What's going on with the utopian crowdfunding campaign?

in #utopian-io5 years ago (edited)

I just went checking the Utopian campaign on indiegogo, and was a bit shocked to see that it's at only 4k$ with 10 days remaining.

utopian.PNG

Of course I immediately backed it, but when I saw the perks part of the problem became obvious. The maximum pledge is 190$, and they only have a few of those available. This means they need a lot of backers.
Those are missing too though. Even though the premium pledge is so cheap, there are still 5 of 10 left. The total backers number also is rather low, regarding the benefits utopian provided to so many people - be it monetary by upvotes for contributors, or by funding the devs who work on the tools and services we all use on a regular base.

So I ask - do you have reasons for not backing it? Did you back it, and would you think about adding a seperate contribution if the campaign is going to miss its goal?

I like utopian, and so far heard only good things as far as I remember, why do they seem to fail to raise 35k$?

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Hello @pharesim. Thanks for supporting our Indiegogo. As others have said we have received the necessary support here on Steem. While we would have preferred to have that kind of support on the Indiegogo for a number of reasons, what matters the most now is that we can go back to focus on building our product.

If I had to guess a reason to why it is not finding success, it would be a lack of marketing. I've only ever heard about Utopian here, I follow a lot of programmers and tech people on twitter and I've never seen them talking about Utopian once. Utopian twitter account is dead, no posts since April 6th and Twitter has the biggest tech community only comparable to Linkedin. How are they going to find external funding without marketing?

There's only one mention of their Indiegogo campaign on their Twitter account and it's from a retweet from a different account.

image.png

They need to pay someone to take care of their twitter account and interact with developers to let them know that they can earn from their open source contributions and to build a community outside of Steem as well! So much potential being wasted not being active on Twitter.

Sure, from the perspective of a normal crowdfunding campaign I'd agree.
But they are such an integral part of this platform, that alone should've helped to fill the goal and push them up in the indiegogo system for more eyes to see.

Is distributing upvotes the only thing this community is able to?

Well checking @utopian-io account, you can also see the lack of publicity they have given their own campaign, how are most of steemians, that are mostly non coders non tech focused people, that just post and interact on the chain supposed to learn about their campaign when you visit their profile everything seems to be running alright except for a pessimistic post talking about how they are going to go down without investment? I support Utopian 100% and want to see them succeed but as you said, If they are an integral part of the platform, why are they not advertising this harder?

You are right.
Not having heard of the campaign is a very valid reason, and if that's what the majority will reply it's kinda sad.

I used the tag #whales because I assume they're at least as informed as I am (so basically not at all, although I've seen it before it was pure luck that I had a look now).

Crowdfunding campaigns are very hard to do without big secret backers. Utopian has provided so much to so many but the expectations of everything should be free make it hard to get people to shell out cold hard cash.

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Yeah, the incentives don't seem to be great and not sure why the max is so low. I agree with what @lunaticpandora said, the marketing was also weak. Having said that they did get a successful funding thanks to the help of @freedom that sent the rest of funds needed.

I'm glad they managed to get the funding they needed thanks to @freedom but it would have been cool if a proper campaign was made and they managed to grab more attention for themselves and grow the community even more :-D I still believe that having a presence on other social media platforms with active developers such as twitter is a must for Utopian to attract more developers to open source projects and the Steem blockchain as well!

I backed it after the final call the other week (before @freedom privately funded) but there isn't much incentive for me through what they offer. I did it because it should be done.

I think for many here, the only use a project has is if it adds value to their post payouts which is why those with delegation do well but die if they lose it.

Yeah, they would very much struggle without all the delegated SP - the contributions would fall right off I think.

One of the goals of the new project is to acquire funding from outside, I'm not sure how that is going at present. It is the best time to invest in crypto, but the folks with the fat wallets don't see that and will likely be buying when stuff is getting expensive again :)

My gogetfunding campaign in the other hand @pharesim has only one backer giving less than $4 :/

This isn't the blog to discuss those matters.

Unfortunately, the campaign has fallen short from the community and outside, but not for the lack of trying in my opinion. The current markets are unlikely the best time to try to win investors and take donations.

However, @freedom sent 30,000 SBD over which covers the initial phase of development of the new site and gives them some room to breathe. He also took around 1 million in delegated SP away at the same time.

@elear can likely tell you more :)

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