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What Kickstarter is, and why we're launching Dory there
How the platform works, and what happens when you decide to back something that doesn't exist yet.
Written by Lorenzo Gumiero
Contents6 sections
Kickstarter is where projects raise the money to exist. People who believe in an idea back it before it goes on sale. If enough of them do, the project starts. If they don't, nobody pays anything. Dory launches there before the end of the year.
What Kickstarter is
Kickstarter is an American crowdfunding platform that started in 2009. You present a project, say how much you need to get it moving, and ask the people who believe in it to back it up front.
It isn't a store. It isn't a fundraiser. It's a way to find out whether something matters to enough people to be worth building, before building it.
How Kickstarter works
Whoever launches a project sets two things. A funding goal and a deadline.
For the whole period people can back it by picking a reward. For a physical object the reward is usually the object itself, at a price reserved for the people who were there from the start.
At the end one of two things happens. If the goal is reached, payments go through and the project begins. If it isn't, nobody pays. It's called all or nothing. It's the most important rule on the platform and the strongest guarantee for the people backing a project.
What happens if a project misses its goal
The campaign closes. The money is never held, never refunded, never moved at all.
For the people launching, it's a clean no, and it arrives before they've spent anything on tooling, components and production. For the people backing, it's the reason it's worth taking a chance on an idea instead of waiting for it to show up in a store.
What happens when you back a project
You pick a reward and enter your payment details. The charge comes when the campaign closes, only if the goal was reached.
From that point you get updates from the people building the thing. That's what makes Kickstarter different from a pre-order. You don't buy and then wait in silence. You follow something while it's being made, and sometimes you change it. Plenty of final decisions on a product come from the comments of the people who backed it.
How Kickstarter is different from a pre-order
A pre-order is an early sale of something that has already been decided. Kickstarter is a public check that happens before everything has been decided. You can pull your pledge for as long as the campaign is open. And for months you get updates from the people building it, while the decisions are still on the table.
Why we chose Kickstarter for Dory
Dory is a smart key tray, so it's a physical object. A physical object has a problem software doesn't. To make one you have to make many.
You need the tooling, you need components bought in volume, you need a minimum batch. That investment has to happen before you know whether anyone wants the thing.
Kickstarter flips the order. First you find out whether it matters, then you produce. For a project our size that isn't a shortcut. It's the only way to start without betting everything on an assumption.
There's a second reason, less technical. Someone who backs a project on Kickstarter isn't a customer making a purchase. They're someone who decided that thing should exist. The first people to use Dory are the same people who will decide what it turns into. To us that's worth as much as the money.
If you want to know what Dory actually does first, we explained it in our guide to smart key trays and on the home page.
Frequently Asked Questions
The all-or-nothing rule protects you where it matters. If a project doesn't reach its goal, you're not charged anything. The charge only ever happens when the campaign closes, never before.
When the campaign closes, and only if the goal was reached. Nothing is charged while the campaign is running. Until then your pledge is a reservation.
Yes, any time before the campaign closes. Your pledge stays reserved and reversible right up until the project ends.
Yes. You can back a project from any country with a credit card.
Every campaign page shows an estimated delivery date. In hardware, timelines can stretch. The people who do this properly tell you about it in their updates while it's happening.
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