
Show HN: Launch your own hosted SelfStarter without writing a line of code - knighthacker
http://www.crowdhoster.com/
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ChrisNorstrom
Thank you. I have some ideas for you guys. KickStarter doesn't want to go the
route of "being a store" and selling pre-sales. This is EXACTLY what a lot of
us want and the direction I think you should go in.

In fact set it up in a way that makes Pre-Sales the main attraction. It would
make things so much easier.

When I was running my ToDoCal kickstarter the biggest pain in the ass was
trying to set up prizes and calculating the cost to fulfill them. Because
kickstarter isn't set up like a store that accepts pre-sales I would have to
double the cost of all my "prizes" so as to buffer the cost of fullfilling
expensive orders. Shipping to Chicago would be $6, shipping to San Francisco
was $10, international shipping was $16. But I can't charge different people
different prices, so I had to forcing everyone to pay a higher price to keep
it safe.

By designing Crowdhoster as a pre-sales store you can eliminate that
completely. USPS shipping api's can calculate the exact cost each backer
should pay down to the penny. You could offer your backers discounts based on
bulk orders and have an idea of where your products are going so you can
design packaging to be more efficient.

Basically make a pre-sales store with minimum order requirements where anyone
can place orders and their card is charged only when the minimum order is
reached after X amount of time.

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msaint
Chris - love your ideas here. I head up our API at Crowdtilt and spearheaded
the CrowdHoster project. We're psyched to get cracking on features like this.

Product pre-sales drove Lockitron to create SelfStarter in the first
place...clearly a huge use case. With our API we'll be able to get more
creative with the payment flow, allowing dynamic cost calculation like you
describe with different shipping scenarios.

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irollboozers
One day self-crowdfunding will be as easy as hosting a blog. Not yet, but this
is a good step towards that direction. I certainly wouldn't mind it if in 10
years crowdfunding is what powers the internet.

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seeingfurther
We built the exact same service last month <http://www.jumpcrowd.com/> The
hosted SelfStarter movement will open up crowdfunding in the same way services
like Blogger and WordPress opened up blogging platforms. KickStarter probably
won't survive in its current form.

~~~
twodayslate
You would seem a lot more professional and trust worthy if you didn't have the
word SHIT in your tagline.

~~~
seeingfurther
You're probably right but this was a side project we hacked together just to
see if we could do it. My partner put it up there and I thought it was funny.
We're not taking ourselves too seriously.

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Yancey
Hey, this is Yancey from Kickstarter here. We think projects like this are
great, which is part of the reason we open-sourced the Amazon FPS code that we
use at Kickstarter, which was then used in Selfstarter and Crowdhoster. It's
on Github here: <https://github.com/kickstarter/amazon_flex_pay>

For us, Kickstarter is a big experiment and we're constantly learning what
works, what doesn't, and making changes as we go. We want to provide the best
possible space for creators to share their projects and for people to connect
with them. We think we're doing a pretty good at that, but of course there's
always more to learn.

If you're curious, we have many of our stats available (live) here:
<http://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats>

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neltnerb
This is fantastic!

16 hours ago, I asked this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138705> and
now you just conveniently come along with the perfect answer!

Awesome.

~~~
msaint
Nice! Psyched to work with you on your project.

~~~
neltnerb
Is this new framework your baby? I really love the idea of being able to
tailor a kickstarter style effort more to product pre-orders instead of trying
to shoehorn it into kickstarter's model.

For instance, I absolutely intend to deliver a product to each person if it
gets funded. None of this wishy-washy garbage. I have a design, I have quotes
from the factory that will make them, and if you preorder a light you will
receive it. If you don't you have every right to sue me or ask for your money
back. I also think it's totally reasonable that if the project meets the goal,
to switch it from "preorder mode" to "order mode" since at that point I'd
rather just have the cash so that I can start the procurement process. No
sense waiting for a month before ordering, right? Not with quotes on hand
sitting on my computer waiting for my approval.

