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After seeing how well Diaspora did in raising funding I've been thinking (as others have I'm sure) of trying to use Kickstarter for some initial financing.

In my case it would be enough money so that I could work solely on my product for 2-3 months without worrying about paying our bills. The trick comes in this:

  1. You cannot use Kickstarter to sell shares of a company - donations only
  2. Are people going to be as willing to donate to a closed source product (which will be free to use and available online)
  3. What benefits should one give to people who donate for such a product? (if I do decide to do this then it wouldtake some brainstorming to come up with some good benefits related to the product)
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Diaspora was successful because of insanely positive coverage in The New York Times, not because they happened to use kickstarter as a mechanism for raising funds. Don't assume that you can replicate that experience.

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That's definitely true, just curious what other startup people think of using Kickstarter as it isn't a traditional means of funding. – Warner Onstine Jun 10 '10 at 4:57
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I have a project currently on Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pepwuper/the-giant-of-the-river-thames-little-megans-giant). It seems to me that, to be successfully funded on Kickstarter, you'll need to have the ability to market your project and utilize your network. Most successful projects are started by people with large networks/fans/followers that they can tap into. Simply having your project up on Kickstarter is not going to get you the funding you need. There will be some traffic from Kickstarter to your project page, but the majority of your backers will be from your network.

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