How are you going to spend $1 million without killing the company/project?

People who previously have made icons for free will now want some of the money, and you only have enough for about 10 people for a year.

I've seen too many companies get money and suddenly, instead of being extremely frugal like they used to, because they had to be, start spending money because they can afford it.

And then the company dies.

This happens to lottery winners too.

Do you have plan to avoid it? You should plan to make the $1 million last at least 10 years without earning any additional money except interest.

Simplest answer is we're going to use the money to build a product that people want. Now that we have more capital and really awesome committed users, we know more about what to make.

We're 4 senior designers and developers that have been around. We can design beautiful, usable software and deliver it ontime. Honestly, I wake up every morning excited to go to work with such excellent and admirable folks. I could not imagine a better job. Honestly.

As far as the icons, no one else contributed. Just me. We tried external submissions before, but they were more work to manage than making them myself. And I think we've kept a somewhat consistent aesthetic. Starting over lets us tighten all of that up, too.

Please be extremely frugal with your money. I would be very sad to come back in a couple of years to hear that you shut down. I've seen it too many times.

> Simplest answer is we're going to use the money to build a product that people want.

Obviously. But will spend money on extras? A nice sign for the office? A better office? Nice chairs? Phones for the conference room? These are the kind of not-very-expensive extras companies spend on when they get money. But it adds up, and without an ongoing revenue source it's not worth it.

If you can budget no more than $100K per year, you'll keep your company alive for a long time.

> Please be extremely frugal with your money.

We are and will continue to be so. Two of us are sharing a 100 square foot office that we're subletting from a bigger startup. The other two of us work from home. We have no interest in flashy office space or things that won't help us get more done. With age sometimes comes maturity, and I think we're pretty pragmatic.

> If you can budget no more than $100K per year, you'll keep your company alive for a long time.

It's four of us, all very, very senior with family responsibilities. $100k isn't in the cards. But I don't think it needs to be. There's a chance that folks will buy Font Awesome Pro after the Kickstarter is over, so we're going to try that.

Also, this team is absurdly talented. We're told repeatedly that we're the only team at our stage that reliably delivers what we've planned. I'd put us up against any team of 4 on the planet to design beautiful, usable web software and deliver it on time. These folks are amazing.

Seriously appreciate your thoughts. :)

> There's a chance that folks will buy Font Awesome Pro after the Kickstarter is over, so we're going to try that.

If you are willing to accept a bit more advice: Don't rely on that.

Anyone who would buy that already did, via the kickstarter. Anyone who didn't and wants to, probably won't because they'll feel like their getting a bad deal (obviously some people will buy, but it won't be a lot of people).

So don't rely on that, add something new.

> Seriously appreciate your thoughts. :)

Thanks. I hope you don't feel like I was insulting you, because that was not my intent (although it seems some people thought it was).

> If you are willing to accept a bit more advice: Don't rely on that.

We aren't entirely. But we've had 15 million folks on Font Awesome in the past year. Not all of them have seen the Kickstarter, so we're hoping some of them will buy. Other plans too. Definitely not relying solely on this, but we're going to take Font Awesome Pro everywhere we can.

I remember reading somewhere that 8% of what the Kickstarter made per month is somewhat normal. Time will tell though. But it's a good lead for us to try and see what happens.

> So don't rely on that, add something new.

Agreed.

> Thanks. I hope you don't feel like I was insulting you, because that was not my intent (although it seems some people thought it was).

I'll be honest, it came off a bit gruff. But I've learned that often goes along with folks that know what they're talking about. (And the 20k karma here helps you out too.)

Again, thanks. I take the livelihoods of 4 families seriously. We'll do what we can to keep making things better.

> [people may still buy pro post-KS] [anyone who would do so was in the Kickstarter]

I'll be kicking in $20 after I finish browsing HN, and I could see using Pro in developing for clients then having them get their own license (or doing so as part of the project cost). In fact, that kind of seems to be how it's intended to work.

Missed the Kickstarter campaign, so i will by the font next year for regular price.

Seems to me you're being very condescending, telling others how to run their businesses and lives. How many companies have you run?

I'm not being condescending. I care about him and his business and I'm giving him advice.

If it sounds that way, then it's just because I don't know any other way to write it.

I'm betting there'll be an "open-awesome" or similar within three years.

Font Awesome is already licensed under SIL (fonts) and MIT (code), so you're sorta right.

How much did making the video cost?

When I first saw it I thought that commercial itself must've cost around the ballpark of the amount you were trying to raise (30k) and can't possibly be worth it. But turns out it was a brilliant move!

