How Font Awesome 5 Became Kickstarter’s Most Funded Software Project (opens in new tab)

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.

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!

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.

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.

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]

Same. Backing the pro-version was a no-brainer given how much I've used the icons in the past. It's such a good product I want to give them money even if it was free.

Really appreciate the kind words!

Yep. I was really excited to see I could still get into the early backer Pro reward.

A little bit annoyed about the theme license price ($600!) but I guess I can buy that if it ever gets to that.

I am sure a very small price to pay if you are making money off Font Awesome.

Exactly. For 20 bucks I get to support them for their awesome font work, plus get some extra perks (which I already forgot what were).

Ditto. Plus the video was adorable.

My thoughts exactly! I just made my pledge, with the hope that they'll clear the $1M stretch goal.

Yup felt the same and can't wait to get a whole bunch of new icons to use in my project.

same, backed the project as well.

Fair enough! We're going by Kickstarter's definitions:

- Most funded: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/s...

- Most backed: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/s...

I'll link those up in the article. Good point.

Kickstarter considers games a separate category from software, and lumps all games (video games, table top, card games, gaming hardware etc.) into one larger category with subcategories.

> I'm actually very slightly surprised to hear that there's no non-game software kickstarter that's raised more than $891,989.

I'm not that surprised, big parts of crowdfunding are excitement, interesting stretch goals and goodies (for higher tiers to increase the average pledge[0]), these are relatively easy for games: the audience is huge, it gets excited quickly (though it can turn on a dime) and values collectibles and "achievements".

Even more so for something which basically only targets web developers.

[0] Hex and Camelot Unchained have both raised over 2 million with half the backers of FA5.

$5M https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual...

I assume they mean most OVER-funded as a percentage. 3432% would be pretty hard to achieve for most already high game budgets.

I think they knew going in from the survey's they did there was going to be huge support. The excellent and slick video they shot lends a perceived value to the product. When you need to capture the viewer's attention for a few minutes, it pays to hire some pros.

It depends how much you are trying to raise. We just did a survey of 100 campaigns, and the majority of successful small campaigns (that raised <$25k) spent under <3k on the video. Mind you this was for Hardware campaigns. It's only for campaigns that raise >$100k that you see average video spends above $10k

It part of the "lie" that kickstarter has become.

The "goal" is raising $30k, yet they're willing to spend half that on a video.

There's no incentive to have a high goal, in fact the lower the goal the better, you get to look better "We raised 50x our goal!" and it secures the kickstarter is a "success".

Eh, I mean this is a similar idea to a non-profit using fund to advertise itself to gain a larger war chest. On the surface it sounds wrong, when you donate to a charity you want the money to contribute to the cause. However If you care about the cause, and greater funds can improve it better... then doesn't it actually make sense? In for-profit business, people don't blink an eye at spending money to grow it...

Somewhat surprisingly, I've normally found this view to be more common with US based folks. I personally prefer icon fonts for a large swath of reasons, but other folks prefer SVG. So we're making both. :)

Version 5 is going to include a full SVG framework.

Why is that?

It comes from using Kickstarter primarily as a marketing platform and as a funding source secondary. These campaigns are created with an insignificant "funded" threshold knowing very well that they'll be funded a few hours into the campaign. See for example the Reaper Bones [1] annual campaigns that set a very low bar, expecting very well to hit a million from the get go. It's a great way to get many eyeballs on your project and make a few bucks as well.

1: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1513061270/reaper-minia...

It's a kickstarter goal, it doesn't have to be all of your funding and why not set the goal low?

Think of it more like a minimum to make the effort worthwhile. If you can get $30k on kickstarter you can probably get a lot more from other channels.

What value do you get from setting a high goal?

Actually, we think the best way for us to keep making Font Awesome Free as good as it can be is to figure out how to be sustainable so we can put more time into Font Awesome.

And the already-funded 38 stretch goal icon packs give 10 each back into Font Awesome Free. So that's another 380. That means FA Free will be over 1,000 icons in version 5 (up from 675). Also, the $1M stretch goal makes the SVG framework and all the code open source.

I wasn't aware of it before your comment, and now I'm confused, just sounds like buying 'Pro' would damage workflow.

Say I have a project on Github, and I want to add some of the new icons I buy - I have to leave the icons out of the repo, and deal with whatever that means for deployment?

Already well known and they're able to push people to the Kickstarter from their site: http://fontawesome.io/cheatsheet/

Ehh. Assholes use this logic all the time.

I agree. Having something a bit polarizing is good news.

They promote the campaign on their site ( http://fontawesome.io/ ). A lot of people (including me) already visited the site occasionally to take a quick glance on the cheatsheet. I think that's probably where the most traffic originated from.

We tried doing some Facebook advertising ourselves, but it didn't go so well. Jellop has done better, but they're REALLY great for products that have mass appeal.

With our narrower audience, the Font Awesome website has been the biggest driver.

Yeah, terrible timing. A CNAME record conflicted with our new SSL cert - renewing the cert forced us off VIP on to SNI (per GAE's deprecation schedule for VIP) and the CNAME we had in place for VIP then prevented DNS from resolving properly - at least that's what I think happened ! (videopixie engineer :)

They're back! Was just a hiccup. :)

Yeah, it shouldn't be confusing! We extended early backer pricing for the whole Kickstarter, so the Personal / SMB license would have been $40.

Only difference is who can use the license. Student license is for students only. But I'm recommending students just get the full Personal / SMB license since it's more flexible in the end and a better price.

(Non-profits should ABSOLUTELY get the Student / NP license as it's good for any organization size and just $20).

Great that you're excited about the SVGs! We wanted to add more formats so as many folks as possible could use them. For a lot of folks, icon fonts are the way to go. But other folks want SVG. We get that, so we're adding them!

Yep, we definitely took inspiration from there!