Agreed. $50 for a license it too high. Lowering it to $15 for a license would put it in impulse buy territory for most people, and you'd likely get a lot more backers and receive more money. Personally, I don't know you at all, so I have no reason to trust that you will produce something good, and so I don't want to gamble $50 on it. But, I would gamble $15 on it.

The other software kickstarters I've backed have included a copy of the product for the lowest tier (usually $15), and then added swag like t-shirts at the higher tiers.

Something like this:

$15: Light Table license

$30: Light Table license and included in the list of contributors

$50: Light Table license, included in list of contributors, and early access to beta

$100: Light Table license, included in list of contributors, early access to betas, and t-shirt

Lowering the early access will get you more beta testers, and raising the t-shirt higher will make you have to ship less t-shirts.

I couldn't change them even if I wanted to now that money is involved. But I think looking at this as buying something is also inaccurate. Ultimately kickstarter is a way of helping things turn into a reality - not a place to shop. It's basically a form of donation, that just happens to have some reward associated to it.

"Ultimately kickstarter is a way of helping things turn into a reality - not a place to shop."

I disagree, I think shopping is exactly what Kickstarter becomes. You can use the platform for a lot of different realities. But, really, I didn't back the pebble watch because I thought the guys were nice, or because I thought the world needed another watch, or another thing to charge at night. I backed it because I like having new shit, I wouldn't of done so if I didn't get something physical from the money. As much as kickstarter is the poormans way to vc projects. VC's want to see something for their money too.

Even if my only reason for backing projects was to see projects become a reality. I'd still be shopping in a way, shopping to find projects I wanted to push into a tangible place. But even at that point, I still think it's the minority.

Donation based projects are more than fine, i'd love to see light table exist. But don't underestimate affordable donations, or fair rewards.

Exactly.

Kickstarter isn't "supposed" to be an e-commerce site, but that's what the majority of its users seem to be using it as. That's the emergent use case that's become almost a standard for the site.

Regardless of how we might feel about it, pricing needs to accommodate this user behavior. Not the other way around. Expecting users to change how they use Kickstarter is a recipe for sub-optimal subscription, if not failure.

"That's the emergent use case that's become almost a standard for the site."

For the consumer electronics. I'd say it's absolutely about crowdfunding and supporting the creator for artist and artwork projects, which are the majority that I back, as well as many people I know.

Precisely -- I have argued before that crowdfunding is not an option for a startup or any other commercial activity. But if we see it as selling in advance, than it makes all the sense, and pricing and everything should be set up just as if they were selling an existing product.

However, if Kickstarter doesn't allow changes in pricing once the project is set, it might not be the best option. Why not simply set up a personal pre-selling page, accepting payments via PayPal or any other service?

"if Kickstarter doesn't allow changes in pricing once the project is set, it might not be the best option."

Can not change current reward level's, at least not after they have a purchase. But you can always add more levels. So as much as that does not alleviate the fixed prices, I think if the prices are well thought out, then more reward levels were added based on demand of the market, at that point I think it becomes a pretty successful platform for a startup or commercial activities. Although there are definitely exceptions.

"Why not simply set up a personal pre-selling page, accepting payments via PayPal or any other service?"

Awareness. If I started a new company that sold shoes, set up a seperate page. I would not have the instant credibility or the traffic that kickstarter has. As much as there is a small chance if the market demanded what I had, that I could push it viral without kickstarter. I do believe that the kickstarter platform has proved itself over the last few months. Multiple projects being pushed over the million dollar barrier, projects spanning from pure hardware to pure software. I think there are plenty of cases where kickstarter should be a last option. You're still preselling product, instead of equity, all while gaining awareness/free publicity while not taking very much risk.

On top of that, with not using kickstarter, you're losing not only the traffic, but the impulse buys. At least a lot of them. At the discounted prices, people jump on bandwagons. For instance, if I see something that has taken off, I will in a lot of cases "back" the project, even projects where I didn't think I wanted or needed before logging on to kickstarter.

Can't you add new tiers at any time? You could make parallel $15, $30, $50 and $100 tiers. Also, nobody has actually paid yet, since the money isn't collected until the end of the period. People can change their amount and reward selection at any time before the backing period ends.

I agree with you in theory that kickstarter isn't a place to shop, but in practice it appears that offering 0 marginal cost rewards (e.g. software, videos, early access, media, etc...) at low tiers is a very successful strategy.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't give actual value to the people that are making this possible for you. People that donate the full license price over a year in advance without even knowing if the end result will be realized should at least get access to the beta. The people that pledged $100 can still get earlier beta access, but not giving any kind of early access at the $50 level is a deal breaker for me, and I know I'm not alone.

