Kickstarting a gadget is one thing, but what happens when you actively court your backers to help you design what you’re selling them?

That’s what Satarii, the team behind Swivl, is attempting with the second revision of its personal cameraman. Built for motion video capture, the device can rotate 360-degrees, giving users a powerful tool for use in a variety of recording applications, including teleconferencing and lecture recording.

But as unique as the original Swivl is, owners have had quite a few suggestions on how to improve it. Which is why Satarii is looking to tap into Kickstarter once again  — this time with a heavy focus on backer feedback.

“We find that the people who put up the dollars tend to be the ones with the best feedback,” Satarii co-founder Vlad Tetelbaum told me.

This feedback, Tetelbaum says, was essential to the inclusion of support for both the iPad and DSLR cameras, which Swivl owners practically begged Satarii for.

But what’s really interesting about the new Swivl is that Satarii isn’t quite done designing it yet. “The final feature set isn’t quite defined,” Satarii co-founder Brian Lamb said.

And this is where the Swivl community steps in once again. Rather than create a device that doesn’t consider what features buyers want the most, Satarii plans to ask them directly. What exactly do you want to see in the Swivl? A better battery? A smaller footprint? By speaking directly to customers, Satarii aims to create the perfect device. It’s crowd funding meets crowd design.

Sounds simple in theory, but there are a few concerns. For one, Swivl is a hugely complicated device. “We’re not a watchband. There are over 400 components here,” Lamb said.

For Satarii, this means lots and lots of product testing, which is why the team is launching Swivl’s Kickstarter over six months before it plans to deliver the final product. Welcome to the less sexy side of crowdsourcing: Sometimes it just takes a long time to get a device out the door.

Timeline concerns aside, what Satarii is attempting here is a complete upheaval of the traditional design process. And I’m eager to see how the project goes for that reason alone.

Photo: Ricardo Bilton/VentureBeat

This post was written by entrepreneur Dan Shapiro.

I want to buy some clothes. From From Holden (not a typo). And I can’t. Because they’re full of Kickstoppers.

More and more, I’m seeing exciting, fun projects on Kickstarter that make me think they’re being run by the cast of Community. Clever, well meaning, adorable, and more clueless than a general with a Gmail account.

In case you just landed from Planet Preorder, Kickstarter is a site where you can “back” projects and get “rewards” in return. For most of the civilized world, it’s a way to preorder stuff from teams that haven’t figured out how to make it yet.

I’ve backed a few projects before: Romo the Robot (in front of me), Stack Soap (in my shower), LadyCoders (in progress), DIY Spectroscopy Kit (in the mail), and Pebble (in schedule la-la land). They’ve turned out with varying degrees of success, and that’s OK – part of Kickstarter is that you’re taking a bet on a team to make something amazing happen.

But more and more I’ve been seeing the same set of mistakes that just leave me sighing wearily, hitting the back button, instead of kicking start.

Because examples are precious, I’m going to pick on the good folks from From Holden. I’m choosing them because a) they’re an egregious example of all three Kickstarter sins, and b) they’ve already raised 6x their target as of this writing, so I’m not going to stifle what appears to be a very well-intentioned team that seems to have a great product offering.

Kickstopper 1: Dodging Details

Are these shirts machine washable?

Are the T-shirts cut for your founder? Because my abdomen does not look like his.

“You built a venture backed firm that reached 275 million people monthly” – Who?

I realize that you want to sell a crap-ton of T-shirts.  And I know the answers to these questions may not endear you to everyone.  That’s OK.  As a startup, polarizing decisions are a virtue. If you’re selling dryclean-only T-shirts cut for Arnold Schwarzenegger, own it! You’ll get fewer returns and your target market will love you to bits. A dear friend of mine (who may choose to identify himself in the comments?) was effusing, without irony, about how much he loved a pair of jeans that is completely unwashable but, instead, must be frozen and thawed. If they found buyers, so will you.

But when you don’t address issues like these proactively, when your answer to “How do I know it will fit” is “Well if it doesn’t, send it back,” it makes me think you’re more concerned with having lots of customers than having happy customers.

Kickstopper 2: Not Totally Thinking This Through

“We’ve had dozens of people ask us – ‘what’s next?’, ‘Do we have any reach goals?’ …. well, we spent all night thinking about it and here is what we came up with.”

