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Kickstarted

By Nitasha Tiku 1/29 3:30pm

Kickstarted

Screen Shot 2013-01-29 at 3.28.12 PM

Four Kickstarter-Backed Films Sundance Films Have Already Gotten Deals

With one day left in January, there’s still time for the annual media ritual: celebrating Kickstarter’s crowdfunded contributions to world cinema. NPR has already noted that 10 percent of this year’s Sundance selections raised money through Startupland’s answer to Harvey Weinstein. That’s the same percentage of the Sundance slate Kickstarter helped back in 2012.

Last year, Kickstarter sent 19 films to Park City, four of which picked up awards. This year, 17 Kickstarter-backed films made it to Sundance and took home 5 awards. More importantly, you might actually get a chance to see some, since four films already inked deals.  Read More

By Myles Tanzer 10/26/12 4:10pm

Kickstarted

Whoa (Photo: kickstarter.com)

Kickstarter Shows Off Their Beautiful Faces on New Team Page

There are some lookers spread across the board in New York’s tech scene, but no one holds a candle to the collective attractiveness of the Kickstarter team. Seriously, their staff is a little too beautiful, like the shirt folders of the local Abercrombie in our high school days.

Luckily, we can now gaze at them all day long on the site’s new team page. They’ve bucked the trend of posing together like a picture day elementary school class and have instead gone with a looping scrollable video gallery. It’s like taking a ride through Disney World’s Hall of Presidents, as styled by American Apparel. Read More

By Myles Tanzer 10/10/12 5:00pm

Kickstarted

kickstarter-logo

Kickstarter To Open In The U.K. Without Any Help From Amazon

Kickstarter announced today that the U.K. version of its crowdfunding platform would launch on Wednesday, October 31st. A very spooky day for a launch–or perhaps it’s just an excuse to dress up like the king and queen of England? Starting today, starving film students and wacky designers who live overseas can start registering their projects and get them approved, so that they can be ready to launch on the 31st.

To go along with the international expansion, the site also just added a streamlined international shipping option for both US and UK projects. The update makes it clear to international backers when the creator is asking for more money to cover the cost of international shipping. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 9/04/12 7:00pm

Kickstarted

Basically. (Photo: flickr.com/benhusmann

Backers Better Beware: Kickstarter Says No Refunds, No Way

A series of stumbles–dead jellyfish, burned sandals, iffy iPod docks–has Kickstarter backers wondering whether there’s any recourse when they bet on projects that just don’t pan on. Their discontent finally bubbled up to NPR, which politely requested some answers yesterday. And so today, the Kickstarter cofounders–Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler–took to the company blog to clarify a few things, with a post titled “Accountability on Kickstarter.”

That mason jar desk lamp hasn’t show up? The brainwave-scanning iPhone accessory not working quite right? Concerned that brilliant poet has taken off to Tahiti with your donation? Sorry, Charlie. It’s not Kickstarter’s responsibility to make you whole: Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 8/16/12 8:45am

Kickstarted

Cheaper than a vacation!

This Kickstarter Campaign Would Prefer You Not Back Them

The dream of the nineties is alive on Kickstarter! Or one specific dream is, anyway: virtual reality. Think the holodecks from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Oculus Rift is a new gaming headset currently raising money on the crowdfunding platform, and it’s already garnered quite a bit of attention. And how could it not, promising “truly immersive virtual reality”? The excitement is such that its campaign is already overfunded, having raised $1,688,407 to the requested $250,000, and there’s still a big chunk of August left to go.

Don’t pull out your credit card just yet, though. According to Wired, the folks behind the campaign don’t want your money. Not if you’re a consumer, anyway: Read More

By Jessica Roy 11:25am

Kickstarted

(Photo: Kickstarter)

Kickstarter Unveils a Redesign for Project Pages

Kickstarter CEO Perry Chen announced today on the company’s blog that project pages for the crowdfunding site have gotten a major makeover. Now it will be easier to find information about projects like that sketchy open source game console Ouya. Rejoice!

Though we’re no UI experts, Kickstarter’s original project pages could be described as “cluttered” and “confusing” at best. Mr. Chen hopes this redesign will make absorbing information about projects you might want to back much easier. Read More

By Jessica Roy 6/18/12 12:07pm

Kickstarted

(Photo: Kickstarter)

Hugely Successful Elevation Dock Kickstarter Project Apparently Just as Annoying to Use as Regular iPhone Docks [UPDATED]

When the marketing peg for your Kickstarter project is that your product is less annoying to use than its competitor products, you probably want to deliver on that promise. The Portland-based Elevation Dock surpassed its funding goal back in February, raising almost $1.5 million, almost 20 times more than its $75,000 asking goal. The project’s premise was that, unlike other iPhone docks on the market, the Elevation Dock allows your iPhone to be easily lifted from the dock, without all that annoying shaking and yanking characterized by other docks. But according to Droplr cofounder Josh Bryant, the Elevation Dock is just as annoying to use as its competitors. Read More

By Jessica Roy 6/05/12 11:25am

Kickstarted

Ms. Hu (lark.com)

Dismissive VCs Drive Hardware Startups Straight to Kickstarter

Imagine that you invented this really cool wristband alarm clock, and you think it could be a real ‘disruptive’ technology. You spend months mocking up a presentation to give to investors at TechCrunch Disrupt, but on the morning of your demo, rich assholes incapable of summoning empathy shit all over your startup, simply because it’s a hardware idea.

That’s pretty much exactly what happened to Julia Hu, the cofounder of Lark, according to CNN. Napster bad boy Sean Parker literally laughed her off the stage:

Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 5/21/12 7:00am

Kickstarted

remee

Six NYC-Based Kickstarter Products Are Vying to be Sold in Brookstones Nationwide

Betabeat was checking up Remee, the lucid-dreaming sleep mask we profiled earlier this month, when we happened on an intriguing contest. On Friday, Bitbanger Labs, the Brooklyn-based duo behind Remee, closed out their Kickstarter campaign–raising an impressive $572,891 on their goal of a mere $35,000. That’s when we noticed the project page also featured a link to a competition sponsored by Buckyballs and Brookstone, the retailer mostly commonly associated with a free chair massage while you’re waiting for your mom in a mall.  Read More