> we have been spending the majority of our engineering resources the past 8 months building a “secret project”.... Additionally, we already have much of this built: a polished native iOS app, a robust technical infrastructure currently capable of handing ~200MM API calls per day with no code changes, and a developer-facing API provisioning, documentation and analytics system. This isn’t vaporware.
So basically... it's already built.
> To manifest this grand vision, we are officially launching a Kickstarter-esque campaign. We will only accept money for this financially sustainable, ad-free service if we hit what I believe is critical mass. I am defining minimum critical mass as $500,000, which is roughly equivalent to ~10,000 backers.
Oh that's interesting. The grand vision will not manifest until $500k is raised. But isn't the product already basically finished?
So what happens if they don't raise $500k? Do they kill the product and flush 8 months of hard work (and presumably a bunch of money) down the drain? Doubt it. That doesn't make any sense.
Crowd-sourcing has recently become a way to get free publicity and money, even if something is already built. For example, Roll20.net launched a Kickstarter campaign [1] with a tiny limit ($5,000) to build an online tabletop RPG. It became quite popular, earning something like $40,000 by the time the Kickstarter was over.
Here's the kicker: their Kickstarter video had an already-working demo! They launched the closed-to-backers beta within weeks of the Kickstarter funding closing, and opened it up to everybody within a few more weeks. They already had a working product, they simply used Kickstarter as an advertising platform that cost them NEGATIVE $39,651 and got them hundreds of loyal fans and evangelists (their backers) and millions of eyeballs (through the media covering their ~8x funding).
I don't understand why people are so quick to cast aspersions.
It's not "fishy". It's a huge undertaking. Regardless of how much they've built, there's no way the product is "already basically finished" (as if one could know that), it almost certainly will need work to accommodate the change in focus, and technology is not the hardest part of the challenge anyway.
The thought that went through my mind when I saw the number is that $500K is awfully low, given the scale of what he's talking about. But then I read more and it's clear that he proposes that number as a sort of idea validation. One can argue for or against that but you have no cause to impugn his honesty.
I don't fully get the idea yet; "API-oriented Twitter" only gets me so far. But this:
fired me up so much about this proposed service that I have had trouble sleeping
The purpose is not to raise $500k, but to have around 10k committed users - committed enough that they paid and will likely contribute content. This is what they feel they need to get off the ground.
So nothing is fishy. It's quite clever actually. They can almost guarantee that they will have a nice launch if the strategy works.
So basically... it's already built.
> To manifest this grand vision, we are officially launching a Kickstarter-esque campaign. We will only accept money for this financially sustainable, ad-free service if we hit what I believe is critical mass. I am defining minimum critical mass as $500,000, which is roughly equivalent to ~10,000 backers.
Oh that's interesting. The grand vision will not manifest until $500k is raised. But isn't the product already basically finished?
So what happens if they don't raise $500k? Do they kill the product and flush 8 months of hard work (and presumably a bunch of money) down the drain? Doubt it. That doesn't make any sense.
Something is fishy here.