Social: Crowdsourcing/Fundraising For Small Projects on Kickstarters Is Helped By Famous Folks

You might think that just because the new Veronica Mars movie raised $5.7 million on Kickstarter, it sucked up all the air on the room from other projects.  However, VM backers were mostly new to the crowdsourcing and went to to support other projects to the tune of $400,000 (Economist).

In fact, I think this is just the beginning for all concerned.  Consider the era of $150 to $200 million mega-budget movies that Hollywood tends to put out, $5.7 million isn't all that much.  It's likely a standalone Veronica Mars movie would probably cost around $50 million if the studio wanted to do it.  

Back in 2005, Serenity cost $39 million to make.  How much would it have raised on Kickstarter?  

The thing is we're still at a pretty early stage of Kickstarter-like projects and only a very small percentage of likely supporters are involved.  Probably only a few thousands people at most.  When tens if not hundreds of millions of people become comfortable with this format and supporting projects or enterprises they like, it could have a real change on real economic terms for many industries.

So, right now, I'm okay with famous rich people asking the crowd for money.  They have just as much right to do that as a couple working on a cool project in their garage looking for some seed money to take off.  

On a couple of years, five years, or ten years, who knows?  There could be studios or companies that are formed around crowd sourcing to produce their goods or media.