The Future of Crowdfunding

Several weeks ago my oldest son showed me this video - of him in a home-brewed flight simulator.  It turns out that several of his friends from San Francisco decided last year to build a 3-axis flight simulator using funds raised from Kickstarter.  Using a salvaged Piper Cub fuselage, his friends created a Viper trainer, inspired by Battlestar Galactica.

They really made this thing work.  Hard to believe that high school students could (1) build from scratch and (2) raise over $10,000 to build a fully functioning flight simulator.  Moore’s Law and social media are letting our kids build things for fun that weren’t even possible 30 years ago.

Sexy fundraisings by Pebble and Ouya have grabbed the headlines, but the real story is in examples like the Viper.  Dodge has even jumped into the marketing fray with the Dodge Dart Registry, where you can use social media to recruit your family and friends to buy you a new car, piece-by-piece.