How Font Awesome 5 Became Kickstarter’s Most Funded Software Project | Hacker News Reader

How Font Awesome 5 Became Kickstarter’s Most Funded Software Project

articles.fortawesome.com

315 pointsfortawesome129 comments

Honestly I've gotten so much value from Font Awesome over the years that it was great to finally support the project – I have a feeling others felt the same way.

Really appreciate the kind words!

Yep. I was really excited to see I could still get into the early backer Pro reward.

A little bit annoyed about the theme license price ($600!) but I guess I can buy that if it ever gets to that.

I am sure a very small price to pay if you are making money off Font Awesome.

Same. Backing the pro-version was a no-brainer given how much I've used the icons in the past. It's such a good product I want to give them money even if it was free.

I love this. This drives me to do my own thing - a small thing - but I know that if I build it for the right people, some of those people will feel compelled to give me money for it.

Not all, I know, I know, but some. Some is enough. Some is marvellous. Some might be all I need to quit my regular day job, which is all I want.

Yup felt the same and can't wait to get a whole bunch of new icons to use in my project.

Exactly. For 20 bucks I get to support them for their awesome font work, plus get some extra perks (which I already forgot what were).

same, backed the project as well.

My thoughts exactly! I just made my pledge, with the hope that they'll clear the $1M stretch goal.

$953,404. It looks like they will. I kicked in $20 because how could I not.

Ditto. Plus the video was adorable.

Font Awesome was already well known to developers and designers before Kickstarting, so it's no surprise its campaign is a success. If Bootstrap made a crowd funding campaign for instance, it would be as the same level if not more as Font Awesome. Obviously one wants to launch a campaign when a project has some big momentum, not when it's declining.

Already well known and they're able to push people to the Kickstarter from their site: http://fontawesome.io/cheatsheet/

That's another one of the big things. We didn't talk about this one specifically, as it's not as common for folks to have. 1.5M uniques a month has come in handy, that's for sure.

Hey folks! I'd love to answer any questions folks might have about running the Kickstarter or Font Awesome in general!

-Dave Gandy

Did you see https://github.com/crocodilejs/font-awesome-assets? Not sure if we are OK to have the icons there - the licensing is confusing - we're not really distributing them.

Those icons are Font Awesome 4.7, which is completely open source so you can do almost whatever you want with them.

Font Awesome 5 will have a Free and Pro version. The Free version will be completely open source and you can use it however you like. The Pro version will have 2500-ish more icons and an SVG framework. Pro is the only one to worry about for distribution. :)

Can you email me? niftylettuce@gmail.com <3333 keep up the kick ass work. I'm launching a crowdfunding campaign of my own thanks to your inspiration.

Done!

Is it accurate that if you're using Font Awesome 5 Pro in an open source project you can't include the icons in the repository?

Correct. It's not okay to distribute commercial software to folks who have not paid. But Font Awesome Free is completely okay to include in the repo, as it is open source software.

That said, we're letting open source projects use Font Awesome Pro CDN for free so this is hopefully mitigated. We want folks to use Font Awesome Pro, just don't want it distributed. :)

That definitely makes sense :)

And the CDN at least helps mitigate any deployment issues with not being able to keep the images in the repo.

This is great news; when I emailed you guys, you said "For open source projects, we’re working something out" but I didn't know what.

I backed Font Awesome Pro but I was afraid I'd only ever be able to use the Free version since all my projects are open-source.

My only concern left is for offline apps (like NW.js apps). I can make do with Font Awesome Free's icon set, but it'd be nice to have those SVG icons...

Isn't the whole point of a CDN to distribute things?

Distribution is the means; the end is to load assets faster.

How much did making the video cost?

When I first saw it I thought that commercial itself must've cost around the ballpark of the amount you were trying to raise (30k) and can't possibly be worth it. But turns out it was a brilliant move!

I'm curious about this too.

Also, how many nights of shooting in the bakery were required?

Just one night at the bakery from 6am to 6pm. There were a couple of shots they needed to get later, but it wasn't much at all. I think the intro and final scenes in the office were shot a couple of days later.

