JumpStartCity is a new crowdfunding platform that launched in June of 2013 with the goal of creating a more social experience around crowdfunding campaigns, and they’ve just announced that they have their first fully-funded project using the platform.
Our model allows the community members to be involved in many more ways than simply pulling out their wallets. The site’s activities include voting to approve which events launch in the city, increasing their city rank by being active in the community, and joining the marketing team of specific events by becoming an official Promoter. The site’s “sticky” environment means backers hang around on the site forming the world’s first, truly cohesive crowdfunding community. And this is exactly what creators are looking for when seeking a platform to launch their product on.JumpStartCity
The first project to be funded on the platform is the TiBolt, a slick-looking titanium bolt action pen. Titanium is known for being extremely strong, extremely light and extremely expensive; a premium metal. Brian Fellhoelter, the creator of the TiBolt, says that every piece of his pen that could be made of titanium was made of titanium. The pens are all made in the USA and are crowdfunding for $103.50 during the first 24 hours of the campaign. After that period is over the price goes up to $115. The project page places the retail price around $160 once the campaign ends.
One thing to note is that the TiBolt has already fully funded and delivered on a Kickstarter project, so it seems that Fellhoelter is using crowdfunding as a means of drumming up interest and preselling the product multiple times. It’s a smart strategy. Backers of the Kickstarter project seem genuinely pleased with the end result, which should offer some peace of mind to backers of the JumpStartCity project.
This is the first success story for JSC, but the platform certainly hopes it won’t be the last. They’re taking a unique approach that involves three stages…
- Elevator pitch: The community votes on which projects JSC should list based on a 60 second video
- Promotion: Creators have three weeks to get their idea out to the world
- Active: Rewards-based crowdfunding
The promotion stage is a big one. JSC co-founder Mark Baker shared that the TiBolt project had hundreds of people sign up during the first two stages of the campaign, so when the campaign launched there were backers that just had to submit their credit card information. This type of pre-campaign promotion is actually one of the core tenets of a successful crowdfunding campaign, but JumpStartCity is actually forcing project creators to go through that very process. It’s a smart approach. Backers are also incentivized to jump in early due to the 10% discount offered during the first 24 hours of a campaign.
There are numerous other moving parts to the platform that makes it unique to the space. The ability to publicly see who is actively promoting a campaign is a fun one. Project creators can also pay to reach high-impact backers (backers that fund and share the most campaigns) to pitch their project or idea to these individuals.
It’s a very backer-centric way of crowdfunding, and it reinforces best practice. Whether it will stick and catapult JSC into the conversation as a legitimate, long-term contributor to rewards-based crowdfunding remains to be seen. With the TiBolt, they’re off to a good start.