Sources of finance in the internet age.

I have always found sources of finance a pretty dry topic to teach but yesterday my fourteen year old son introduced me to a website that I will use to hopefully engage my students in what is a very important topic.

My son told me that he wanted my help (aka credit card) in funding an internet start-up. Squashing my first thoughts of becoming a billionaire when it went public, he explained that it did not involve ownership or even a loan, but access to special privileges as the game was developing and when it went on sale.

The website is kickstarter.com and also featured in Geoff’s post a few days ago on Robert Schiller’s talk. In my son’s case, it was a game called Yogventures” and he wanted to pledge US$25 to the games development in exchange for access to the development forums as well as a copy when the game was released. As the picture below shows, Yogventures pitch on Kickstarter has been very successful as they have raised more than double of their US$250,000 goal.

There is a wide range of projects on Kickstarter that are trying to attract funding and the rewards for doing so usually depend on the amount given, but can be as a little as an email saying thank-you up to lunch with Tom Cruise, although this has the minor issue of being contingent on Tom Cruise agreeing to have lunch with you…

The home page shows the categories of projects that want funding and these could either be discussed as a class or let the students go away and report back on which project they think should get their funding.

Perhaps if tutor2u requires funding for another project then I might be prepared to part with £5 for a personally signed photograph of Geoff and Jim…