It says it in the article: So we did some research into how much a great Kickstarter video should cost (i.e. Googled “how much does a kickstarter video cost”). To work with a fantastic production company and get the quality we wanted was going to run somewhere around $15k. This sounded like a lot to spend on a video, but we were pretty sure we’d be able to make back our investment.

It also talks about the company that produced it.

So first, we got an absolute steal for what we paid for Knox Avenue (http://www.knox-avenue.com). For something similar from Sandwich Video, prices _start_ at $250k. We paid 1/10 that. But again, we got an absolute steal. Knox isn't as famous as they deserve yet. They're ridiculously talented.

Edit: fixed URL

*(http://www.knox-avenue.com/) << working link

Oh man. Thanks.

Wait so you paid around 25k in hopes of raising 35k, were you expecting to raise significantly more?

edit: apparently they paid 15k in hopes of raising 30k, which is still a lot.

$30,000 was the minimum for them to cash in on the kickstarter. They were planning to get a whole lot more money. That video probably more than paid for itself in bringing the project more exposure.

Admittedly, we've been a bit light on specifics for price. But that's only because I'm worried it will undervalue Knox Avenue. Those folks can get by with charging a LOT more than they charged us.

Sandwich Video (a much bigger name in this space) starts at $250k for a video. And if you have the budget, they're worth it. Knox Avenue is ridiculously awesome and we were excited to be able to still afford them!

Thanks for the reply. Great product and you deserve your pay day. So good job! And as I said can't wait for the release. Going to be a lot of icons that will be put to good use by millions of sites. All the best! Maybe throw a bit of that scratch at the company that made the video. I think that helped you guys out quite a bit.

Hey David,

Would you consider open-sourcing the JavaScript component apps if the $1 mil stretch goal isn't reached? Even as a pro backer, I want as many eyes (and contributions!) on said components as possible.

That's a good thought. I'll check with the team and see if we want to add that to the $900k goal.

How are you going to spend $1 million without killing the company/project?

People who previously have made icons for free will now want some of the money, and you only have enough for about 10 people for a year.

I've seen too many companies get money and suddenly, instead of being extremely frugal like they used to, because they had to be, start spending money because they can afford it.

And then the company dies.

This happens to lottery winners too.

Do you have plan to avoid it? You should plan to make the $1 million last at least 10 years without earning any additional money except interest.

Simplest answer is we're going to use the money to build a product that people want. Now that we have more capital and really awesome committed users, we know more about what to make.

We're 4 senior designers and developers that have been around. We can design beautiful, usable software and deliver it ontime. Honestly, I wake up every morning excited to go to work with such excellent and admirable folks. I could not imagine a better job. Honestly.

As far as the icons, no one else contributed. Just me. We tried external submissions before, but they were more work to manage than making them myself. And I think we've kept a somewhat consistent aesthetic. Starting over lets us tighten all of that up, too.

Please be extremely frugal with your money. I would be very sad to come back in a couple of years to hear that you shut down. I've seen it too many times.

> Simplest answer is we're going to use the money to build a product that people want.

Obviously. But will spend money on extras? A nice sign for the office? A better office? Nice chairs? Phones for the conference room? These are the kind of not-very-expensive extras companies spend on when they get money. But it adds up, and without an ongoing revenue source it's not worth it.

If you can budget no more than $100K per year, you'll keep your company alive for a long time.

Seems to me you're being very condescending, telling others how to run their businesses and lives. How many companies have you run?

I'm not being condescending. I care about him and his business and I'm giving him advice.

If it sounds that way, then it's just because I don't know any other way to write it.

> Please be extremely frugal with your money.

We are and will continue to be so. Two of us are sharing a 100 square foot office that we're subletting from a bigger startup. The other two of us work from home. We have no interest in flashy office space or things that won't help us get more done. With age sometimes comes maturity, and I think we're pretty pragmatic.

> If you can budget no more than $100K per year, you'll keep your company alive for a long time.

