Kickstarter now lets you pledge after a campaign closes | TechCrunch
“Late Pledge” allows campaign creators to continue collecting money even after the campaign has closed.
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
“Late Pledge” allows campaign creators to continue collecting money even after the campaign has closed.
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Once a Kickstarter campaign is complete, you need to turn to a creator’s own page to pre-order the products — that is, until now. Today, Kickstarter announces that it is (finally!) including pre-order functionality once the campaign is over as part of its core platform. It calls the feature “Late pledges,” and the platform says it’s planning to make it available to all creators ‘soon.’ Those following the industry will probably meet the announcement with an eyeroll and a ‘welcome to the club,’ as Indiegogo launched its equivalent – InDemand – almost a decade ago.
Late to the party-ness aside, since its inception in 2009, Kickstarter has been a trailblazer in the crowdfunding space. The introduction of Late Pledges is a welcome addition to its support of creative individuals. The feature only opens up new avenues for backers who missed the initial campaign but also simplifies the process of post-campaign contributions, making it a win-win for all parties involved – not least Kickstarter, who until this point has seen post-campaign pre-sales go off-site, which means the platform wasn’t able to skim its usual 5% platform fee off the top. Which, of course, it will do for Late Pledges as well.
Bit of a no-brainer, really.
Once a project is successfully funded, creators can activate Late Pledges from their dashboard. This adds a dedicated ‘Late Pledges’ section to their project page, where new backers can choose rewards and pledge their support at their convenience, just like in the initial campaign phase. A spokesperson for Kickstarter assures us that Late Pledges is seamlessly integrated within the Kickstarter platform, ensuring a smooth and efficient experience for all users.
For founders, Late Pledges makes a lot of sense. A product’s Kickstarter page often has an enormous amount of Google clout, and will frequently show up in the top search results. Driving people towards spending money is an obvious next step. That makes Late Pledges an excellent way to leverage the momentum from successful campaigns. Potential backers discovering the project later can still participate and secure their desired rewards without waiting for a separate pre-order campaign. Creators can also offer exclusive rewards or limited-time incentives to attract additional support, maintaining excitement and visibility of their projects.
It’s not all rainbows and unicorns, however: Crowdfunding campaigns can be excruciatingly hard to deliver in some cases, and there’s often a post-campaign period where the real gets really real, and manufacturing and design challenges start showing up. Continuing to take pre-orders at that stage could represent a risk: managing an increased volume of backers, fulfilling rewards, and potentially affecting the initial urgency that drives many crowdfunding campaigns. Additionally, creators may need to carefully consider the timing and duration of the Late Pledges period to avoid diluting the impact of their initial campaign.
Despite potential challenges, Late Pledges offers substantial benefits to Kickstarter creators. Backers gain more flexibility and the opportunity to support projects they might have missed initially. It’s also easy to imagine a world where the feature could contribute to a more sustainable crowdfunding environment by allowing projects to generate ongoing support.
It’ll be interesting to see where Kickstarter takes the feature going forward – it’s easy to imagine the platform introducing enhancements like time-limited pledge windows or integration with other platform features to boost project visibility and success. The evolution of this feature could lead to broader changes in Kickstarter’s strategy, emphasizing long-term creator-backer relationships and expanding support tools for creators.
If you want to see what it looks like, Kickstarter has enabled the functionality on the recently-completed Master of Realms campaign.
Troy Sheets began making music at 15 years old in his home studio with a keyboard synthesizer, drum machine and four-track cassette recorder — an impressive setup for a high school sophomore. However, it’s rare for young, up-and-coming musicians to have access to advanced equipment (other than a free app on their phone). And most adolescents can’t afford it. Plus, for someone starting out, a synthesizer can be confusing to use.
That’s why Sheets decided to develop the $199 Blipblox, an affordable kid-friendly synthesizer designed for ages 3 and up.
“I thought that there’s an opportunity to create a toy-like device that was simplified so more people could have fun using these tools that had previously been reserved for professional musicians because of their cost and complexity,” Sheets told TechCrunch.
Now, Playtime Engineering — Blipblox’s parent company — is ready to release its latest product. Called MyTracks, the new “toy-like instrument” (as the company calls it) is essentially a groovebox or electronic music production device fully decked out with a drum machine, synthesizer, built-in microphone for audio sampling and sequencer, all in one device. With its chunky control knobs and levers and an easy-to-use randomize feature, MyTracks aims to encourage music exploration and simplify beatmaking for kids. The company announced Tuesday that its Kickstarter campaign for MyTracks will open on April 9 with an expected price of $249 to $299 for backers, and the first round of products is anticipated in November. The expected retail price is $349.
The product is designed first and foremost to be kid-friendly. According to the company, all Blipblox devices underwent “rigorous” testing to ensure they are BPA-free and comply with toy safety standards. To avoid choking hazards, the plastic knobs are locked into the device so kids can’t remove them. Additionally, the batteries are secured inside a screw-down compartment.
The company says its products are the only synthesizers on the market fully certified to international child safety standards.
In terms of its design, the flashy lights and colorful buttons are meant to appeal to kids. Sheets adds that the levers are one of the most popular features since it feels like a “spaceship control panel.”
But Blipblox wants adult musicians to take it seriously as well.
“These are real musical instruments, and not just ones that look like a [toy] guitar that you press a button and it plays the same sound every time. It really does engage adults the same way that it engages kids,” says co-founder Kate Sheets.
The layout of the MyTracks machine resembles a traditional groovebox or MPC (music production center) with two effects (FX) processors, five tracks, 25 pads and over 50 acoustic, electronic and percussive instrument sounds. In addition, it has the ability to layer, record and save songs.
On the back of the MyTracks device there’s a MIDI output so professional musicians wanting to play around with a fun new toy can use it in the studio with their other gear. It also includes a stereo audio output and a USB-C for adding more tracks. Future updates will include more sound packs to provide new music styles like classical, hip-hop and EDM.
More than $300 is indeed a steep price tag for a children’s toy, and not many parents are willing to cough up that much cash. However, the company argues that it can be a great tool for children to learn how to create music, manipulate sounds and experiment. Blipblox has even been used by music teachers, including helping special-needs kids express their creativity in a non-verbal way.
“[Blipblox devices] are adjustable, so you can adjust [the volume] for different sensitivities. So, neurodiverse students have really enjoyed using our products,” Kate Sheets tells us.
The company previously won the SBO (School Band and Orchestra) Best Teaching Tool for preschool students.
“We got a lot of weird looks from parents,” Kate Sheets says, describing how people reacted to the first Blipblox synthesizer in 2018. “The music device industry looked at us and thought we were a toy, and the toy industry looked at us and thought, ‘We don’t even know what that is.’ We sort of straddled both markets for a while. And now, all these years later, we’re seeing that there really is a market for our type of products.”
Despite the initial reactions, Blipblox has managed to sell 15,000 products and raised more than $300,000 in crowdfunding to date.
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