That's not a safe assumption to make of Kickstarter. If the intent is really to treat everything as donations then every tier should include "acknowledgment as a backer". As it stands today it's only stated for $1000+ level and that's not really acceptable if you consider everything a form of donation. I saw very little in the description or "rewards" that really treated backers as genuine donations rather than just simple pre-orders (that includes access to betas and/or user testing). It was rather confusing compared to nearly every other project I've contributed to on Kickstarter.

You're right that the tiers can't change much now, but the way it was structured and worded is indeed discouraging. I know I was certainly discouraged as a result, and I'm currently on the fence as to whether to contribute now or wait and see how it turns out. If this project doesn't succeed in making it's goal I would really recommend looking at the more successful software projects in detail and notice how they go out of their way to message and recognize backers in a way that makes them feel like their genuinely contributing, even if only in spirit, and orient their rewards accordingly. Adding buttons, logo stickers, t-shirts, posters, etc. are the kind of things that a community of supporters will desire and from what I've seen so far, go a long way in encouraging larger donations.

edit: removing suggestion to rollup rewards due to their potential for complicating things.

You could easily change it if you want to, send out an update and everyone who's contributed will be notified of the changes.

I must admit that I'm having a really hard time justifying donating to this project, if it really will be pay-what-you-want when it's released.

Looking at the kickstarter page, it looks like you're completely missing out on the low tier donations that many other kickstarter projects get the most money from

I love how the top-voted comments on HN are always "the price is too high!" And yet, Light Table has already raised $22k in 4 hours-not a bad start.

Yeah, but it isn't even remotely enough and the majority of what has already been pledged are from the hype wave of HN that will disappear in a day or two. You only get the hype wave once.

I actually think the amount would be much higher had the $50 included beta.

What data are you basing this off of? Have you ever tried selling products at significantly different prices and measuring revenue/profit? I have-as one example, I've sold the same PDFs at $.99, $9.99, and $49.99. The $.99 and $9.99 price points got about the same revenue, with $9.99 getting much higher profit due to transaction costs. But $49.99 got much, much more revenue and profit than either of the lower-priced options. And I've seen this over and over again, with a variety of products.

What you said is confirmation of my guessing. I'm saying if $50 includes beta (currently only $100 [EDIT: just saw $50 for beta added, thanks for listening to HNers ibdnox! Oh, wait, that access is much later than the $100 price point..]), then the amount he may be getting may be higher than the current amount.

FYI, no data to base off, just guessing, hence the words "think", "would" in my post you're replying to.

Of course it isn't a bad start. But, as others pointed out, the price point is pretty high as it is merely a bet on the product.

I myself would have considered buying/donating, although I wouldn't use the first version (not doing any Javascript or Clojure projects). But I see value in what is planned here and would be willing to bet twenty or even thirty dollars on its success. It would be a bet that the final product, which I basically bought, is good enough that people implement plugins for it that I could use (ruby/php/java/actionscript/etc).

But $50 is a pretty high bet in this case, and I would bet that I am not the only one in the described situation...

You get a lot of passion at the moment the bargain goes down.

No, it's not a form of charity. Kickstarter even goes so far to make it clear they aren't in that game. In fact, they even say this:

"Kickstarter isn’t charity: we champion exchanges that are a mix of commerce and patronage, and the numbers bear this out."

You've hit the nail on the head. I'll back for $15, but not for $50.

Kickstarters are a bet: I expect 50% of them to succeed, so I have to be able to extract double the backing value per project for it to be worth backing.

I'm obviously not the only one, which is why the $15 price point is so effective..

That would be absolutely perfect. Plus, let's face it, this won't be a success in the long run if a lot of people aren't using it and there isn't a community behind it. The goal right now needs to build a large user base, not squeeze every last dime you can get in the fundraising portion. This is ultimately supposed to be a platform right? The profits will come from the long tail with upgrades to a large number of users and add-ons like new language support, etc.

According to me tools have practically zero chances of survival without communities rallying behind them.

This looks like such a cool idea. I think their primary concern must be to release a basic thing out first and then iterate over it. This way they will get both contributions and the product going.

Decide what your design goals are, define what code and quality goes in and out of your repo. Build something basic, release it and then iterate. Contributions and donations will follow. But if you are expecting mass adoption for a tool designed primarily for Clojure then, Clojure itself is in low adoption stage now. On top of that people who use clojure wanting to use will be fewer(Emacs + Slime really works well). So the initial payment model with only Clojure support may not bring them much money. This definitely has to be a platform like Emacs. And then the money can come from upgrades, major revisions.

Also it would have been nice if language used to extend this was Clojure itself.

We desperately need some modern GUI candy on an Emacs like editor which can be extensible by Lisp.

Out of curiosity, could you give an example of the software kickstarters you're talking about?

