Try iOS: iPhone App Development Course
kickstarter.com
kickstarter.com
That being said, I feel... Conflicted about a company, whose goal is to make profit, using Kickstarter as a way to raise money to build the course. When I was supporting up-and-comers on Kickstarter, it felt like I was helping the little guy be on the same level of the big corporations. But with this, I become worried that when companies don't have enough money, or don't want to deal with the risk of product development, they will make a Kickstarter, which has no real requirement for disclosure of where the money goes, or on actually delivering a product, and build a profit making service on the backs of their customers up front in exchange for the possibility of a coupon off the course.
Most of our courses do take a lot of time and money to build, and we've been able to fund those courses by charging money. But there is a much larger initial capital investment to build an iOS course like the one we want to build. We had a couple of different ideas on how to raise the money, from taking out a loan, to getting a more traditional VC or angel investment. We decided to try the Kickstarter approach so we could get funding from the people who would actually want the course.
What's funny/weird about this sentiment is that if Envy Labs/Code School got $2mil+ in funding from an investor I would be totally cool with it and happy for them. The fact that they are crowdfunding while I am a paying customer just rubs me the wrong way.
Does it really feel that bad?
sponsorship !== investing
The only downside I see is that a paying customer might have thought that $25/mo was getting them all CodeSchool had to offer, and now some people are paying $60 to fund the KickStarter and getting a shirt. To me that's because they misinterpreted what the $25/mo is for. It's really for something much simpler: unlimited access to all the Courses and Code TV.
Moreover, it eliminates the idea-validation risk of developing something that no one wants.
I feel that they are very smart to use this.
I feel somewhat the same as you, but is this really different than the recent games explosion on KickStarter? Gamers help fund the development of the game (usually in return for a copy of the game and some trinkets) and then developer goes on to make profit from it.
Other products are much the same, with music and video being obvious ones that are similar, but even physical products that are being developed often go the same route.
There have been plenty of things that I would have donated to help bring to existence and paid for afterwards. Most of them will never be on KickStarter, but if they ever are, they'll get my backing.
The ones that I don't feel that way about, won't.
In order to offer the course, they need to build the infrastructure ... and in order to build the infrastructure, one needs capital to even start on the venture. In the past, you would go to a venture capitalist to front the money. Kickstarter offers a way of doing that without the strings attached.
I find no qualms with this usage of kickstarter
Why start out with a whole farm? Why not start small - with just a few? Surely you don't need all of them up front in order to build out the infrastructure for them. Then, as $$ starts coming in from sign-ups, you start provisioning more and more of them.
They want to build a big farm to begin with to handle the load.
Alternately, they could take (free) signups for beta slots. Once your number comes up (i.e. when they provision enough machines to support the next batch of users), you hand over cash and get access.
The production value of their videos is high, however.