What kinds of constraints does your system have? Are the types of things I
mention above possible in your framework?

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hariis
I read somewhere that the challenge with posting your projects with
Kickstarter is getting the attention of people and hence most of them do not
reach their funding goal.

~~~
knighthacker
I think as an entrepreneur, you are gonna need to do your homework and figure
out how to get the attention to your project regardless of using Kickstarter
or not.

Lockitron was a perfect example that used Selfstarter to fund their project
and got a lot of attention from users without the help of any organization
like Kickstarter.

~~~
arkonaut
i agree with this ^. if you're going to launch a project that you hope builds
the momentum to fund +$100,000 of your capital needs, it might be worth
putting aside $5k or so for strategic PR or hiring a PR person for the launch
of your own crowdfunded project.

And Lockitron proved with a product people want and getting people to notice
it, you can do really well without Kickstarter (+$2,000,000 to date I
believe).

~~~
neltnerb
Thanks for this advice, I will be taking it to heart. I know I'm not good at
PR, and think that people will really want to get my product if only I was
able to tell them about it. I mean, it's a fully programmable, 10W RGB+white
LED light with a built in arduino core, microphone for audio responsive mode,
and has extensibility to allow for wifi, DMX, or any other communications you
want. Not to mention hallucinatorator mode:

<http://youtu.be/Nu21KK0iyFU>

which uses the ganzfeld effect to make crazy hallucinations happen.

I don't even care that someone could completely steal my design because it's
open hardware and open source; I would _happily_ pay $70 to get one of my own
lights!

So then the question is... since I've been working so hard on this that I
haven't been working enough real job to have savings to speak of, I wonder if
there is a good PR person I could hire that would defer payment until after a
project was successful...

Let me know if anyone knows someone who might be interested!

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brackin
This is great to see. I'm working on something similar which has a few more
features is focused on integrating into other brands websites or social
networks.

I think this is going to be an exciting arena with a lot of market potential.
The current marketplaces support a small percentage of the audience and free
form platforms can let anyone crowdfund.

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orangethirty
This is just a great project. Thank you! I submitted my own proposal.

I was going to use kickstarter, but it simply did not match very well with
what I plan to launch. This however, fits just right.

Also, great landing page. I don't know what is your conversion rate, but from
experience I can tell that it just works.

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twodayslate
As a user I would feel more comfortable buying from a trusted source such as
kickstarter because I feel like there is more of a guarantee of getting my
money back if the project never gets off the ground

~~~
arkonaut
There's no guarantee of getting your money back if a project fails on
Kickstarter though... [http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/22/why-this-jilted-
kickstarte...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/22/why-this-jilted-kickstarter-
backer-decided-to-sue-why-he-was-right/)

~~~
neltnerb
There could easily be _more_ of a guarantee if you host it through your own
website. If you don't finish the project, and didn't explicitly state that
funding was to "try" rather than a preorder, I'd see it as far more likely to
be finished.

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lesinski
I don't know a ton about crowdfunding... but what could be the downside of
using Kickstarter? Seems to me that it comes with free audience and offers
some security for the backers.

~~~
siong1987
It has no problem to run a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter until
Kickstarter disallows you to do that on their platform.

SelfStarter was created by the Lockitron team to run their own crowdfunding
campaign because Kickstarter didn't allow them to run their campaign on
Kickstarter.

Eventually, I still see Kickstarter as the main/most important crowdfunding
platform. Like many closed platform versus opened platform plays, it seems
like most of the closed platforms win eventually.

I might be wrong on this but I would like to see example on the opposite case.

~~~
arkonaut
Wordpress?

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phloatingman
Are there any hosted SelfStarter services that work with bitcoin?

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ar4s
<https://github.com/lockitron/selfstarter/pull/22>

~~~
phloatingman
Thanks! I'll test it out..