While in an ideal world, things like this could be free, in reality, the amount of time, effort, and people involved to build it in the time frame we're all wanting this means they need money and I'm not sure having rewards for $15 is going to accomplish that. That's the unfortunate reality of what is wanted, and what it takes to actually get there. :\

I'm talking about the recent PC game kickstarters that have been wildly successful such as: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2

I know that a game and IDE are not directly comparable, but they do have some things in common: 0 marginal cost and expensive to implement due to skilled labor requirement.

Textmate is 39 Euros or approximately $53.

Yes, and it is a trusted piece of software that has been around for ages and I can start using it right now.

Textmate is certainly cool. Then again, I've tweaked my Gedit to work like Textmate (and it's Free-as-in-Beer, and I can use it right now).

However, neither do what Light Table does. I'm also certain that there will be plugins for practically every language with a REPL, given enough time and the fact that it's open source.

I agree. I was eager to contribute but saw the page and didn't do anything. The rewards just seemed kind of stingy and the target seemed high. It's software, zero replication cost. Everyone who contributes should get a copy, and additional rewards should encourage additional generosity.

$200k is presumptuous, really. If you look at the top-funded technology projects, they all have low goals and excessive results: http://kck.st/J7kUqn

A high goal on Kickstarter /is like a high price/ and seems to trigger similar supporter/customer behavior.

When I saw the Light Table video on HN I flipped out. I want this! But when I saw this campaign something cooled my jets. I'm not sure I'd pay $50 if it was for sale right now. If I'm supporting its creation, and speculating at that, I need a more alluring price and/or a story that makes me forget about all price concerns.

If I were the creator, I'd seriously consider pay-what-you-want.

I would argue few are as ambitious either. To put this into perspective, the VS team is numbered in the thousands. We're talking a small team, but a team nonetheless, and it's hard to imagine being able to keep a team together for a year at less than 200k.

In this case, it's not a matter of presumption, it's a matter of knowing the reality of what is involved in actually building this thing.

If that's what it takes, by all means they should get it. I think the best advice then is to simply make the offer as remarkable as the ambition, so we all get on board.

Edit: I did't mean to suggest the goal is unreasonable or unattainable. I was just trying to explain the not-positive reaction I had to seeing it. Like shopping, not all price reactions are logical.

Similar experience.

If it's worth $50, give it to early-adopters/supporters for 50%, because unlike buying something for $50, they don't get it now (and there's many a ways for a project to not deliver). In this promotion phase, it's good to have exciting specials. (e.g. Notch's 50% beta Minecraft) Marginal cost of software is zero, more users = more evangelists etc.

Saying "license" looks non-free. I guess it includes the closed-source plug-ins (?). Good to clarify.

And they doing the opposite of this because they ask for double the price for early access, but currently it's the most popular option with 91 backers.

Dead horse but, without being able to see upvotes, Chris has no way of knowing if 2 people agree with this or 200. This is a wasted opportunity to help.

For what it's worth, I agree, especially on the t-shirt. I stopped reading after $20 because (a) I sure as heck don't want a tshirt and figured everything else would include it, but that doesn't matter because (b) I have no desire to "invest" more.

For awhile now though, there's been a $15 tier, and currently only 3 backers have chosen that option. Given the cost ineffectiveness of a t-shirt, particularly at a low price like $15, other than Chris' eternal gratitude, what sort of recompense would people want for that level of support? Almost 30 times the number of people went for the $100 beta access level, and only slightly fewer went for the $50 license, so apparently it's popular enough, but what's the best way to get support at a $10 or $15 level?

>but what's the best way to get support at a $10 or $15 level?

That's obvious: Include a full copy of the product at that level. Call it "no support" or something, but if you're going to be doing pay-what-you-want, then go ahead and start now.

He can obviously charge what he wants, but I think my parent was spot on. $50 is too much as the first tier where you actually get something [you want]. This is especially true considering the final product will be pay-what-you-want.

I think playing with support options or possibly upgrade paths ($20 get you free upgrades for 1 year, $50 gets you free upgrades for 2 years or somehting) might be a solution...though I'm not sure myself.

As of right now the $15 option has 0 backers. There is really no benefit to donate below $30 right now. I don't see why giving everyone beta access would be an issue. It gives some value to the lower tiers. Invite priority could still be from greatest to least but that last tier would see something eventually.

Being able to only pay the difference when buying a licence is another option.

I think its always hard for software kickstarters to offer anything interesting besides the actual product. As you've said, in this case, even merchandise doesn't really make sense.

The only tier, apart from a 15$ software tier(as its been standard), that would make sense to me personally(and financially) would be an option to vote on what language he creates support for first(after he's done with the initial Clojure version).

I agree. $50 is too much for a prototype. But I would gladly pay $50 if this is already a developed product and ready to be used.

Also this http://www.andrewbragdon.com/codebubbles_site.asp