Entrepreneurship and Innovation Subject Q1) Do You

Entrepreneurship and Innovation Subject Q1) Do you think kickstarter is a viable alternative to raising equity funding or debt financing? If so under what circumstances? The growing popularity of the Internet has spawned crowdsourcing as new model of fund raising, pioneering by www.kickstarter.com. This innovative model is a distributed problem-solving and production model helping entrepreneurs and investors to launch a new product to the market place. From the novelty point-of-view, it is fast becoming a viable alternative to traditional funding models like equity or the debt route.

Typically, crowdsourcing for financing is familiar as crowdfunding. Under this model, an innovator makes publicity of his funding requirements through the Internet to individual investors. The individual investors offer financial contribution which are thereafter consolidated by the platform and handed over to the project owner. (Jennifer, 2012) By far, it has become a viable alternative due to the following circumstances (i) Kickstarter provide a standardised format for entrepreneurs to publicise their project in a wide-ranging manner over the internet.

(ii) They permit for small financial transactions to allow broad participation with restricted downside risk. Since Kickstarter permits innovators to source finance from a vast majority of the population, each individual investor is able to contribute according to their wish. (iii) They deliver information regarding investment as also tools for investors to link up with each other. It is seen that popular projects normally reach funding needs in a faster way and are comparatively more popular.

As a matter of fact, during 2012, the total amount of contributions raised by Kickstarter crossed the annual funding granted by National Endowment for the Arts. (Jennifer, 2012) 2. Kickstarter is not the first crowdfunding platform, yet it is the most successful. List five reasons that you believe account for Kickstarter's success: (i) Kickstarter is one of the most popular crowdfunding services which is a website for creative projects wherein more than 26,000 projects have been funded with an investment of $242 million.

It has funded a broad array of start-ups ranging from films, music, comics and video games. (ii) Kickstart does a background check to ensure that 80% of the projects that are able to pass the 20% funding part are able to attain their goal. (iii) The commonalties between successful Kickstarter projects are basic sales and marketing tenants' along with a video although optional, helps it to outreach for maximum exposure.

(iv) Audience mobilization is done as a prelude through Facebook and Twitter and other social media apps for audience mobilization as a 360 degree tool (Horse Power Marketing. (2012) (v) The primary factor contributing to the success of Kickstarter is its fairness and transparency model which is based on the principle that a good idea when communicated well is able to spread fast and will have a wider reach. Besides, a large group of people can be a remarkable source of money as well as encouragement as well. 3.

The city of Portland, Oregon, recently set up an official curate page at Kickstarter. (www.kickstarter.com/pages/portland). Is this a model for other cities to follow? Is it a potentially effective way for cities to go about promoting their Kickstarter pages? The Portland-based projects titled "Portland lives green" is a theme-based city project concentrating on greener ways to live. It can definitely be a model for other cities to emulate the green brigade considering the growing concern about environmental problems and awareness needed to promote across various cities.

Especially, cities where pollution levels are high can have their own pages for promotion of environmental issues and possible city-specific solutions for alleviation. The pages also contain other informative projects like the iPhone Dock and Sound Amplifier which is an iPhone and iPod docking station having a space for a planter and natural acoustic amplifying design with is a very innovative project in itself considering that one can amplify his music with a planter box which can serve also as an iPod dock while producing oxygen.

(Kickstarter.com, 2012) 4.To what degree do you believe Kickstarter itself is a successful start-up? (i) If numbers are any indication, till the year 2011, Kickstarter has touched the 10,000 mark in terms of projects which is an achievement in itself on the crowdsourcing arena. It has funded an identical number of projects during June as they.