
How Font Awesome 5 Became Kickstarter’s Most Funded Software Project - fortawesome
https://articles.fortawesome.com/how-font-awesome-5-became-kickstarters-most-funded-software-project-4a63c035e84
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dwynings
Honestly I've gotten so much value from Font Awesome over the years that it
was great to finally support the project – I have a feeling others felt the
same way.

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Zaheer
Same. Backing the pro-version was a no-brainer given how much I've used the
icons in the past. It's such a good product I _want_ to give them money even
if it was free.

~~~
jen729w
I love this. This drives me to do my own thing - a small thing - but I know
that if I build it for _the right people_ , some of those people will feel
compelled to give me money for it.

Not all, I know, I know, but some. Some is enough. Some is _marvellous_. Some
might be all I need to quit my regular day job, which is all I want.

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aikah
Font Awesome was already well known to developers and designers before
Kickstarting, so it's no surprise its campaign is a success. If Bootstrap made
a crowd funding campaign for instance, it would be as the same level if not
more as Font Awesome. Obviously one wants to launch a campaign when a project
has some big momentum, not when it's declining.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
Already well known and they're able to push people to the Kickstarter from
their site:
[http://fontawesome.io/cheatsheet/](http://fontawesome.io/cheatsheet/)

~~~
fortawesome
That's another one of the big things. We didn't talk about this one
specifically, as it's not as common for folks to have. 1.5M uniques a month
has come in handy, that's for sure.

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fortawesome
Hey folks! I'd love to answer any questions folks might have about running the
Kickstarter or Font Awesome in general!

-Dave Gandy

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rawnlq
How much did making the video cost?

When I first saw it I thought that commercial itself must've cost around the
ballpark of the amount you were trying to raise (30k) and can't possibly be
worth it. But turns out it was a brilliant move!

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fortawesome
So first, we got an absolute steal for what we paid for Knox Avenue
([http://www.knox-avenue.com](http://www.knox-avenue.com)). For something
similar from Sandwich Video, prices _start_ at $250k. We paid 1/10 that. But
again, we got an absolute steal. Knox isn't as famous as they deserve yet.
They're ridiculously talented.

Edit: fixed URL

~~~
devoply
Wait so you paid around 25k in hopes of raising 35k, were you expecting to
raise significantly more?

edit: apparently they paid 15k in hopes of raising 30k, which is still a lot.

~~~
fortawesome
Admittedly, we've been a bit light on specifics for price. But that's only
because I'm worried it will undervalue Knox Avenue. Those folks can get by
with charging a LOT more than they charged us.

Sandwich Video (a much bigger name in this space) starts at $250k for a video.
And if you have the budget, they're worth it. Knox Avenue is ridiculously
awesome and we were excited to be able to still afford them!

~~~
devoply
Thanks for the reply. Great product and you deserve your pay day. So good job!
And as I said can't wait for the release. Going to be a lot of icons that will
be put to good use by millions of sites. All the best! Maybe throw a bit of
that scratch at the company that made the video. I think that helped you guys
out quite a bit.

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baldfat
> Those icons are Font Awesome 4.7, which is completely open source so you can
> do almost whatever you want with them.

Pro vs Free still bothers me. Couldn't one of the stretch goals been to make
all fonts free and open?

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OJFord
I wasn't aware of it before your comment, and now I'm confused, just sounds
like buying 'Pro' would damage workflow.

Say I have a project on Github, and I want to add some of the new icons I buy
- I have to leave the icons out of the repo, and deal with whatever that means
for deployment?

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fortawesome
If you're talking a private repo, that's no problem at all.

As for a public repo, the same applies as to commercial typography. Don't make
it available for download.

This is part of why we're doing Font Awesome Pro CDN. Choose your options and
icon packs and we'll serve them up for you. And we're making this free for
open source projects. It also means you can upgrade to a new version without
pushing code if you like.

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tf2manu994
Wouldn't the end-user be able to download it from the cdn anyway? Would an
alternative not be to allow them in an open source repo provided that the
owner adds a readme to the folder in which the font resides, telling the end-
user to refrain from downloading?

Edit: what about an open source non-electron web application? How would they
use the font?

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fortawesome
If someone can see a font, they can pirate it. We just don't want to make it
really, really easy.

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edblarney
$15K to make a proper video for kickstarter?

This is kind of defeating the purpose?

I mean - there's prob. another $5K in expenses + all the work ...

That's a lot of risk - which is what it takes to be competitive?

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dangerboysteve
I think they knew going in from the survey's they did there was going to be
huge support. The excellent and slick video they shot lends a perceived value
to the product. When you need to capture the viewer's attention for a few
minutes, it pays to hire some pros.

