Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Why Kickstarter is one of my favorite startups

Since crowd funding site Kickstarter launched about three years ago we have been able to follow the explosion of successful projects raising unheard of amounts of money without VC or angel involvement.

As an entrepreneur I find the Kickstarter success especially interesting, and probably in a way you had not thought or heard of.

If you read this great Wired Magazine background on Kickstarter and its founders, or the GigaOM interview with Kickstarter founder Perry Chen, you might find the answer, hidden in the text, barely mentioned.

One of my favourite aspects of Kickstarter is that the founders were non-developers. They didn't have a great idea and on a Sunday afternoon, singlehandedly created Facebook like Mark Zuckerberg did.

The guys behind Kickstarter fleshed out their idea over the years and then (I know it sounds incredible) hired developers to put their ideas onto the web.

Of course there are many other successful businesses with non-developer founders, but the myth of the lone developer creating coding wonders and by the end of the day having 200M users and money raining down from the sky, is quite prevalent today and has been for a long time.

Kickstarter is evidence that not only good, but great, startups can come from non-developer founders too.

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