Maybe you said this solely for the purposes of dramatic illustration, but let me take you at your word. It is terrifying to me that you are now accepting real cash money for a product that you conceived of less than 24 hours ago. I’m not entirely sure what a beanie is (this?) but presumably it hasn’t received the same care and diligence for sourcing, design, and so on as everything else you’re offering. Or even worse, it has.

Kickstopper 3: Bull****ting About Risk

Quite recently, Kickstarter added a section called “Risks and Challenges.” They did this so you could reassure your customers that you don’t have any risks and that there are no possible challenges to delivering your product.

Or at least that’s what I surmise from reading your section on risks and challenges. You spend the whole (short) section talking about how awesome you are, then quite literally say that all you need is fabric.

Pro tip: If I, who know your business as well as I know the feeding habits of the Springbok Antelope, can come up with more risks than you can, you’re not doing it right.

Kick this nonsense to the curb

Come on, Kickstarters. It’s OK. We know  you’re excited. We know you’re new to this. We want to see you succeed. We don’t expect perfection.

We can forgive a lot, as long as you’re being straight with us.

This post originally appeared on Dan Shapiro’s blog. 

Hurricane Sandy has had an astonishing impact on the eastern seaboard of the United States. Dozens are dead. New York officials estimate that up to 40,000 people were left homeless by the storm. The FEMA trailers made famous in the wake of Hurricane Katrina could be on their way back in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

In the face of this disaster, crowdfunding portals such as Fundly and HelpersUnite are making an effort to rush aid to those in need.

One Fundly offering in particular speaks to the way crowdfunding could change disaster relief for the better. Sean and Shana Carroll did not have flood insurance and lost their home in the storm, which created a very desperate situation for them and their two young boys. Today they have successfully raised more than $15,000 from individuals using Fundly’s platform. That total could increase drastically with 56 days left in the campaign. The only cost to the family will be Fundly’s typical charge of 4.9% of total donations.

HelpersUnite, another charity-focused crowdfunding portal, has waived its typical offering fee for Hurricane Sandy victims. These victims can now crowdfund their own Sandy relief and only be responsible for credit card processing fees. These fees are deducted from the funding total only when a campaign is successful.

Christina Hermida of HelpersUnite has high hopes for the impact of crowdfunding on disaster relief.

“After the chaos subsides, emergency efforts and the mobilization of all the donations passes, those who lost their homes and need to rebuild their life find themselves at a loss,” she said. “Whether they have insurance or get help from family/friends, natural disasters are unexpected and nobody is fully prepared to lose it all. This is where crowdfunding comes in.”

HelpersUnite has also launched a parallel web site, SandyStatus.org, that acts as a crowdsourced information repository. The site draws from sources like Instagram, Twitter, and RSS Feeds and aggregates all of this data in one place.

Other crowdfunding campaigns want to gather funds to transfer directly to the Red Cross. Restore the Shore has leveraged the Selfstarter.us platform developed and open-sourced by the makers of Lockitron. To date, they have raised just short of $100,000, which isn’t bad for a campaign that declared a $25,000 goal. Donations undoubtedly will climb higher with 24 days left in the campaign. Those who donate are rewarded with apparel commemorating Hurricane Sandy, as well as a mention on the campaign’s site.

Additionally, there are concerns about people fraudulently trying to collect funds for disaster relief, and crowdfunding is certainly subject to this. However, portals are doing everything they can to ensure the sanctity of their offerings. Many of those seeking donations make their contact information available on offering pages, and portals have their own criteria for receiving donations as well. For example, HelpersUnite requires victims to post a video outlining the damage and needs of the individual or family.

Crowdfunding is establishing a niche in disaster relief while organizations like the Red Cross are coming under scrutiny. Some of those affected by Sandy have been less than satisfied with the response, including Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, who called the Red Cross’ response an “absolute disgrace.”

The Red Cross has been scrutinized before for everything from the misallocation of funds to a lack of efficiency and oversight. However, there are also numerous stories of the good they’re doing in the wake of Sandy. The question is whether we lean too hard on legacy organizations during crisis situations.

Crowdfunding is providing a valuable alternative and could create a healthy separation of powers for future relief efforts. Organizations like the Red Cross are often first on the scene of major disasters and can provide essential services in the short term, but crowdfunding can serve as a more direct way for victims to seek the monetary relief necessary for long-term stability.