~~~
fortawesome
> it pays to hire some pros.

It certainly does. Arguably the best money our company has ever spent. (Okay,
salaries. Because we have a ridiculously amazing team.)

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bambax
This is interesting:

> _believe it or not, trolls are a sign you’re onto something. You’ve upgraded
> from indifference to dislike (or outright hate)._

Things that are new and useful create resistance, which is actually a sign
there is _something_ instead of nothing.

~~~
draw_down
Ehh. Assholes use this logic all the time.

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joshvm
I'm curious where the costing came from (since $30k barely pays a good
designer for a few months). The reason for asking is that I'm wondering why
the original goal wasn't higher? Is it really that you didn't forsee that
level of support? This is a common reaction from startups that are amazed that
their $10k goal suddenly spiraled into millions. Often the reaction is to add
lots of unrealistic stretch goals which delay the project.

As for most backed, I think relaxing the early bird deals clinched it for a
lot of people (including myself). I have a lot of respect for Kickstarters
that offer a flat pricing for the base product.

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colechristensen
It's a kickstarter goal, it doesn't have to be all of your funding and why not
set the goal low?

Think of it more like a minimum to make the effort worthwhile. If you can get
$30k on kickstarter you can probably get a lot more from other channels.

What value do you get from setting a high goal?

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joshvm
Seems like pretty sound logic.

Though to answer the second question: there are plenty of cases (usually
hardware) where people really underestimate how much things cost to make. I've
lost count of the number of stories where startups said "We messed up our
mold/printer/fab order which cost us $20k to redo, and then we had no money to
make t-shirts".

~~~
fortawesome
Estimation is key on a Kickstarter. We've got a team of 4 of the best
designers and developers I've ever worked with who can deliver beautiful,
usable products on time.

It's the highest compliment I can pay them professionally.

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AndrewOMartin
Either I'm missing something (not uncommon) or, whoever claims this is the
most funded software project seems to believe video games aren't software.

Star Citizen ($2,134,374) and Double Fine Adventure ($3,336,371) leap to mind.

I'm actually very slightly surprised to hear that there's no non-game software
kickstarter that's raised more than $891,989.

~~~
fortawesome
Fair enough! We're going by Kickstarter's definitions:

\- Most funded:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/s...](https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/software?recommended=false&sort=most_funded)

\- Most backed:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/s...](https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/software?recommended=false&sort=most_backed)

I'll link those up in the article. Good point.

~~~
imaginenore
That's just in Tech -> Software category, not all of Kickstarter.

The most funded projects can be found here:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?recommended=fa...](https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?recommended=false&sort=most_funded)

Pebble Time = $20.3M

Coolest Cooler = $13.3M

Pebble 2 = $12.8M

Pebble e-paper = $10.3M

Baubax Travel Jacket = $9.2M

And if you look at the software

\--------------

Shenmue 3 = $6.3M

Bloodstained = $5.5M

Torment = $4.2M

Project Eternity = $4.0M

Mighty No. 9 = $3.8M

Double Fine Adventure = $3.3M

~~~
Zarel
I think you missed the part where they said "most funded software project",
not "most funded project", and that they're using Kickstarter's category's
definition of "software".

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rasz_pl
The best part about webfonts is you can block them, glad they decided to do
SVG.

>900 requests blocked on [https://articles.fortawesome.com/how-font-
awe....](https://articles.fortawesome.com/how-font-awe....). and rising by 1
every second. Quite aggressive font fetching script doesnt seem to get the
hint.

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SippinLean
Glad to see SVG is an option. The icons are great but icon fonts are dead at
my shop (mostly for the reasons Github abandoned them).

~~~
fortawesome
Great that you're excited about the SVGs! We wanted to add more formats so as
many folks as possible could use them. For a lot of folks, icon fonts are the
way to go. But other folks want SVG. We get that, so we're adding them!

