Is Crowdfunding Making Us Lazy?

9:53 AM Unknown 0 Comments



It is nothing new for industries or industry models to change over time, especially when you consider the massive influence the Internet and Social Media had on classic business practices. Public Relations has changed drastically because we have moved from a one-way communication to a strong dialog-oriented communication model. People are in a position to do and speak whatever they want to at any given time. It certainly offers a variety of ways how a company can market or communicate themselves. Now, companies aren’t always required to conduct expensive survey’s anymore by waiting at specific locations asking customer’s for feedback, they can just do it all over Twitter, Facebook, email or anything they can successfully get their hands on and effectively get feedback almost instantly.

Yet as much as the Internet made the life of an entrepreneur easy, it may have led to a completely new problem altogether, it made it almost too easy. The reason for it is quite simple, the most difficult job of getting a product or company started is finding the necessary finances that would allow you to pursue your passion and dreams, but what happens if this menial task suddenly becomes as simple as asking the public for money? We, as a society, get too comfortable and tend to start abusing the system to our liking. At this point, most people will know that I’m talking about Crowdfunding, a topic that I personally have some gripes with.

Like I stated before, it is a difficult task for companies to find funds, so in some way I think Crowdfunding is a perfect way for smaller companies with great ideas to establish themselves, but only as a last resort. As easy as it is to enter your information and ask for $20,000 to start selling a product by offering a few bonuses for people that pay a specific amount, it shouldn’t be the first place the corporate mind should go to. Your companies foundation will be the result of a dependence on the people funding your project altogether, and when it isn’t successful all you have to show for is that no one is interested in your product or what you offer. If you try to start looking for business angels or investors after a failed Kickstarter campaign, you will be met with them realizing, no one is interested in your product enough to fund it and you will have an even worse time trying to find the necessary funding.

I may be no business expert, but I have seen projects of friends fail due to these conditions. As easy as the first step sounds to market your product on Kickstarter, it only creates so much buzz until interest fades. There are success stories like Shovel Knight[1] or Veronica Mars[2], but these do not ensure that every single project will become successful. They were even met with criticism as people were still required to purchase the tickets to watch Veronica Mars in theaters, so technically paying money in addition to even see the film they backed. The Crowdfunding model is simply not sufficient enough to prove that it is the best way to fund any project or company.

This isn’t an issue specifically for companies though, as I believe the topic has already reached the peak of absurdity with the site gofundme.com. I will state that everyone is allowed to use the site to seek help for something, but the true worthy investments are very far and few between. People will spend their money on anything as long as they find it interesting, useful or even just funny, something that may be the only reason someone was able to fund a campaign so that he can learn on how to make a potato salad. A lot of people are in positions and in need of help, while some use these crowdfunding websites to help themselves instead of facing the troubles to manage it on their own. We are losing a sense of self and are developing a co-dependency on others to solve our own problems. As much as it is practical, it is just as dangerous.

A friend recently told me that the main mentality is, if I give them one dollar or euro and everyone else does the same, then it doesn’t really affect me that much. He certainly isn’t wrong, as financially spending one dollar won’t truly hurt as much as investing $50. Like I stated early on, this is more my personal view on the matter of Crowdfunding in general, maybe from a more corporate look. I probably am simply old-fashioned in this regard, and I can certainly be wrong in my assessment towards the topic. Still, I thought it would be important to share my thoughts on the matter.

What do you think about Crowdfunding? Do you agree or disagree with me? Leave a comment below!

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