Charles Luzar is the Director of Crowded Media Group and Crowdfund Insider, a blog dedicated to crowdfunding in the United States and around the world. Crowdfund Insider is helping to bring a global perspective to crowdfunding in advance of the JOBS Act becoming law in 2013.

Hurricane Sandy photo via keikolynn/Instagram

Its not often an entrepreneur cites Mr. Rogers as his role model, but Jase Wilson and Mr. Rogers have a shared mission. Both strive to make neighborhoods stronger.

Wilson is the founder of Neighbor.ly, a crowd funding platform for civic projects. Organizations can post projects on the site and raise money from the community. Neighbor.ly grew out of Wilson’s frustration at community meetings. A self-identified “city geek,” he has two degrees in urban planning and design. Time and time again, Wilson heard great ideas and proposals, but the common denominator was a lack of resources to make them happen. He decided to create an alternative channel for municipal fundraising.

“Cities are broke,” Wilson said. “People need civic projects- the economy, jobs, and quality of life all benefit when good civic projects happen. It’s a problem that needs innovation now. We built Neighbor.ly to help greenlight civic projects, even when the community budget is not so awesome.”

However, stalemates in urban improvement are not only a function of budgets. There are also bureaucratic and political obstacles that slow the whole process, which Neighbor.ly can circumvent. For example, a civic committee may not choose to fund a skate park or Women’s biking co-op, but if these groups can achieve their fundraising goals, their proposals could become a reality.

“This is very much a way to cut through bureaucracy,” he said. “We want to rewire public finance and help cities help themselves to get civic stuff done, without relying exclusively on debt. People can short circuit the process of voting by voting with their dollars directly on the site. This is more efficient.”

Neighbor.ly is still in the early stages and there are a small number of projects on the site. Most of them are located in Kansas City, Missouri where Wilson is based. So far, the platform has helped fund a bike sharing system, Google Fiber initiative, pedestrian walkway renovation, and a Streetcar line. Interested groups (never individuals) can submit their ideas for review and if approved, Neighbor.ly will work with them to figure out the campaign, set goals and timeframes, and hopefully find sponsors. Once the funds have been raised, it is up to the organization to implement them effectively.

So far, many of the proposals on the site are civic projects that could not get funded, but the platform also works for more alternative ideas and people that would rather pursue their visions outside of municipal bodies.

“This will help to usher in a new era of urbanism,” Wilson said. “This is not just about cities that need a million dollars to do basic things. This is about DIY cities, its taking an entrepreneurial, hacker approach to civic thing. It appeals to younger generation that wants to be more involved and have more participation than what it was afforded in past, but is not keen on idea of a traditional, electoral or ballot based vote in the government. There is distrust it in some cases, and rightly so. With all the talk about the deficit, social security, bankruptcy and unemployment, people realize the government may not provide what they need.”

Grassroots movements are picking up around the country and Wilson and his small team are picking up where Kickstarter leaves off by focusing on civic initiatives. In addition to a financial platform, they also provide their expertise and knowledge surrounding urban planning. Wilson said depending on how things progress with the economy, this type of model would be a useful alternative for keeping certain government services alive. Only time will tell.

Startup Spotlight is a new weekly series that features a company with a unique idea or story to tell. If your company would like to be considered, please submit an application at http://venturebeat.com/news-tips/.

Schoolyard has opened the gates to its platform that lets students raise money directly from alumni.

Traditionally when alumni want to support students at their alma mater, they donate to the university, which then distributes the money. This puts a large institutional middleman between the alumni and the students. Schoolyard’s vision is to provide an off-campus, online opportunity for alumni to fund students, groups, and projects they believe in. This can benefit students who are unable to procure university funding, as well as alumni who want to have more control and engage on a deeper level with their chosen causes.

On Schoolyard, students can create or join groups and create profiles for their cause, true to crowdfunding website form. They can then raise awareness for their organization, track membership, collect dues, plan events, communicate with the network, and raise money, as well as interact with interested alumni who may be able to offer guidance and other non-financial resources.

“Donating and fundraising for universities and students is broken right now,” said CEO Dan Gailey. “The real disconnect is because the schools don’t really understand how alumni would like to donate, and alumni don’t have an easy way to give back to the things that mattered most to them. We want to enable people to give to projects that resonate with their own beliefs and make it possible to see how their influence is making a positive impact.” 

