Profile 3: Indiegogo

IndieGoGo

Michael Tubinis (mstubinis), Brian Escriche (Pharas)

Rationale

Indiegogo seemed like an overall interesting company and it would be interesting to see how they interacted with Open Source

Organizational Details

1. Is the subject of your profile a corporate entity?
   Indiegogo, Inc.
2. What type?
   “Funding Platform that does Seed Investments”
3. When was it founded?
   2008
4. By whom?
   Danae Ringelmann, Slava Rubin (CEO), Eric Schell
5. Original founder(s) still active?
   Yes
6. Publicly Traded? Since when? Initial Stock Price? Current stock price?
   It is a private company.
7. Has the company made any acquisitions? If yes, which companies, and what were their core products?
   No acquisitions that were mentioned
8. Has the company made any investments in other companies? If yes, which ones.
   Yes, $25,000 invested in UCreate3D
9. Number of Employees?
   80 employees
10. Where is HQ?
    965 Mission Street, 6th Floor San Francisco, CA 94103 United States
11. Does it have any other offices or locations?
    145 Hudson St, Tribeca, New York
12. Website?
    https://www.indiegogo.com/
13. Wikipedia?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiegogo
14. Does your organization file any annual reports? Please include links to any relevant documents (i.e. 990, Annual Report, Year in Review, etc...
    No annual reports that we could find

Communications

1. Does your subject participate in social media? If yes, please list a URL for each account, and reach within that community.
   Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Indiegogo (321,668 likes)
   Twitter - https://twitter.com/Indiegogo (218k followers, 18.6k tweets)
   Google+ - https://plus.google.com/+indiegogo (291k followers, 3.185  
   million views)
   Instagram - https://instagram.com/indiegogo/ (261 posts, 5,982 followers)
   Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/company/indiegogo (6,710 followers)
   
   
2. What communication channels does your subject use to reach their public? Briefly describe and include a URL for each.
   Blog - http://go.indiegogo.com/blog
   They also appear to use their Facebook and Twitter to help promote some of the various projects that get put up using their service.
   
3. Does your subject organize or participate in any conferences? If so, list them here, and provide links to any relevant sessions, keynotes, or content.
   http://connectedconference.co/ - Connected Conference - Indiegogo will be attending to host a crowdfunding competition

Technology/Product

1. Who invented, created, or sponsored the technology?
   Indiegogo was started in 2007 under the name Project Keiyaku by Danae Ringelmann, Eric Schell, and Slava Rubin. It officially launched in January 2008 at Sundance
   
2. What is the technology designed to do? How is it used?
   Indiegogo is meant to allow people to start up any idea they want and crowdsource the funds from other people. Generally speaking, Indiegogo is used to give ideas that normally wouldn’t get anywhere a chance in the light.
   
3. Who would benefit from using this technology?
   Anybody can start a campaign. More directly, people who need just a little more funding before they can launch their project.
   
4. What kinds of companies or organizations (stakeholders) might have been concerned about the development of this technology? Why?
   The biggest concern about crowdsourcing in general is that legitimate startups circumvent the need for Venture-capital. This is merely postponing it, as the startups hit the point at which they need to expand.
   

Does/Did an aspect of copyright law play a role in controversies about the technology? How?
There has been some controversy surrounding Indiegogo, but little to none of it has to do with copyright law. Namely Indiegogo now no longer has the same fraud guarantees.