It's four of us, all very, very senior with family responsibilities. $100k isn't in the cards. But I don't think it needs to be. There's a chance that folks will buy Font Awesome Pro after the Kickstarter is over, so we're going to try that.

Also, this team is absurdly talented. We're told repeatedly that we're the only team at our stage that reliably delivers what we've planned. I'd put us up against any team of 4 on the planet to design beautiful, usable web software and deliver it on time. These folks are amazing.

Seriously appreciate your thoughts. :)

> There's a chance that folks will buy Font Awesome Pro after the Kickstarter is over, so we're going to try that.

If you are willing to accept a bit more advice: Don't rely on that.

Anyone who would buy that already did, via the kickstarter. Anyone who didn't and wants to, probably won't because they'll feel like their getting a bad deal (obviously some people will buy, but it won't be a lot of people).

So don't rely on that, add something new.

> Seriously appreciate your thoughts. :)

Thanks. I hope you don't feel like I was insulting you, because that was not my intent (although it seems some people thought it was).

> [people may still buy pro post-KS] [anyone who would do so was in the Kickstarter]

I'll be kicking in $20 after I finish browsing HN, and I could see using Pro in developing for clients then having them get their own license (or doing so as part of the project cost). In fact, that kind of seems to be how it's intended to work.

> If you are willing to accept a bit more advice: Don't rely on that.

We aren't entirely. But we've had 15 million folks on Font Awesome in the past year. Not all of them have seen the Kickstarter, so we're hoping some of them will buy. Other plans too. Definitely not relying solely on this, but we're going to take Font Awesome Pro everywhere we can.

I remember reading somewhere that 8% of what the Kickstarter made per month is somewhat normal. Time will tell though. But it's a good lead for us to try and see what happens.

> So don't rely on that, add something new.

Agreed.

> Thanks. I hope you don't feel like I was insulting you, because that was not my intent (although it seems some people thought it was).

I'll be honest, it came off a bit gruff. But I've learned that often goes along with folks that know what they're talking about. (And the 20k karma here helps you out too.)

Again, thanks. I take the livelihoods of 4 families seriously. We'll do what we can to keep making things better.

Missed the Kickstarter campaign, so i will by the font next year for regular price.

I'm betting there'll be an "open-awesome" or similar within three years.

Font Awesome is already licensed under SIL (fonts) and MIT (code), so you're sorta right.

Would the license not spell out trouble for anyone using the svgs on a GitHub pages site?

I currently do this(tf2manu994/manmeetgill.com on github, gitlab and bitbucket), and I am a backer for pro. Does this mean I can not use the pro icons on my site without forcing a user to download the entire iconfont?

[Yes I know, the markup on my site is crap, currently in the process of reworking without mdl]

Nope. Folks will be able to use just certain icon packs on their site. For more granular control, the $350k goal was a desktop icon subsetter.

Would embedding the output of the desktop app in a GitHub pages repo be allowed

I think we'd be fine with that. Seems removed enough and isn't the whole set.

It's a good area for us to think about and be more specific about. I'll talk to the team and see what we can do.

Awesome, thanks.

It seems like you will get really close to the 1 million goal.

Please consider open sourcing the SVG framework, even if you don't fully make the million.

SVG icons clearly are the future, imo.

See this article for a comparison: https://css-tricks.com/icon-fonts-vs-svg/

> Those icons are Font Awesome 4.7, which is completely open source so you can do almost whatever you want with them.

Pro vs Free still bothers me. Couldn't one of the stretch goals been to make all fonts free and open?

Actually, we think the best way for us to keep making Font Awesome Free as good as it can be is to figure out how to be sustainable so we can put more time into Font Awesome.

And the already-funded 38 stretch goal icon packs give 10 each back into Font Awesome Free. So that's another 380. That means FA Free will be over 1,000 icons in version 5 (up from 675). Also, the $1M stretch goal makes the SVG framework and all the code open source.

I wasn't aware of it before your comment, and now I'm confused, just sounds like buying 'Pro' would damage workflow.

