Crowdfunding site Kickstarter, which has almost become the ‘Kleenex’ of the crowd-sourced funding world in terms of brand recognition, today unveiled two changes to its business model (via The Verge) that will have a huge impact on non-equity crowdfunding in general and on its main rival Indiegogo. Basically, Kickstarter is simplifying its rules and relaxing the barriers for entry, even introducing a “Launch Now” feature that allows project creators to bypass the network’s approval process entirely.
That means that what you see on Kickstarter is no longer necessarily vetted for feasibility or content standards – which means fewer guarantees that hardware projects, which typically have a low incidence of success anyway, will ever make it to market. But Kickstarter appears to have decided to stop fighting the tide and go with the flow; now it can unapologetically embrace its role as a community-driven mechanism for investing in ideas, instead of even pretending in any way to be a pre-order store for devices.
Kickstarter has also trimmed its rules for creators document, cutting it by over two-thirds from 1,000 words down to 300, and previously banned campaign types including bath and beauty projects, as well as multiple reward items for hardware projects are now allowed. Non-developers can offer app projects, too, though charities, GMOs and photo-style renderings that might mislead people into believing a graphic is a photo are still off-limits, the Verge reports.