The Story of 2 $1 Million Projects in 24 Hours

Hi HN, Casey from the Elevation Dock project.<p>People use the term disruption pretty loosely, I think crowd-funding is really doing it. Goodbye middlemen, sayonara to the massive traditional barriers to entry. Hello bootstrapped projects like this that would otherwise never see the light of day.

This is really starting to show the potential of Kickstarter.<p>So many of the successful Kickstarter projects have been unknowns. Just really smart and driven people with a dream.<p>If established companies can bypass publishers and investors by promising to sell a product directly to the consumer then we have a whole new ballgame here.<p>Double Fine has successfully funded a game where the only promise is that they will release it. That's it. No percentage of revenue to the publisher. The publisher can't demand they add DRM, etc. Their only obligation is to do what they do best because they are only answering to someone who wants a great game, not a return on their investment.<p>This is big.

One has to wonder though, if you priced out your Kickstarter project because you wanted to make one for yourself and well if you could get 100 other people to kick in you would be able to get the better price on parts, and then 10,000 people kick in and now you're looking at something which was 'spend the weekend building up a hundred or so foo-widgets' becomes 'spend the next six months building 10 thousand foo-widgets' that has to suck.

So if Blizzard does a Kickstarter and raises $10M in pre-sales for a new game, is that within the mission of the site? I was under the impression that it was a site for projects by people who otherwise wouldn't be able to fund them. This seems to be pushing that boundary.

Congrats to Kickstarter!! This is the type of win-win startup I want to create/work at. Gives a simple example of pg's essay about wealth not being a fixed cake to share but that it can be created (<a href="http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html</a>).<p>Two things that piqued my interest:<p>1) They kept saying that they were refreshing the project page to say when it'll hit 1M. Surely a company like Kickstarter has created visualization tools that create nice, real-time graphs of selected projects. No?<p>2) "After not having a single million dollar project in Kickstarter's first two-plus years, there are suddenly two within four hours of each other." Call it black swan, non-normality, heavy tail, whatever, this shows how common (and lumped) rare events are.

Is the money raised through Kickstarter seen as income, and therefore, taxable (meaning that 20-30% of the final amount raised is lopped off)?

I think Kickstarter is the most interesting thing happening on the net today. Simply because it aggregates the most interesting things happening in the real world, by its very nature. Browsing Kickstarter has actually become a fun activity for me.<p>It's such a simple and genius way of directly connecting producers and consumers, reducing risk for both parties, verifying ideas, creating relationships. So elegant. The number of opportunities this is going to enable is staggering. And Kickstarter themselves, do they have any overhead? These guys are going to be printing money.<p>And being a patron is fun!<p>One thing I'm curious about is Kickstarter's exposure to someone who fails to produce the promised rewards for funding. As a funder/patron, do I have any recourse for a producer failing to uphold their end of the bargain?

I love how enthusiastic the Kickstarter team looks in those photos - it's awesome for them to be able to share in the success of the projects on their platform.<p>I'm looking forward to seeing how it grows and what other projects crop up now that people have seen this incredible milestone passed.

This is really inspiring to see.<p>I give my respect, admiration, to the empowerment Kickstarter is enabling in the world. People say they do crap like empowerment all the time.. Kickstarter seems to say very little themselves, all I hear is the success stories.<p>It's a delightfully simple concept: Put a great idea out there and let it be loved and supported.<p>Ideas that wouldn't have seen the light of day are, fuelled by early adopters and pioneers.<p>Being on the web for almost 2 decades makes everything look the same, or at least kind of blur together over time.<p>For me, with information and innovation; since Gutenberg, the web really was the second big thing.<p>Maybe enablers like Kickstarter are part of the third leap for our world where they are creating change in the real world from innovation.<p>I've rarely seen something successful on Kickstarter I didn't want to buy. Normally I can't decide as quickly on items in the retail market that compete with it.<p>The continued popping up of Kickstarter stories and dreams becoming a reality have made me think about all those things I wondered about.<p>Could they become a reality? Where could I start learning about how to kickstart something successfully? (I Might be a search or two away but the feeling of possibility is great.)

This must be the epitome of feel-good startup stories. Congrats to everyone involved!

Congratulations to all concerned. I think the Kickstarter model is really powerful, and it's exciting to see that these projects have got off the ground, but - without wanting to be party pooper - what happens if a fundraiser can't deliver?<p>It seems that Kickstarter have an incentive to raise as much money as possible. After all, they take their 5% - so as a company they've taken over $100,000 in the last 24 hours from two projects alone. Spending a vast amount of money without the necessary battle-scars and bruises gained from experience, is likely to involve a steep learning curve.<p>Bringing a product to market isn't easy. The fundraisers in question are in a unique position, because they have their buyers' attention and money from the start. This has to be a great thing, and to large extent levels the playing field and creates a great environment for innovation .. BUT, the hard work has just begun.<p>I can't help feeling that this model of funding is about to gain even more popularity - but could eventually open up a can of worms.

KickStarter is one of the very few businesses that's truly innovating / disrupting anything right now.<p>Then Stripe.<p>Then CloudFlare (I really like their story and pivot).

For Kickstarter, business model... Validated! Great job guys congrats! What a great story of someone not playing the startup lottery and winning.

Kickstarter continues to prove that good ideas spread quickly. Where websites show viral growth in user visits, kickstart shows it with real dollars for real products. Very inspiring. Thanks for sharing this post- it lets the community get an insider view of the excitement.

This is going to put Kickstarter well and truly in the public eye and, as a result, bring many more potential wallets browsing the site. Great time to be an entrepreneurial industrial designer in the US.<p>Just wish it was open to those outside the US as well.

Every startup should be like a Kickstarter project. Show your concept, find customers who pre-purchase, build product, deliver and scale.<p>Grow organically.

Why din't Raspberry Pi use Kickstarter?

Why is Ron Gilbert nowhere to find in the celebration photo? Is he really that grumpy &#38; shy?