Computer Support Blog

In the past, school fundraisers have mostly involved having students sell low-profit items that most people purchased out of a sense of obligation while the school received less than half the money raised.  For a school district to raise money often involves proposing tax increases and waiting half a year for a budget to pass, which seldom does in some places.  EdBacker is a startup that takes advantage of the popularity of crowdfunding and applies it specifically toward PTA group and school fundraising.  In fact, its creator refers to it as “PTA made easy.”  More than just raising money, it is a tool that consolidates volunteer signups and any other business a PTA performs into one platform.  Not only that, it makes the fundraising aspect easier, more social, and more transparent. Read more »

Crowdfunding is an increasingly popular way to gain funds as well as support for many individuals and companies.  People use it as a method to achieve all sorts of goals and to gain enough money to open any kind of company.  Typically, would-be producers utilize crowdsourcing to fund the creation of a company, a project, or a line of products, but a startup called Gustin looks to employ it as a means of backing the creation of individual products.  In the same way that crowdfunding brings together creators and potential consumers on a more personal level and gets individuals involved, Gustin does so for particular items.  Its niche is menswear, and its creators intend it to change the way men buy clothes by creating a fully crowdfunded model for determining which jeans it makes.  Gustin’s focus is exclusively on high quality clothing, and its model cuts out a lot of the cost to make it more affordable. Read more »

Whether due to a last minute emergency, indecision, or unfulfilled claims of financial support, many have faced the burden of having to pay most or all of the money others had claimed they would contribute when attempting to raise funds for a group event. Often there are non-refundable reservation or cancellation fees for a particular event or use of a venue. Sometimes, if one or more people pull out too close to the time of the reservation, the full fee is required. Evenstir’s developers have created a solution to this dilemma. Read more »

Crowdfunding is one of the biggest innovations the web has provided to small startups and independent artists in recent years.  The biggest crowdfunding sites, such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, support all types of crowdfunding campaigns, whether they be for a technology product, a video game, an independent film or even a theater production.  However, it is also very easy for projects to become lost on these larger sites. People aren’t just competing with others in their field for attention and support, but also projects in many other areas.  Cool product in technology Musicraiser is a crowdfunding site designed specifically for musicians.  By keeping the type of crowdfunding projects listed on the site limited to only music-related campaigns, Musicraiser gives individual artists and bands a better chance at achieving notice from fans.  Read more »

People’s definition of television is changing rapidly.  New realities of the web and streaming video have revolutionized how people consume video as entertainment.  Users seek more and more content from online sources such as Netflix and Hulu Plus rather than from their cable providers.  Many people have even cut the cord from cable companies completely, getting all their video content through the Internet.  This shift towards online streaming as a new standard for video entertainment opens to door to a slew of new possibilities and innovative business models for video content production.  Cool product Mobcaster is pushing one such new model.  This startup combines the concept of watching television online with the populist ideals behind crowdsourcing.  In crowdsourcing, the audience funds the projects they want to see completed.  Likewise, Mobcaster only airs the exclusive content that their viewers fund.  Audience members who experience buffering issues and hiccups on Mobcaster videos can fix their problems with help from a network support service. Read more »

Thanks to sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, many small businesses have made their first products with the help of crowdfunding.  However, due to these popular crowdfunding sites’ openness to the public, those who fund a business’s project cannot get equity from their investment.  Backers can only receive rewards such as products or free services for their contributions.  This practice often discourages backers from offering larger amounts of money to startups since their contribution is more akin to a gift than an investment.  Cool product RockThePost changes the crowdfunding model by applying it to a group of accredited investors rather than the public at large.  On RockThePost, startups that are looking for funding and seed capital can post company profiles and short pitch videos.  RockThePost’s community of investors can then browse through different startup pitches and make funding offers through the website.  This also allows a startup to pitch their company to multiple investors at once conveniently.  This process saves the business important resources in its early stages. The money and time a company saves from finding investors and developing individualized pitches can go into other needs such as office IT support and product development.  Read more »

The Internet has severely changed the state of being for independent musicians and artists.  Having a web and social media presence is essential to maintaining your career as an artist if you want to stay independent.  Most successful musicians on the web stick to social media sites such as YouTube and BandCamp to promote and sell their music.  That was not enough for cool person in technology Jack Conte.  Conte worked for years as an independent musician with a heavy web presence, both with his solo projects and with his partner Nataly Dawn in the band Pomplamoose.  Conte has drawn a significant following of fans on the Internet thanks to his popular music videos on YouTube, which reveal how he creates the unique sounds in his music.  However, Conte was not satisfied with promoting his work on a social network while selling it elsewhere.  This is why he founded Patreon, a website that allows users to patronize specific artists and fund them for their continued work. Read more »

New crowdfunding sites seem to pop up every day since Kickstarter blew up on the tech scene.  Most sites focus on one particular industry or type of project that can benefit from the now-popular model.  Almost all of these sites are very capitalistic in nature, looking for backers to support businesses or commercial music, writing, and art.  There is nothing wrong with helping entrepreneurs or artists chase their dreams, but cool person in tech Beth Schmidt believes there’s another group who could benefit greatly from this concept—poor and underprivileged youth.  Beth Schmidt is the founder and executive director of the non-profit Internet company Wishbone.  Wishbone finds promising young people who do not have the resources to pay for the education that would allow them to chase their goals.  Schmidt’s company then provides them a space on the Internet where backers can crowdfund their education.  Rather than use the crowdfunding model to invest in single projects or startup business, Schmidt wants people to invest in a proven resource for society’s future—smart, young students.  Read more »

Crowdfunding has deeply affected the way many people look at their entertainment and the artists who create it.  Where popular art, fiction, music, and even games once only came from monolithic institutions that had a disproportionate amount of say over what the public got to consume, now Kickstarter, Indiegogo and its brethren have made it so the public can access and fund any work they want to see or hear, independently of larger industry trends.  Still, most people consider crowdfunding solely as a way to fund the actual creation of a project, not to directly compensate creators for their work.  This is why most art that people fund on sites like Kickstarter are projects that take large amounts of cash to complete such as albums, movies, comics, and video games.  However, cool product Unbound wants to use the crowdfunding model as an alternative to the book industry and, even more significantly, want to use it to compensate authors directly. Read more »

Starting any company from scratch is difficult, but founding a hardware startup comes with its own unique set of challenges that make it especially difficult—manufacturing costs, distribution problems, and shipping concerns are just the most obvious of these.  That’s why cool person in technology Scott N. Miller runs Dragon Innovation to help new hardware startups ship their first products.  Miller has run Dragon Innovation for many years as a consultancy firm for hardware startups that need help due to inexperience with manufacturing physical products at scale.  However, recently Miller has taken his company in a slightly different direction to set itself apart from other firms.  Miller has added a crowdfunding aspect to Dragon Innovation’s business model and is utilizing this new trend to enable his firm’s clients to succeed.  Read more »