So first, we got an absolute steal for what we paid for Knox Avenue (http://www.knox-avenue.com). For something similar from Sandwich Video, prices _start_ at $250k. We paid 1/10 that. But again, we got an absolute steal. Knox isn't as famous as they deserve yet. They're ridiculously talented.

Edit: fixed URL

Wait so you paid around 25k in hopes of raising 35k, were you expecting to raise significantly more?

edit: apparently they paid 15k in hopes of raising 30k, which is still a lot.

Admittedly, we've been a bit light on specifics for price. But that's only because I'm worried it will undervalue Knox Avenue. Those folks can get by with charging a LOT more than they charged us.

Sandwich Video (a much bigger name in this space) starts at $250k for a video. And if you have the budget, they're worth it. Knox Avenue is ridiculously awesome and we were excited to be able to still afford them!

Thanks for the reply. Great product and you deserve your pay day. So good job! And as I said can't wait for the release. Going to be a lot of icons that will be put to good use by millions of sites. All the best! Maybe throw a bit of that scratch at the company that made the video. I think that helped you guys out quite a bit.

$30,000 was the minimum for them to cash in on the kickstarter. They were planning to get a whole lot more money. That video probably more than paid for itself in bringing the project more exposure.

*(http://www.knox-avenue.com/) << working link

Oh man. Thanks.

It says it in the article: So we did some research into how much a great Kickstarter video should cost (i.e. Googled “how much does a kickstarter video cost”). To work with a fantastic production company and get the quality we wanted was going to run somewhere around $15k. This sounded like a lot to spend on a video, but we were pretty sure we’d be able to make back our investment.

It also talks about the company that produced it.

I'm curious about this too.

Also, how many nights of shooting in the bakery were required?

Just one night at the bakery from 6am to 6pm. There were a couple of shots they needed to get later, but it wasn't much at all. I think the intro and final scenes in the office were shot a couple of days later.

It seems like you will get really close to the 1 million goal.

Please consider open sourcing the SVG framework, even if you don't fully make the million.

SVG icons clearly are the future, imo.

See this article for a comparison: https://css-tricks.com/icon-fonts-vs-svg/

Hey David,

Would you consider open-sourcing the JavaScript component apps if the $1 mil stretch goal isn't reached? Even as a pro backer, I want as many eyes (and contributions!) on said components as possible.

That's a good thought. I'll check with the team and see if we want to add that to the $900k goal.

Did you see https://github.com/crocodilejs/font-awesome-assets? Not sure if we are OK to have the icons there - the licensing is confusing - we're not really distributing them.

Those icons are Font Awesome 4.7, which is completely open source so you can do almost whatever you want with them.

Font Awesome 5 will have a Free and Pro version. The Free version will be completely open source and you can use it however you like. The Pro version will have 2500-ish more icons and an SVG framework. Pro is the only one to worry about for distribution. :)

Is it accurate that if you're using Font Awesome 5 Pro in an open source project you can't include the icons in the repository?

Correct. It's not okay to distribute commercial software to folks who have not paid. But Font Awesome Free is completely okay to include in the repo, as it is open source software.

That said, we're letting open source projects use Font Awesome Pro CDN for free so this is hopefully mitigated. We want folks to use Font Awesome Pro, just don't want it distributed. :)

This is great news; when I emailed you guys, you said "For open source projects, we’re working something out" but I didn't know what.

I backed Font Awesome Pro but I was afraid I'd only ever be able to use the Free version since all my projects are open-source.

My only concern left is for offline apps (like NW.js apps). I can make do with Font Awesome Free's icon set, but it'd be nice to have those SVG icons...

That definitely makes sense :)

And the CDN at least helps mitigate any deployment issues with not being able to keep the images in the repo.

Isn't the whole point of a CDN to distribute things?

Distribution is the means; the end is to load assets faster.

Can you email me? [email protected] <3333 keep up the kick ass work. I'm launching a crowdfunding campaign of my own thanks to your inspiration.

Done!

Would the license not spell out trouble for anyone using the svgs on a GitHub pages site?

I currently do this(tf2manu994/manmeetgill.com on github, gitlab and bitbucket), and I am a backer for pro. Does this mean I can not use the pro icons on my site without forcing a user to download the entire iconfont?

[Yes I know, the markup on my site is crap, currently in the process of reworking without mdl]

Nope. Folks will be able to use just certain icon packs on their site. For more granular control, the $350k goal was a desktop icon subsetter.

Would embedding the output of the desktop app in a GitHub pages repo be allowed

I think we'd be fine with that. Seems removed enough and isn't the whole set.

It's a good area for us to think about and be more specific about. I'll talk to the team and see what we can do.

Awesome, thanks.