We've been talking about crowdfunding $1-200,000 from a Kickstarter campaign. I've just been a bit concerned that we're talking about it like it is a foregone conclusion. So let's tease it out a bit before we head too far down the track.

In a similar league:
Hypothes.is recently raised $100,000 from 800 pledgers late last year: http://kck.st/nbvi0G
Diaspora raised $200,000 from 6400 pledgers 2 years ago when crowdfunding was new: http://kck.st/9QC2zk

Pros:
- could bring in a great deal of users, regardless of whether we make the target
- force us to get our messaging polished
- force us to set a launch date
- crowd-funding is in keeping with our bottum-up kaupapa

Cons:
- ~50% success rate
- 8-10% in fees (i.e. up to $20k)
- I'm concerned that the time and effort is a risky expense on an 'all or nothing' kind of gambit.
- Directing existing users to donate to the campaign may be off-putting (e.g. would WCC put money into Kickstarter?)
- all-or-nothing is not in keeping with our iteration kaupapa

Main learnings for me from our PledgeMe campaign:
- Good exposure
- Didn't really care about the money once it came in
- Took a lot of work to pull together

What are other pros and cons?

I think the main pro is that running a Kickstarter would give us impetus to start really pushing Loomio internationally, in terms of media and reaching out to potential funders there. In theory we could do this anyway (regardless of whether we run a Kickstarter campaign), but the PledgeMe taught us that it's a good way to ramp up the energy and enthusiasm.

The main con is that running a >100K is a pretty huge gamble, and we may not be ready to take it.

A few things I think could help inform our decision: Has any project not based in the US ever raised that much? Has any project been funded that much in the last couple of months?

One worry I have is that Diaspora was riding the buzz of crowdfunding bursting onto the scene, and that Hypothes.is was riding the buzz of Occupy. Things have calmed down a bit now on a few fronts, and I wonder if that may have taken some wind out of Kickstarter's sails.

I think the other BIG question is what we focus on in place of Kickstarter if we decide not to go ahead. Rich, any suggestions?

What does everyone think?

Just throwing it out there - IndieGoGo is not all or nothing (you get the money even if you don't reach your goal), is more international, and charges less in fees. The downside being they are less well known. On kickstarter, your first 30% or so probably needs to come from your own contacts/networks, but once you hit that threshold, you're likely to get a lot of attention from the general kickstarter community. On IndieGoGo, we'd be more reliant on our own networks for the whole thing.

Yet another option is to go for a much lower goal on kickstarter, say $30 or something. We would still get the benefits of a deadline, forcing us to get our message out there, an impetus for going international, etc, but there would be a lower risk of falling short. Of course, we might be underselling ourselves or not communicating how huge we think this could be, but at the same time, a kickstarter campaign can be funded beyond its goal amount if it goes viral, so no one who wants to give money will be stopped from doing so after we hit the goal. However, it's the same amount fo work (a lot) regardless of the goal we set, so one mode of thinking might be "go big" instead of play it safe...

My gut feeling is to go for a low kickstarter mostly as a promotional piece of around 10k - if it goes big then that's a huge bonus but planning for it to go big feels very risky to me.

Seems fairly likely we're going to nail some decent contracts in the near future, which could fund the core app development. Then we can look at using Kickstarter as a promo piece to develop specific features, e.g. '$10k to build the Facebook app' or whatever.

I don't think we Can make this decision outside the context of a whole plan.
Right now all the pieces of the plan are emerging, we are seeing them and also feeling the pressure. Some of the pieces I am seeing are:
Capital for staffing to complete alpha phase and fund launch to cash break even,
Capital for user sign up promo and guide
Capital for marketing.
Capital for patents, licenses and trademarking, probably another 10,000
We estimated this at $10,000 per month for 3 months then I think it is more like double that as more of us need to be paid more.
We need to clarify and confirm these numbers, project our pricing structure into a business model and look at projected returns and then consider all the ways we might raise those funds. Richard is right, Kickstarter is just one option and probably we can't decide unless we consider the other options and which is most likely to work when.
Today I had a email from Gorw Wellington who had been asked to connect with us by WRC. They described us as an innovative startup with huge growth potential. I will set up a meeting and talk about capital.
We also need to discuss social lending. This conversation is not unlrelated to legal structure either. For example if we are a cooperative we can raise loans from members without a prospectus and other legal requirements if we are a company. One the other hand if we are a company we can sell a percentage of shares...., the big issue is how much we capital we need
The next is the options to raise it
And finally of the options if one of them is crowd sourcing which crowd sourcing option and why.
Thanks for your question Richard, it made me realize we can't really answer it well without these other questions also answered.