With successes like the Pebble smart watch, crowd-funding is becoming more and more attractive to startups. But maybe you aren’t even at the startup stage in your idea. Maybe all you have is an idea and a computer. That’s where Noodlecrumbs comes into the picture.
It’s a new type of crowd-funding for those of us who don’t quite know how much we need to make the dream a reality. In fact, Noodlecrumbs could be used by someone who doesn’t even want to build the actual product, but just wants it to be built. I have friends who pitch me ideas all the time, and I say, “sounds good, build it.” Most of the time, they say they don’t have time or don’t know how, but they’d love to use the product. That’s the perfect situation for Noodlecrumbs.
Once the idea receives some funding, organizations or companies that have the means and resources to build the product write up proposals to take over the idea. Those who have donated then get a vote for which proposal is best.
There’s obviously a fatal flaw here: that this sort of “reverse” fund-raising suggests the founder knows nothing about his or her chosen project – or at least not enough to know how much he needs. It’s kind of a Kickstarter for the catastrophically lazy – or that’s how it could be perceived.
Shukla used the example of a mashup between two of your favorite artists. Obviously, you can’t just send Lady Gaga and Gotye an email and hope for the best, but you can post about it on Noodlecrumbs and see if the rest of the world is interested, too. If enough money is sourced and interest displayed, perhaps the artists will want to collaborate for their fans.
The second concern would probably be in equity for the “founder” of the idea. It could be argued that anyone who has a truly great idea, one they fully believe in, would pursue it. But founder Sachin Shukla feels that there are plenty of people who have an idea for something they’d like to use rather than something they’d like to build and distribute. And when it’s as easy as posting the idea on a site and doing nothing more, there isn’t a huge cost associated with planting the seed.
To the point of equity, he said there may be a way to offer some equity to the “founder” in the future, but he’s still just testing the water to see what picks up.
The platform is brand new, so there’s only one project currently looking for pledges, a startup based TV show called Midas Touch. It’s already received $500 in funding, which is a good start.
So if you have a genius idea — and you don’t want to follow through with it — post it up on Noodlecrumbs. Maybe one day it’ll actually be a real thing. Or maybe not!