If you are planning to start a business in San Diego, but haven’t figured out where to get startup funding, consider what many other small businesses have done. They used Kickstarter, or other crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo, to raise money for their new venture. Check out some of the companies and ideas that have been successfully funded by San Diego entrepreneurs in the following table. These are the top San Diego crowdfunding projects in their respective categories on Kickstarter.
Crowdfunded Project Name |
Crowdfunding Category | Description | Funding Amount Raised | Number of Bakers |
Date Funded |
Dynamic Bible | Art | Self-published book by Peter Han on the Dynamic Sketching class he teaches at the Artcenter College of Design. |
$55,941 |
1,122 |
6/26/16 |
Comic Book People | Comics | Book of photographs taken by Jackie Estrada of comic creator people. |
$28,360 |
438 |
2/22/14 |
Hippo Sweat Sunscreen | Crafts | Sunscreen that is vegan friendly and provides protection for hours. |
$7,469 |
108 |
10/1/15 |
Enhanced eBook Telling a Story Through Dance | Dance | e-Book created by Keone and Mari Madrid that combines film, dance and music to tell a story. |
$57,144 |
904 |
7/29/16 |
Passion Planner | Design | Personal planner created by Angelia Trinidad designed with your passions and goals in mind. |
$706,287 |
16,335 |
11/24/15 |
The Undress | Fashion | Dress that allows women to take their clothes off without getting naked. |
$615,663 |
7,297 |
11/1/14 |
Veronica Mars Movie | Film and Video | Film about Veronica Mars who is a high school student and private investigator. |
$5,702,153 |
91,585 |
8/12/13 |
Steak Locker | Food | Special refrigerator designed for dry-aged steaks created by Nadia Bruno. |
$191,010 |
362 |
7/8/14 |
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Board Game | Games | Story driven board game featuring the iconic four Turtle brothers as they defend New York City from Ninjas and the Shredder. |
$862,211 |
6,033 |
2/25/16 |
XI North American Soccer Quarterly | Journalism | Quarterly publication by Tom Dunmore, John Turnbull, and David Keyes about soccer from a North American perspective. |
$15,075 |
339 |
5/2/12 |
Second Album by Hirie | Music | Album called Wandering Soul featuring Reggae music by Patricia “Trish” Anne Jetton. |
$44,194 |
369 |
9/10/15 |
Behind Photographs | Photography | Pictures of legendary photographers holding their favorite photograph taken by Tim Mantoani. |
$17,140 |
168 |
11/12/11 |
Freedom Journal | Publishing | Goal planner by entrepreneur and EOFire host John Lee Dumas to help you establish SMART goals. |
$453,803 |
7,063 |
2/5/16 |
OSSIC X | Technology | 3D headphones that calibrates the sound based on your anatomy. |
$2,708,472 |
10,263 |
4/21/16 |
Tik-Tok Man of Oz | Theater | Frank Baum’s sequel to the Wizard of Oz performed at the Regency Ballroom in San Diego. |
$18,293 |
69 |
4/12/14 |
There are a couple of key takeaways from the San Diego Crowdfunding table above. Firstly note that only a couple of categories have projects that raised more than a million dollars – Film and Video (Veronica Mars movie) and Technology (OSSIC X headphones). Also the majority of categories raised less than $100,000, and the Crafts category actually raised the least amount of funds ($7,469) for Hippo Sweat Sunscreen. So if you are thinking of raising millions of dollars from an arts and crafts idea, then you should probably set more realistic expectations.
Another takeaway you should notice is how many backers some projects got. For instance, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Board Game has more than six thousand backers. Having a lot of backers can be both good and bad. Good because you have many people that want to back your idea and bring it to life. Bad because you normally have to provide some type of reward for the backers. If they are all going to get a free board game, then you need to make sure you have the right shipping address, adequate space to store the games, capacity to handle all of the comments on Kickstarter, and follow-up customer service calls for all those backers.
Finally you need to ask yourself where all of your backers will come from. Is your social media presence large enough to interest that many people? Do you have thousands of Facebook friends, LinkedIn contacts and Twitter followers? If the answer is no, then you will need to build your social contact list prior to launching your startup business on Kickstarter or other crowdfunding platform. While crowdfunding sites to offer you the ability to get additional backers for your new product idea, you should consider those icing on the cake, and be prepared to fund most your idea from your own contact list.
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