January 22, 2014 @ 10:03 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Zach Braff’s Kickstarter-funded feature film Wish I Was Here premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last week. Reviews were mixed, of course… And to those who thought Braff was out of line asking for a hand-out, be satisfied in knowing that his second directorial effort — which… Read More

January 22, 2014 @ 9:34 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Wells Fargo has told its employees to scale back and eventually cease their participation on for-profit peer-to-peer lending platforms like Lending Club and Prosper. The banking behemoth’s “ethics administrators” cite a conflict of interest, pointing out that peer-to-peer lending is a competitive practice. The San… Read More

January 21, 2014 @ 1:47 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

A Kickstarter campaign for an officially-licensed Mega Man board game has ended. The campaign and Lubbock, Texas-based creator Jasco Games netted $415,041 on a goal of just $70,000. Over 11,000 backers chipped into the campaign. It is a bit of a disappointment considering over half… Read More

January 21, 2014 @ 1:40 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

Kung Fury is a campy movie done in classic 80’s over-the-top action style that is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, and the campaign is about to come to an end. Crowdfunding for the film will cease this Sunday, January 25th at about 11 AM EST. Will Kung Fury… Read More

January 21, 2014 @ 12:02 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

In an op-ed published to The Digital Journal today, Maryland State Senate candidate Don Quinn presents his case for an intrastate crowdfunding exemption in his home state. It goes without saying that each small business is more than just a single unit employer. Every small… Read More

January 21, 2014 @ 11:48 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Zopa is the UK’s largest peer-to-peer lending service, and one of the company’s co-founders has made a pretty amazing prediction about the size of the peer-to-business lending market in Ireland. In an interview with The Irish Times, Simon Deane-Johns predicted that peer-to-business lending throughput in… Read More

January 21, 2014 @ 10:10 am By Charles Luzar  |  

We caught wind of a proposed crowdfunding exemption in the State of Alabama in the fall of 2013. As any regular reader of Crowdfund Insider knows, intrastate crowdfunding exemptions are popping up left and right as of late. Just this week we reported on proposed legislation… Read More

January 20, 2014 @ 11:09 am By Charles Luzar  |  

The United States, The Soviet Union, China and… Penn State University? If one crowdfunding campaign can find funding, the above statement might become the list of entities that have made it to the moon. Only three of them would have had a standing army. (Nittany… Read More

January 20, 2014 @ 10:19 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Double Fine Adventure was a bit of a turning point in crowdfunded video games. When Double Fine Productions launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter seeking $400,000 in funding from the crowd, they couldn’t have imagined netting over $3 million. The road wasn’t easy from there… Read More

January 20, 2014 @ 9:53 am By Charles Luzar  |  

What do you do when you’ve raised almost $500,000 on a goal of just $200,000? Lumo BodyTech wants to pay it forward to a few of their favorite charities. A self-hosted crowdfunding campaign for the Lumo Lift launched earlier this month amidst the Consumer Electronics… Read More

January 19, 2014 @ 2:21 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

I’ve started businesses in Washington. I’ve raised money here and hired folks here. My testimony focused on my entrepreneurial story. I talked about the various businesses I have started, ran, and sold. I talked about my experience raising angel and institutional capital in Seattle very… Read More

January 18, 2014 @ 4:52 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

Greenlight is essentially a crowdsourcing platform where any of Steam’s 75,000,000 active users can help to determine what games get launched on Steam, the Valve-owned video game marketplace. It’s step one in a game development funnel Valve has used to empower smaller developers and studios…. Read More

January 18, 2014 @ 1:39 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

Veronica Mars is on the comeback trail, and not just because of the forthcoming Kickstarter-funded feature-length film. Producer Rob Thomas has just struck an agreement that will result in a Veronica Mars-themed web spinoff… The CW web series: a comedy featuring @HiRyanHansen attempting to put together… Read More

January 18, 2014 @ 11:49 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Remember Amex Sync? Back in 2012, American Express launched the program as a joint effort with Twitter. It offered Twitter users discounts on products for tweeting certain hashtags. The possibility of Twitter entering the e-commerce game has been the subject of a lot of prognostication… Read More

January 17, 2014 @ 10:35 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested $20 million in Teespring, an innovative crowdfunding platform for t-shirts. RELATED | Teespring Crowdfunds T-Shirt Preorders Teespring is a Y Combinator alum and has seen some pretty insane growth early in its lifecycle, so it is no huge surprise that… Read More

January 17, 2014 @ 10:33 am By Charles Luzar  |  

  Fundable is a crowdfunding platform based in Columbus, Ohio. The company released the following infographic, and it makes some pretty interesting claims regarding the economic impact crowdfunding is expected to have in 2014. It borrows data from the recent Fung Institute report, Massolution’s 2013… Read More

January 17, 2014 @ 9:58 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Yasumi Matsuno has teamed with California-based Playdek on a tactical RPG entitled Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians. It’s kind of a big deal. Matsuno is a huge name in video games with titles like Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII under his belt. He has… Read More

January 17, 2014 @ 9:24 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Vimeo is putting movie creators on notice. The online streaming video service is looking for films that have raised at least $10,000 in crowdfunding efforts. The goal? To get those movies to grant Vimeo exclusive rights for a set window of time. Vimeo wants to… Read More

January 17, 2014 @ 8:57 am By Charles Luzar  |  

As reported on Crowdfund Insider, there was a pretty incredible hearing yesterday in front of the House Committee on Small Business Subcommittee on Investigations, Oversight and Regulations. Attendees included Jason Best, DJ Paul, Prof. Mercer Bullard and Daniel Gorfine. In short, all four attendees expressed… Read More

January 16, 2014 @ 2:06 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

Y Combinator-backed Apigy created Lockitron just as the connected home movement was really taking off. The company promised some pretty slick features. The device integrated with your home’s deadbolt and promised to allow things like remote unlocking from a smartphone. It was even said to have… Read More