We decided to go with Kickstarter because they have the most traffic, and it's growing every year (https://www.quantcast.com/kickstarter.com/traffic)... but they have the most restrictions. Here are some of their rules that are causing us issues:
- Kickstarter cannot be used to fund software projects not run by the developers themselves.
- No contests, raffles, coupons, or lifetime memberships.
- Kickstarter cannot be used to sell equity or solicit loans.
- No product simulations or photorealistic renderings.
Because my partner and I are not developers, it made us question if having a developer on the team is enough or if we are supposed to make him a co-founder, which is a problem because we are using a Ukraine firm, and we are paying them with cash (You can't really be a co-founder unless you are taking significant amount of risk for the company, and receiving cash compensation is not considered taking a significant amount of risk.)
My partner said we should offer some sort of coupons as one of the rewards, but Kickstarter doesn't allow that.
I wanted to offer equity for some of the higher level rewards, but Kickstarter doesn't allow that.
Since we didn't have the product built yet, we asked our animator to put together a realistic animation of how the app would work based on the visuals I've put together, but Kickstarter doesn't allow that.
What's weird is that I've seen plenty of realistic renderings of the products on Kickstater so... what's up with that?