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EGreg
I bet they did something besides this. How did they get people to VISIT THEIR
PAGE on kickstarter? Were they featured on KS front page? Featured elsewhere?
How did the word of mouth spread? THAT IS WHAT I WANT TO KNOW

~~~
bxbb
They promote the campaign on their site (
[http://fontawesome.io/](http://fontawesome.io/) ). A lot of people (including
me) already visited the site occasionally to take a quick glance on the
cheatsheet. I think that's probably where the most traffic originated from.

~~~
EGreg
How do you know? Why is their site so heavily trafficked?

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fortawesome
We posted the info he's referencing elsewhere in the thread. We're used on
roughly 1 in every 3 new websites that gets made.

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ggreenbe
So you're like the Wordpress of icons.

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FullyFunctional
Wow, I would have backed this. There's much useful insight in the article I
wish other KS would heed - especially regarding stretch goals; I've seen soo
many KSs derail because they, in desperation, added stretch goals that they
could execute. (But I'm done done done with KS; I've suffered too many burns
and scams).

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lowglow
At the bottom of the kickstarter they have a link to Jellop, they run ad
campaigns to boost kickstarter projects.

This might be the real story, but not sure since there are no metrics on how
much they've helped.

[http://www.jellopcrowdfunding.com/](http://www.jellopcrowdfunding.com/)

~~~
fortawesome
We tried doing some Facebook advertising ourselves, but it didn't go so well.
Jellop has done better, but they're REALLY great for products that have mass
appeal.

With our narrower audience, the Font Awesome website has been the biggest
driver.

~~~
lowglow
Same. We just failed big time on running our own ads for pre-orders for our
product[0] on Facebook.

Our take away was just keep doing what works: Engage with our community and
keep showing proof of progress and milestones met.

So now that we have our first basic lesson down in connecting products to the
right audience, what do you think really activated the majority of purchases?

[0] [https://getasteria.com/](https://getasteria.com/)

~~~
fortawesome
Three things come to mind right away that seems like contributed to folks
pulling the trigger and buying:

1\. Pent up good will from using Font Awesome over the past 4 years.

2\. The product was something folks actually wanted and the price was a great
value.

3\. A video that makes folks laugh. Even if just a bit.

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philfrasty
The video is kinda similiar to the Dollar-Shave-Club commercial ;-)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI)

~~~
fortawesome
Yep, we definitely took inspiration from there!

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intrasight
My understanding is that best-practice now is to use SVG instead of icon
fonts.

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fortawesome
Somewhat surprisingly, I've normally found this view to be more common with US
based folks. I personally prefer icon fonts for a large swath of reasons, but
other folks prefer SVG. So we're making both. :)

~~~
BuuQu9hu
github found that SVG is better:

[https://github.com/blog/2112-delivering-octicons-with-
svg](https://github.com/blog/2112-delivering-octicons-with-svg)

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phaed
You killed VideoPixie. Bad time to be down.

~~~
tomsaffell
Yeah, terrible timing. A CNAME record conflicted with our new SSL cert -
renewing the cert forced us off VIP on to SNI (per GAE's deprecation schedule
for VIP) and the CNAME we had in place for VIP then prevented DNS from
resolving properly - at least that's what I think happened ! (videopixie
engineer :)

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justanton
Can someone pls explain the difference between personal and student licenses?
They're both $20.

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fortawesome
Yeah, it shouldn't be confusing! We extended early backer pricing for the
whole Kickstarter, so the Personal / SMB license would have been $40.

Only difference is who can use the license. Student license is for students
only. But I'm recommending students just get the full Personal / SMB license
since it's more flexible in the end and a better price.

(Non-profits should ABSOLUTELY get the Student / NP license as it's good for
any organization size and just $20).

~~~
cbhl
Students eventually stop being students (i.e. graduate), so doesn't that
conflict with the licenses being perpetual?

~~~
fortawesome
They can always gift it to another student. :)

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ythn
FontAwesome is amazing, so useful

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dangerboysteve
Just got a email from the A5 campaign asking for help to get over the $1M
hump.

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bayesian_horse
Some people think making a font is boring and senseless, but I think it is
character building...

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tzury
How can one wisely use $ 900K to maintain an open source icons rendering in a
font format?

This seems to me as a total waste of money.

Too much money will ruin creativity processes, and so it did in most of the
cases I have observed.

