KickStarter is a site where artists, musicians, etc can post their project ideas and ask for funding from fans. if they hit their funding targets, the contributors get billed and usually get some exclusive or premium access to the item being created. There are a number of stories of independent musicians getting a few thousand dollars needed to record albums, and scaled levels of rewards for contributors based on how much they gave.
It made me wonder if something like that would work for developers? It could provide some level of financial security during development, almost like micro-funding for micro-ISVs, and also some level of validation of your idea. Not sure if offering the end result exclusively to those contributing would work (maybe it would work for libraries and components, saving 10 people from writing a Delphi wrapper for the Facebook API, for example) but perhaps a premium-version for founding members, or a percentage of sales?
Does this exist somewhere?
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This guy is doing something like that. I’m not sure if it’s just him or if he’s set up the system so that other developers can participate.
http://www.donationcoder.com/Donate/Credits.php
His software is quite good though.
Don’t know, but funding is hard. When I left my regular job to start my own company last winter I chose to trade the stock market to finance development as well as contract jobs rather than put myself in hock to the banks or give ownership to a VC. Perhaps a larger group of small investors would have been more acceptable to me. Anyone who has dealt with banks or VCs knows they’re a constant source of stress. My route has gone okay, but I’ve had to put far too much effort into those efforts to pay the bills and it’s slowed development on my own goals down far more than I had hoped. All a big balancing act I suppose. In any case, I wouldn’t give up the last year I’ve had at home with my wife and two little ones for anything. 🙂