When future historians look back at the evolution of the Internet, today might mean something special. Today, we watch crowdfunding break out of its holding tanks—the self-contained websites of Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Rally and others—and rush foaming across the web, spilling into the playbooks of developers, tinkerers, and global brands alike.
Taking the ax to the silo is Crowdtilt, a year-old crowdfunding company built by cofounders James Beshara, 26, and Khaled Hussein, 28. This morning, the San Francisco startup released the first full-service crowdfunding API, allowing developers to plug a customizable crowdfunding tool into any application. “Crowdfunding seems like a played-out term,” says Beshara, Crowdtilt’s CEO, “but we think it’s at the very beginning of being the next web phenomenon.”