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Comment by eggbrain | Hacker News Reader

Code School is a great company, and this web course will definitely help bring iPhone development to many users, rather than only ones with Mac's and Xcode.

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.

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I feel exactly the same way. I pay for Codeschool because I enjoy playing around with it, and would have assumed that my payments would be used to fund the development and advancement of their curriculum. To see this leaves me feeling soured on the whole thing.

I feel the exact same way.

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.

Think it this way: crowdfunding the development of this new Code School project, YOU are the investor.

Does it really feel that bad?

Not really. You aren't able to make a return (exit or dividend) on future profits from such a course when sold to others after development is complete.

sponsorship !== investing

ditto

I'm a paying member and I have no problem with them also using a KickStarter for a special project. This is for several reasons. First, I'm not funding them, I'm paying for access to the videos. Second, I expect them to keep making web development vides, though if this stopped I wouldn't feel violated, since I'd still have access to the videos that are there. I would be disappointed and would re-evaluate whether I want to keep paying for them. Finally, this really is a special project, both in content and what's required to deliver it, and they talk about what they're using the money for in the video. I'm confident that videos unrelated to iOS will continue to be released as this is being worked on, just like they were while they developed the prototype.

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.

We've gotten a couple of questions about this so far, and I just added an FAQ item in the Kickstarter project about this. Here is the answer:

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.

It's a good thing nobody's forced to back it, then. ;)

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.

Kickstarter is an excellent marketing platform to launch any new product/service and getting new leads.

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 guess we just have to hope that emergent "forces" create some sort of balance that works. I don't think your sentiments are unusual and inasmuch as their widespread, they may act as a balancing force.

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