An independent Web blog is launching a real-time map of active Kickstarter projects Sept. 10, according to one of the site’s co-founders.
Kickstarter allows individuals and businesses to ask for donations from many different funders at once in exchange for a finished product or service in the future. It’s become a popular tool for startups in the U.S. who can’t find funding through traditional channels like angel investing and venture capital. Kickstarter gained notoriety in Canada earlier this summer when Pebble, a smartwatch firm founded by University of Waterloo graduate Eric Migicovsky, set records on the site by raising more than $10 million.
The tool will be able to search Kickstarter by location and category.
“We love Kickstarter, but if we’re being honest, searching for projects there is a little lame,” Justin Wilcox, one of the site’s founders, writes in a blog post. “Kickstarter will tell you the projects in a specific ‘location’, so if you want a list of project in ‘New York’ you can get them. Unfortunately that list won’t include any of the thousands of projects in ‘Brooklyn’, ‘Manhatten’, ‘Lower East Side’, ‘Long Island’, etc.”
The service will let users search Kickstarter projects by combining filters in the category and location fields, and receive an e-mail when there is a new project matching their search criteria. It will also generate infographics based on templates for lists of the top cities for a particular type of project (for example, the top five cities for tech projects).
Zoom in to see what projects need help locally.
As the crowdfunding conversation continues in Canada, we should pay close attention to efforts like this being made in the U.S. This type of data visualization tool and searching capability helps connect entrepreneurs looking for cash with the people most likely to give it to them. It just makes sense that you’d want to fund a project that’s in your neighbourhood, or trying to accomplish something innovative in a category that you’re passionate about.
Source | Things We Start