Gailey was first inspired to create Schoolyard while leading a robotics group in college. His team attended a competition where they were overshadowed by better funded groups, and after the competition, he heard from alumni that wanted to support their project, but didn’t know how. After working for a few other startups, he decided to branch out and build Schoolyard.

Since beginning in May, Schoolyard has worked with 300 beta users across 32 universities, including Stanford, Cornell, CMU, and The University of Texas. The platform is available to students, alumni, and universities, with the ultimate goal of changing the way people donate to their alma maters.

Schoolyard is based in San Francisco.

The crowdfunding platform brings together accredited investors with promising startups looking to raise money. Investors can look at profiles of the featured companies and if interested, make small equity investments directly on the site.

All of the smaller checks are aggregated into one entity and given to the startup. By pooling together smaller investments, Funders Club essentially sets up a micro fund for each startup. This eliminates concerns that crowdfunding for startups could lead to an over-crowded cap table.

This model makes it easier for aspiring investors to find and invest in startups. They can make multiple small investments to diversify their portfolios. Smaller investors can also save time and money because Funders Club provides due diligence and contracts for them. It also gives investors who do not have access to startups the ability to form relationships. People from all over the world have signed up.

Since launching about a month ago, Funders Club has raised over $1.3 million on the site, including fully funding itself.

Read more on VentureBeat. 

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It’s the latest company to ride the wave of enthusiasm around crowd-sourced funding, a trend sparked in part by the recent JOBS Act legislation.

However, the JOBS Act hasn’t been promulgated yet by the SEC, and the company is actually taking advantage of  a different regulation, the little-used Regulation A, which lets you do public offerings under $5 million.

Fundrise launched last week, with the goal of raising $325,000 for its first offering, a property at 1351 H Street, in Washington DC. It has already raised $127,600 from more than 60 investors, co-founder Ben Miller told me.

Another part of the company’s vision is to let community residents partake in neighborhood development projects they care about, he said.

It’s Simple

The beauty of this Fundrise is how it cuts through oodles of red tape to get such deals done. Indeed, Miller says the reason he launched the company is because of the hassles he and his brother, Daniel Miller, had with  their existing real restate business. They were forced to raise money from private equity investors, often complex deals. Moreover, these investors had few ties with the communities they were investing in, and their interests were often unaligned.

Another elegance to Fundrise is that there are no middlemen, and that all investors are treated equally. If you invest $100 in a property, you have the same economic stake in the investment as the general managers of the deal themselves, i.e, folks like Miller. There are no “preferred share” versus “common share” differences, where one class of investors gets a slightly better deal than another. There are no liquidation rights. No first-out clauses. No broker-dealers. It really looks like the real deal. The only difference is that so-called “Class A” shares are owned by the managers of the deal, who have a few more governance and voting rights, as you might expect. Class B shares have the same economic rights, but no governance rights.

How is this possible?

Ben Miller, Fundrise co-founder

Miller tells me the company had to work really hard to qualify the offering with the SEC and register it with the securities regulators in Virginia and the District of Columbia. The idea for company actually started two years ago. It took his team eight months to get through the regulations. They even hired the guy who wrote the original Regulation A documentation in the 1990s. Surprisingly, when Miller was researching deals that were filed under Regulation A last year, he found only 22 filings, only three of which ended up being registered. In other words, the opportunity had been sitting there, vastly under-utilized.

But it’s not like anyone can do this. Here’s how it works: Miller and his team at Fundrise had to first use their own money — made in from prior real estate business — to buy the 1351 H Street property outright. That took up-front cash. They then turned around and used another site they’d built, called Popularize, to gather public opinion and input about the property. The found that there was local interest in high-end food market. So they leased the property out to the creators of  fashion company DURKL and Asian food Toki Underground to combine the fashion and food concepts. The space is now being renovated for a hybrid food and fashion market called Maketto. The money raised will be used to pay for the renovation and the interior infrastructure for Maketto.

According to the company, each share purchased entitles individual investors to a percentage of the Maketto holding company, which owns:

• Shares of ownership in real estate property (1351 H Street NE)
• 30% share of potential profits of Maketto
• Rights of ownership (Investor Benefits exclusive access to events, discounts, gear)

There are other perks, too. A $100 share gets you access to things like shareholder events and cocktail receptions. If you buy $1,000 in shares, you get extras like a 10 percent discount on all food at the new market, and some Limited Edition DURKL Maketto gear. And for $10,000, you get an annual food and wine dinner prepared by the food company’s chef.

