Resisting the monoculture
Crowdfunding is often the only hope for many artists and craftsmen to get funding for their work. This fall Kickstarter, one of the most famous crowdfunding platforms, changed from Incorporation to Public Benefit Corporation to make sure culture and art really get what they need from their profit, too — not only the investors. Their new slogan is “Fuck the monoculture!” In Finland Mesenaatti.me shares same kind of values.
Yancey Strickler, the co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter reminded in Web Summit, that maximizing the profit isn´t the only value in entrepreneurship. “Many successful companies have started as a small company, but in some point they lose their soul”, he said. “Not all are interested in making money, but just to exist.”
“Don´t sell your values, always maintain your integrity and be patient”, Strickler guided the new entrepreneurs. The pressure of collecting more and more money seems still to be impossible to resist, because while getting bigger the companies also lose their independence from investors and partners.
Since 2009, Kickstarter has got 9,9 million backers to make art and culture projects true. Applicants and backers can be totally unknown beginners as well as more acknowledged artists. 95 877 projects have already been done, worth 2,1 billion.
The community of Kickstarter has funded movies, theatre plays, exhibitions and small publications — and made a few Oscars possible.
The money the donor has backed for the applicant will be charged only once the minimum amount of money has been collected. All-or-nothing funding makes sure that the audience gets the quality of fully funded results.
However, the donors are not investors and they do not share the profits, even if the project later grows into a successful startup. Ownership and also the responsibility to complete the project as promised remains with the applicants.
The donor has to evaluate and decide based on the pitch presentation, whether the applicant is capable of making the project or not. Often the backers are friends and family or people who know the background of the applicant. But backers can also be people who just get excited about the idea and are interested to see it come true. Applicant´s own networks — both online and offline — are important.
People from 18 countries can pledge funding from Kickstarter. From Nordic Countries only Swedish, Danish and Norwegian can apply. For Finns there has been Mesenaatti.me platform since 2012.
“The idea is that we make funding possible for those who can´t get it from other funding systems”, Pauliina Seppälä, co-founder of Mesenaatti says.
She got the first idea of crowdfunding platform in 2009 without knowing, that there already existed services just like she imagined. Facebook had just had its breakthrough in Finland and Seppälä was interested in the power of social media in networking. Social media would be the channel for those who didn´t get the attention from big investors.
“Our filosofy is that we can use our money so that we can decide ourselves what things will be made in this world.”
About 71 % of those who put their hope in Mesenaatti have seen their dream come true. The success rate of Kickstarter is lower, only about 37 %.
Through Mesenaatti the applicant gets 90 % of the total sum. The rest goes to the payment system Holvi, salaries of three employees, fees for coders, payments for servers and rental costs. One million euros have gone through Mesenaatti for 200 successful projects with 25 000 backers.
Kickstarter has 118 employees, most of them originally artists. The profits come from 5 % fees from all the successfully funded projects. Payment system Stripe takes 3–5 % fees. Kickstarter hasn´t been very keen on getting Venture Capital money, but it did get 10 million investment shortly after the launch of the platform. Union Square Ventures, Twitter c-founder Jack Dorsey and Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake were among them.
To point out his filosofy of resisting the power of monoculture Yancey Strickler wanted his company to give the profits not only to investors but also for public benefit. The founders of Mesenaatti, Pauliina Seppälä, Tanja Jänicke and Marko Tanninen, want people to have better choices to use their money than pure consumption culture. Every “20 euro patron” can participate collectively in projects that make the quality of life better. “That´s more meaningful way of consumption than putting your money on goods”, Pauliina Seppälä says.
Read more:
Kickstarter stats
F*** the monoculture: How Kickstarter is putting cultural ideology above profits (Venturebeat)
Kickstarter CEO says we nee to overhaul the way we do business (Quartz)
Kickstarter chooses public good over private riches (The Guardian)
Resist and thrive (Yancey Strickler in Medium)
Mesenaatti.me
This text was originally published in Finnish in Taajuus Nov 17, 2015.
Photo: Minna Kilpeläinen
