Facebook’s Oculus virtual reality headset. The “Veronica Mars” movie. Beloved video game “Undertale.” What do all these things have in common? They were crowdfunded into existence.
While the practice of crowdfunding actually began in the ‘90s, it didn’t truly pick up steam until the foundings of its two largest modern vehicles: Kickstarter and GoFundMe.
Since then, many types of products, projects and services have been brought to life thanks to the generosity of the online community. Trips abroad, board games, medical procedures and all kinds of tech. You name it. It’s been crowdfunded.
But is crowdfunding necessarily the way some of these things should be financed? Can this system be abused? And what are those in Silicon Valley doing to ensure this democratic process isn’t corrupted?
Produced by Stacia Brown.
GUESTS
Yancey Strickler, Co-founder of Kickstarter and author of ‘This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World’; @ystrickler
Andy Yang, CEO, Indiegogo; @andyyangstar
Rachel Monroe, Contributing writer for The Atlantic; @rachmonroe
For more, visit https://the1a.org.
© 2019 WAMU 88.5 – American University Radio.
Copyright 2019 WAMU 88.5