Crowd+Funding

Crowd Funding

Crowdfunding is a way of raising money that exists only because of the Internet. Instead of pitching your idea to a bank or investor who gives you one big pile of money, you solicit small chunks of money from a large number of people. It all started years ago when some desperately shameless person erected a Web site, told a hard-luck story, and simply asked the Internet to please send money. The most famous example was the Million Dollar Homepage. It was started by a college student who created a 1000x1000 pixel page and sold blocks of pixels for $1 each to fund his college education. That audacity got widespread media coverage, and behold! People donated just for laughs, or for a link. Amazingly, he reached his goal and made a million dollars. Copycats quickly appeared, but the gag soon wore thin. Untold numbers of "Please Donate" [|websites] appeared, but there was no way to tell which were legit. Then crowdfunding got a little more serious.

[|Boy] bands offered a quid pro quo: listen to free music samples and, if you like, what you hear, send money to fund a CD that you can buy. Inventors offered free products or discounts to donors who helped fund their start-ups.