

Ask HN : How about the time version of Kickstarter? - gamebit07

We have always been told&#x2F;taught - &quot;Time is Money&quot;. 
What happens at kickstarter is someone donates money for a cause.<p>How about replacing money with time?<p>This just hit me, not sure if I am making sense, or if it is too vague.  
Just want to know what people think of it here.<p>Maybe something meaningful comes out of the group mulling here.<p>Throwing it out for discussion.
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MichaelAza
I think I see what you're getting at here - people donate their time and skill
to a certain project and in exchange get the same kind of perks you can get
from a Kickstarter campaign. Instead of crowdfunding it becomes crowdbuilding.
Open source development for the masses.

I like this idea. I could get behind this sort of project.

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xauronx
It's a novel idea, and you could almost say that's what GitHub (or open source
in general). People donate their time and efforts, and in return they get to
partake in the finished product. I'm not sure how well I see this working
outside of the software world.

I suppose people could do copywriting, legal, financial, art, design, etc etc
for a project. But then you have to differentiate who's actually contributing
meaningful results, who's just wasting time, who's causing more harm than
good, etc etc.

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FailedGarage
>you could almost say that's what GitHub (or open source in general)

Yes, but that's only for developers (or, in some cases, designers). With OP's
idea, it could be anybody... music composers, film editors, developers,
historical experts, etc.

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wikwocket
It's an interesting idea, a way for people to seek out volunteers instead of
financial backers.

However I don't think it could ride the same wave of popularity that
Kickstarter has. KS works as well as it does because there are many thousands
of people who browse it like a store, who are willing to drop $5-$100 on a
project, to get some rewards or at least warm fuzzies. In other words they
have gamified the pledging system, so that financial support happens as a
byproduct of people 'upvoting' cool projects they like.

I don't know if this would work for volunteering, because it's a lot harder to
make good on a commitment to volunteer than it is to authorize Amazon to
charge you $20 a month from now. You also would not get as many casual
backers, the kind who treat KS as a store, who want something out of a
project, and are not backing projects just to support them.

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sharemywin
My problem is a lot of things take money too. For things like hosting, or
transportation etc. Would you make so X number of hours need to be dontated
for it kick in? How do you keep people to their word?

