Kickstart Your Software Development Game With Fundry

Recently, Black Web 2.0 highlighted a popular service called Kickstarter, which helps individuals and groups in multiple categories raise money for their entrepreneurship ventures. Kickstarter tends to trend towards more creative ideas in media, arts, music and other categories. Today we will discuss Fundry which trends towards the software development space. Fundry is operated by Stateless Systems, a small web startup based in Australia.

Fundry defines itself as a crowdfunding platform that helps developers get paid for creating new features, and enables a community of funders to contribute to get the features they want. It’s a win-win for developers and the community they serve. The main focus of Fundry is on any major open-source projects, WordPress themes or plugins and iPhone apps (no Android love yet?). Let’s take a look at how the service works for the developers and the funders.

Once a developer adds a project, they can list projects or features that they plan to develop, as well as accept (or reject) feature requests from the community. When the developer completes and releases a project or feature, everyone who has pledged to the funding of that feature has seen days to accept or reject the feature. The developer receives the total pledged amount (unless there are any fee(s)) if the majority of funders accept the feature. If a minority accepts the feature, the developer receives funding from those that have accepted the feature. This is a small difference from other similar services (for example Kickstarter), which is more of an all-or-nothing funding model. Fundry charges a 5% fee on any successful funding. Paypal is the only method of payment currently be used, so be sure to have you account set up.

Funders have a more simple road to investing. Once they have funds in their Fundry account, a funder can pledge to particular project or feature, and add feature requests. A pledge can be cancelled at any time before a project is completed. A funder may also withdraw at any time funds they have deposited with Fundry (provided that those funds have not been pledged to a project that is complete). There is also the option to simply make a donation to a specific project and not request a feature. No fees are charged to the developer for a donation.

The next key component is voting on the features once they are complete. Upon first glance, the rules are a bit confusing. A majority vote will net the developer all of the money that has been pledged for a specific feature. This means that some funders could “reject” the feature but still have to pay the money pledged.More detailed information is located here in the Fundry FAQ.

In addition to revenue generation, Fundry will provide a nice platform to view customer feedback and interest in new features based on what is requested and how the pledged money is distributed.

Anyone have any experience using Fundry? Leave your story or thoughts in the comments section.

About the Author
I am a developing social and digital media junkie on an adventure through life. Right now I am on the chapter in the book where I live in Los Angeles. Reach me on twitter @ahr19. Thanks for reading my post.
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