Say I have a project on Github, and I want to add some of the new icons I buy - I have to leave the icons out of the repo, and deal with whatever that means for deployment?

If you're talking a private repo, that's no problem at all.

As for a public repo, the same applies as to commercial typography. Don't make it available for download.

This is part of why we're doing Font Awesome Pro CDN. Choose your options and icon packs and we'll serve them up for you. And we're making this free for open source projects. It also means you can upgrade to a new version without pushing code if you like.

Wouldn't the end-user be able to download it from the cdn anyway? Would an alternative not be to allow them in an open source repo provided that the owner adds a readme to the folder in which the font resides, telling the end-user to refrain from downloading?

Edit: what about an open source non-electron web application? How would they use the font?

If someone can see a font, they can pirate it. We just don't want to make it really, really easy.

Sorry, that wasn't clear, but yes I meant public.

So I could commit, say, an HTML file that linked your CDN; I couldn't commit the actual file on the CDN and link it relatively if I wanted to host it myself for some reason?

What about if the repos private, and instead of using your CDN, I serve it from my own `/assets` or whatever, does that count as making it "available for download" and therefore not allowed?

Serving static files on the web and making files available for download seems a pretty tenuous distinction.

$15K to make a proper video for kickstarter?

This is kind of defeating the purpose?

I mean - there's prob. another $5K in expenses + all the work ...

That's a lot of risk - which is what it takes to be competitive?

It part of the "lie" that kickstarter has become.

The "goal" is raising $30k, yet they're willing to spend half that on a video.

There's no incentive to have a high goal, in fact the lower the goal the better, you get to look better "We raised 50x our goal!" and it secures the kickstarter is a "success".

Eh, I mean this is a similar idea to a non-profit using fund to advertise itself to gain a larger war chest. On the surface it sounds wrong, when you donate to a charity you want the money to contribute to the cause. However If you care about the cause, and greater funds can improve it better... then doesn't it actually make sense? In for-profit business, people don't blink an eye at spending money to grow it...

I don't have a problem with them spending it.

I have a problem with the 'cost of entry' for a Kickstarter campaign.

Honestly, you can get by with $2k if you're frugal and can write it yourself. There are always younger folks who are up and coming (like Knox Avenue but earlier) who will take a shot. But it's a good bit of work sorting through the noise.

I think we had a leg up since we made a Kickstarter video ourselves a couple of years ago. We knew what we were looking for.

I think they knew going in from the survey's they did there was going to be huge support. The excellent and slick video they shot lends a perceived value to the product. When you need to capture the viewer's attention for a few minutes, it pays to hire some pros.

> it pays to hire some pros.

It certainly does. Arguably the best money our company has ever spent. (Okay, salaries. Because we have a ridiculously amazing team.)

It depends how much you are trying to raise. We just did a survey of 100 campaigns, and the majority of successful small campaigns (that raised <$25k) spent under <3k on the video. Mind you this was for Hardware campaigns. It's only for campaigns that raise >$100k that you see average video spends above $10k

This is interesting:

> believe it or not, trolls are a sign you’re onto something. You’ve upgraded from indifference to dislike (or outright hate).

Things that are new and useful create resistance, which is actually a sign there is something instead of nothing.

Ehh. Assholes use this logic all the time.

I agree. Having something a bit polarizing is good news.

I'm curious where the costing came from (since $30k barely pays a good designer for a few months). The reason for asking is that I'm wondering why the original goal wasn't higher? Is it really that you didn't forsee that level of support? This is a common reaction from startups that are amazed that their $10k goal suddenly spiraled into millions. Often the reaction is to add lots of unrealistic stretch goals which delay the project.

As for most backed, I think relaxing the early bird deals clinched it for a lot of people (including myself). I have a lot of respect for Kickstarters that offer a flat pricing for the base product.

It's a kickstarter goal, it doesn't have to be all of your funding and why not set the goal low?

Think of it more like a minimum to make the effort worthwhile. If you can get $30k on kickstarter you can probably get a lot more from other channels.

What value do you get from setting a high goal?

