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Indiegogo is dying and it makes me sad…

(image courtesy of indiegogo.com)

I wanted to continue my sad saga of Indiegogo project failures. We are still sitting at 21% of all technology projects backed fail and disappeared. The support team from Indiegogo says “you understand crowdfunding is a risk, right?” My initial answer to that is no. I started throwing and burning money when I was eight years old and just thought as an adult I would continue to throw money and burn it whenever possible. As the platform, I expect that Indiegogo will do a better job of making sure the right projects are presented.

A friend of mine recently reminded me that I back cutting-edge projects. I do in fact back cutting-edge technologies on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo. I don’t back anything on Indiegogo anymore. At all, ever, I keep my money on the much safer Kickstarter. Yes, Kickstarter projects also fail, but not in an epic way and not in the epic numbers of the Indiegogo failures. Plus you don’t get someone asking you if you understand crowdfunding. They ask you for the project, and they reach out ccing you to that project. I do understand that because I back cutting-edge projects my failure rate is going to be higher than the average crowd-funder. I find 9% at this point to be my Maginot line. Above 9% failed projects is bad. Below 9% failed projects are good. A project that I thought was dead on Kickstarter recently came to life with a post noting that they were planning on shipping soon, two years later than expected but still there That almost drops KS to 6% failure rate.

Failure means:

  • No project communication for more than 12 months

The sad thing is that Indiegogo has deep pockets in its corporate backer (IBM) and still epically fails. I have to say I have talked to a number of other frustrated IG backers and we’ve actually talked about a class action lawsuit. Originally we were just going to sue, but recently it was pointed out that there are a huge number of platform failures and a class-action suit might end up being a better thing. I really loved the concept, idea, and platform so it makes me sad that it comes to this.

It used to matter to me that I was a superbacker on Indiegogo, now I only talk to people about Kickstarter.

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Written by DocAndersen

One fan, One team and a long time dream Go Cubs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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