The kind of system Kickstarter uses has been used for hundreds of years. Unlike Medici-style patronage, where the richest people in town give large amounts of money, Kickstarter's system relies on the general public for funding projects, and rewards those backers.

Perry Chen

One of the best things about Kickstarter and crowdfunding and the collapse of the music business is a lot of artists like me have been forced to face our own weird mess about ourselves and what we thought it meant to become musicians.

Amanda Palmer

With Kickstarter, people are patrons of the arts. With Mosaic, people can be clean-energy investors like Warren Buffett.

Billy Parish

What I like on Kickstarter is when I see real innovation and I see people building something new. It makes me sad when I see things that are just the same technology; you aren't passing the technology forward.

Bre Pettis

We've been working with Paul Bettner and the Playful team since the beginning of Oculus. Paul was one of, I think, seven $5,000 Kickstarter backers.

Brendan Iribe

My first Kickstarter project created a book called 'Clear and Present Thinking', a college-level textbook on logic and critical reasoning, which was made available to the world for free. As a professor myself, I observed that the price of textbooks was too high for some of my students.

Brendan Myers

Today, dancers have so much more information and are much more mobile. Kids are traveling everywhere to go to summer programs, funding themselves with Kickstarter - putting their dreams on the Internet and seeing if they will pan out.

Carla Korbes

While I'm confident in Obsidian being able to deliver a quality title, it only takes one other Kickstarter developer to ruin things for everyone else and cast doubt on the donation process going forward.

Chris Avellone

What I like about Kickstarter is it helps games that people want to play still get made, even if you don't pump $20 million dollars into it to try and meet all the stupid bells and whistles that publishers feel must be in games nowadays.

Chris Avellone

Kickstarter has shifted from funding creative projects to funding products and videogames; the biggest funded are consumer electronics and video game projects.

Freddie Wong

People who support Kickstarter, we love them all. We're so grateful we have these products out here that allowed us to keep the copyrights and own them and everything, but people don't realize just how massive an undertaking it is.

Gail Simone

Kickstarter can get customers invested, both literally and figuratively, in a game before it is released. With nothing but an idea, a bit of video and a few screenshots, a developer can start building a loyal fan base.

Jason Schreier

One of the successes of Kickstarter is that it takes the guesswork out of greenlighting games. Publishers of larger games have to carefully choose which titles they publish, lest they lose a bunch of money on a quirky game that doesn't sell. Kickstarter is all reward, no risk, since nobody has to pay if the project isn't completely funded.

Jason Schreier

Game ideas on Kickstarter have found loads of success, even when they're not as unusual as 'BlindSide.'

Jason Schreier

One of the smartest things Kickstarter has done, in my opinion, is give people a great shopping experience related to the arts, that funds the arts. In essence, they've gotten people to pay $200 for a t-shirt plus the feeling of participation in another artist's endeavor.

Jessica Jackley

Kickstarter is such an amazing platform, it really is. It's something great for independent artists of all kinds because every musician and every artist needs help to produce the record, make the record. It's like the modern day patronage. It's turning to your direct fan. It's a good motivator too.

Jihae

I have a very warm feeling about Kickstarter 'cause I think it's the best of what we can be. It's people who actually help out our fellow artists. We actually kind of go into our pocket for something. It's very rare.

Joe Carnahan

I never understood using Kickstarter for commercial purposes. If you want to raise money for commercial purposes, I think you should give someone a dividend. They make money, then you make money. It should be an investment, whereas I think Kickstarter's true purpose is raising money for things that are in and of themselves justifying.

Kurt Braunohler

I really like Kickstarter because you don't have to be a Medici to fund the arts and sciences or to get behind a big idea or a person that sparks your imagination. It's a type of microfunding directed toward creators.

Lisa Gansky

Those projects most successful on Kickstarter - those that receive funding completely and quickly - do so largely because the creator has a strong social network and invites people to be engaged.

Lisa Gansky

So, to see the response to the Kickstarter, and to see people actually really want to see, hear what I'm doing, hear what comes out of my own mind, is really an incredible experience.

Nita Strauss