You're exactly right. Honestly, we were going to make FA5 anyway. Was time.

Seems like pretty sound logic.

Though to answer the second question: there are plenty of cases (usually hardware) where people really underestimate how much things cost to make. I've lost count of the number of stories where startups said "We messed up our mold/printer/fab order which cost us $20k to redo, and then we had no money to make t-shirts".

Estimation is key on a Kickstarter. We've got a team of 4 of the best designers and developers I've ever worked with who can deliver beautiful, usable products on time.

It's the highest compliment I can pay them professionally.

Absolutely true when you rely solely on kickstarter for your funding, which is a pretty precarious situation anyway unless what you're doing is simple or inexpensive.

It comes from using Kickstarter primarily as a marketing platform and as a funding source secondary. These campaigns are created with an insignificant "funded" threshold knowing very well that they'll be funded a few hours into the campaign. See for example the Reaper Bones [1] annual campaigns that set a very low bar, expecting very well to hit a million from the get go. It's a great way to get many eyeballs on your project and make a few bucks as well.

1: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1513061270/reaper-minia...

Either I'm missing something (not uncommon) or, whoever claims this is the most funded software project seems to believe video games aren't software.

Star Citizen ($2,134,374) and Double Fine Adventure ($3,336,371) leap to mind.

I'm actually very slightly surprised to hear that there's no non-game software kickstarter that's raised more than $891,989.

Fair enough! We're going by Kickstarter's definitions:

- Most funded: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/s...

- Most backed: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/s...

I'll link those up in the article. Good point.

So that's what I was, indeed, missing.

Good stuff, and good luck.

That's just in Tech -> Software category, not all of Kickstarter.

The most funded projects can be found here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?recommended=fa...

Pebble Time = $20.3M

Coolest Cooler = $13.3M

Pebble 2 = $12.8M

Pebble e-paper = $10.3M

Baubax Travel Jacket = $9.2M

And if you look at the software

--------------

Shenmue 3 = $6.3M

Bloodstained = $5.5M

Torment = $4.2M

Project Eternity = $4.0M

Mighty No. 9 = $3.8M

Double Fine Adventure = $3.3M

I think you missed the part where they said "most funded software project", not "most funded project", and that they're using Kickstarter's category's definition of "software".

> I'm actually very slightly surprised to hear that there's no non-game software kickstarter that's raised more than $891,989.

I'm not that surprised, big parts of crowdfunding are excitement, interesting stretch goals and goodies (for higher tiers to increase the average pledge[0]), these are relatively easy for games: the audience is huge, it gets excited quickly (though it can turn on a dime) and values collectibles and "achievements".

Even more so for something which basically only targets web developers.

[0] Hex and Camelot Unchained have both raised over 2 million with half the backers of FA5.

Ouya, oculus and others instantly come to mind.

That's an even more different category, they're complex hardware product so the average pledge is inherently very high, the lowest pledge for a Rift was 300 (or 275 for a lucky 100), and that was more than half the under-10k pledges. Ouya was similar (though lower priced, with $99 for the "unlimited" ouya pledge level)

> no non-game software kickstarter that's raised more than $891,989.

I mentioned this in relation to above statement.

Kickstarter considers games a separate category from software, and lumps all games (video games, table top, card games, gaming hardware etc.) into one larger category with subcategories.

$5M https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual...

I assume they mean most OVER-funded as a percentage. 3432% would be pretty hard to achieve for most already high game budgets.

The best part about webfonts is you can block them, glad they decided to do SVG.

>900 requests blocked on https://articles.fortawesome.com/how-font-awe..... and rising by 1 every second. Quite aggressive font fetching script doesnt seem to get the hint.

Glad to see SVG is an option. The icons are great but icon fonts are dead at my shop (mostly for the reasons Github abandoned them).

Great that you're excited about the SVGs! We wanted to add more formats so as many folks as possible could use them. For a lot of folks, icon fonts are the way to go. But other folks want SVG. We get that, so we're adding them!

