductions. This goes hand-in-
hand with business-related tax complications, so if he isn't planning on
taking deductions and can't see a legal need for separating his business
assets, it might be amounting to a more complex (and therefore expensive) tax
situation for no tangible benefit. Of course, other things he may decide to do
(such as hiring employees or issuing stock) could force him to incorporate.

I'd be surprised if it didn't make more sense to become at least an LLC, but
tax law is complex. If I were him I'd do whatever my accountant told me to do.

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rory096
LLCs act as pass-throughs, distributing profits (and thus taxes) in proportion
to ownership stakes. As a presumably sole owner of an LLC, he'd have to file a
Schedule K-1 with the company tax return, which essentially moves the profits
of the LLC onto his personal tax return (which is then taxed accordingly).

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paulsutter
The referrer log about 1/3 of the way down is really interesting. He needed to
create most of the demand himself, it didn't happen organically through
Kickstarter.

This is a great overview of what it takes to do a successful Kickstarter. Nice
catch.

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citricsquid
Kickstarter is very much "just" a system for people to use. From my own
experience with backing projects I back projects from people with pedigree and
some sort of proven value. Anyone can promise something but when I'm backing a
project I want someone I know can deliver, especially when Kickstarter
provides no assurances or guarantees a project will be made, you're relying
entirely on the project creator to be honest and stick to what they say they
will do. If I found a project via browsing the Kickstarter website and there
_wasn't_ some sort of outside influence driving the funding of the project (be
it the project creators twitter followers, a group of people that are
interested in the same field and have worked with the project creator, a
previous product the creator has produced) I would shy away because if this is
a persons first project they are inevitably going to be issues.

Here's an example of a guy who walked away with $90k and didn't deliver
anything but broken promises for over a year and only recently gone back and
worked on the project:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/schuyler/lockpicks-by-
op...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/schuyler/lockpicks-by-open-
locksport)

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Ryanmf
I don't think that's a fair characterization. No one forced the hands of those
backers. I hadn't heard of the project until you linked to it, but having read
through the updates it's evident that Schuyler was totally forthcoming about
his lack of experience in this area. Any backer slightly less skeptical than
yourself who said "I'll give this guy a shot" was completely entitled to
withdraw their pledge if they felt he was getting in over his head as the
total amount pledged ballooned to over 15x his specified threshold. He's
posted nearly 70 updates since launching the project, and it would appear that
despite the delays it is coming to fruition. It's not as if he fleeced his
backers for $90k and skipped town.

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smackfu
Interesting to read a thoughtful write-up from him, since so much of his
public persona is "I'm doing wacky things... invest in my Kickstarter and I
will give you a prize of a plastic shark!"

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blzabub
The man has a degree in Neuroscience from Brown University, he is not
unfamiliar with critical thinking, analysis or statistics.