I bet they did something besides this. How did they get people to VISIT THEIR PAGE on kickstarter? Were they featured on KS front page? Featured elsewhere? How did the word of mouth spread? THAT IS WHAT I WANT TO KNOW

They promote the campaign on their site ( http://fontawesome.io/ ). A lot of people (including me) already visited the site occasionally to take a quick glance on the cheatsheet. I think that's probably where the most traffic originated from.

How do you know? Why is their site so heavily trafficked?

We posted the info he's referencing elsewhere in the thread. We're used on roughly 1 in every 3 new websites that gets made.

So you're like the Wordpress of icons.

Wow, I would have backed this. There's much useful insight in the article I wish other KS would heed - especially regarding stretch goals; I've seen soo many KSs derail because they, in desperation, added stretch goals that they could execute. (But I'm done done done with KS; I've suffered too many burns and scams).

At the bottom of the kickstarter they have a link to Jellop, they run ad campaigns to boost kickstarter projects.

This might be the real story, but not sure since there are no metrics on how much they've helped.

http://www.jellopcrowdfunding.com/

We tried doing some Facebook advertising ourselves, but it didn't go so well. Jellop has done better, but they're REALLY great for products that have mass appeal.

With our narrower audience, the Font Awesome website has been the biggest driver.

Same. We just failed big time on running our own ads for pre-orders for our product[0] on Facebook.

Our take away was just keep doing what works: Engage with our community and keep showing proof of progress and milestones met.

So now that we have our first basic lesson down in connecting products to the right audience, what do you think really activated the majority of purchases?

[0] https://getasteria.com/

Three things come to mind right away that seems like contributed to folks pulling the trigger and buying:

1. Pent up good will from using Font Awesome over the past 4 years.

2. The product was something folks actually wanted and the price was a great value.

3. A video that makes folks laugh. Even if just a bit.

The video is kinda similiar to the Dollar-Shave-Club commercial ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI

Yep, we definitely took inspiration from there!

My understanding is that best-practice now is to use SVG instead of icon fonts.

Version 5 is going to include a full SVG framework.

For Pro only.

I'm perfectly willing to pay for Pro, the problem is that my project is open-source so I can't use the paid version.

You can indeed! Font Awesome Pro CDN will be free for open source projects. :)

They reached the $1mil stretch goal, so the SVG stuff is coming for the free version as well now.

Why is that?

A variety of reasons:

https://css-tricks.com/icon-fonts-vs-svg/

I've always thought this article was reasonable: https://benfrain.com/seriously-use-icon-fonts/

Somewhat surprisingly, I've normally found this view to be more common with US based folks. I personally prefer icon fonts for a large swath of reasons, but other folks prefer SVG. So we're making both. :)

github found that SVG is better:

https://github.com/blog/2112-delivering-octicons-with-svg

You killed VideoPixie. Bad time to be down.

They're back! Was just a hiccup. :)

Yeah, terrible timing. A CNAME record conflicted with our new SSL cert - renewing the cert forced us off VIP on to SNI (per GAE's deprecation schedule for VIP) and the CNAME we had in place for VIP then prevented DNS from resolving properly - at least that's what I think happened ! (videopixie engineer :)

Can someone pls explain the difference between personal and student licenses? They're both $20.

Yeah, it shouldn't be confusing! We extended early backer pricing for the whole Kickstarter, so the Personal / SMB license would have been $40.

Only difference is who can use the license. Student license is for students only. But I'm recommending students just get the full Personal / SMB license since it's more flexible in the end and a better price.

(Non-profits should ABSOLUTELY get the Student / NP license as it's good for any organization size and just $20).

Students eventually stop being students (i.e. graduate), so doesn't that conflict with the licenses being perpetual?

They can always gift it to another student. :)

FontAwesome is amazing, so useful

Just got a email from the A5 campaign asking for help to get over the $1M hump.

Some people think making a font is boring and senseless, but I think it is character building...

How can one wisely use $ 900K to maintain an open source icons rendering in a font format?

This seems to me as a total waste of money.

Too much money will ruin creativity processes, and so it did in most of the cases I have observed.

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