On the face of it, Fundrise looks to be doing everything right. The only thing limiting it is the ability to scale. It is only available for now in Washington DC, and Virginia, and it’s got a ton of work ahead of it to expand into other markets (it has to fight through local regulation red-tape), and it also needs to raise money fast to afford to buy other properties that it can put on the platform. And of course, there’s still the large, established REIT industry, where investors who aren’t hung up on making specific investments in their community, can already make real-estate investments. Two questions remain: How compelling will community real estate investing really be for people? And will others beat Fundrise to a larger play nationally?

Now let’s get one thing straight from the start: I’m a huge fan of Kickstarter, Indiegogo and the number of similar crowdfunding sites that have sprung up recently to provide capital directly to exciting business ideas. There’s something very “American Dream” about being able to build one-on-one engagement with consumers — not to mention how nice it is for companies to have a viable alternative to traditional VC and angel capitalization.

That said, Kickstarter (or any other crowdsourcing platform) isn’t a viable option for all companies, and I believe it’s irresponsible at best to herald the company as a “people-first,” egalitarian solution for all business financing needs.

In particular, here are five reasons some business owners should not pursue crowdsourced funding:

Reason #1: You can’t offer a discrete product.

The most effective Kickstarter campaigns (like the $10+ million raised by smartwatch creator Pebble) are those that will eventually deliver a discrete product.  That product might be physical or digital in nature, but the end result is a deliverable that buyers can interact and engage with.

Unfortunately, this means that crowdfunding isn’t the right solution for every growing business.  If, for example, your company provides a service or produces an enterprise-level product (which may not generate the same public interest as consumer goods), you may be better off pursuing traditional financing options than investing the time needed to apply for and run a Kickstarter campaign.

Reason #2: You haven’t thoroughly defined your distribution channels.

There’s a reason established companies have entire departments dedicated to logistics. The process of packaging and shipping products economically can be incredibly complicated and often leads to unexpected frustrations for unsuspecting startups.

Consider the case of the “Desktop Jellyfish Tank,” a Kickstarter project that received 54 times more investment than its original goal. Although the project can be considered successful from a financial perspective, the Kickstarter page associated with the campaign is littered with comments from frustrated backers who have yet to receive their purchases.

The bottom line is this: No matter what type of product you’re raising funds for, what you’ve set for your investment goal or how you plan to eventually deliver your product, it’s imperative that you put a plan into place to manage packaging and shipping costs and ensure shipments are delivered correctly before you even begin to think of soliciting funds.

Reason #3: Your prototypes aren’t effective.

People who invest in crowdfunding campaigns do so believing that the product they’re investing in has been proven to work. In general, they’re willing to grant some flexibility for final product iterations and version changes, but they typically enter into the crowdfunding arrangement believing they’re going to wind up with a workable product. All of this means that you — as an applicant — better be able to deliver the goods in the end.

Just take a look at the failed example of the i+Case iPhone cover to see why this is so important. Despite featuring designs on its Kickstarter campaign page that led backers to believe that prototypes had been successfully created, subsequent issues with signal quality arising from the aluminum in the case made the product nearly worthless — resulting in hundreds of dissatisfied backers. Not a great way to build a solid business reputation!

Reason #4: You can’t commit time to customer service.

Running a startup is challenging, and no one is arguing that the demands on an entrepreneur’s time are anything less than monumental. But unfortunately, one component of a successful crowdfunding campaign is dedicating the necessary hours to providing appropriate customer service. And if you can’t do that, you have no business seeking crowdsourced funding.

So before you hit that big green “Start Your Project” button, think about how you’ll manage customer queries — whether your project winds up being hardly noticed or hugely successful. If you don’t have the resources available to handle customer service yourself, consider hiring a friend, relative, or outsourced worker to help you manage the load.

Reason #5: You aren’t prepared for over-funding.

One final consideration is that Kickstarter and similar sites allow projects to be over-funded. Not only does this increase the amount the company generates through its 5 percent cut, but it’s also great publicity to have projects go on to do exceptionally well through its system.

But for you, as a business owner, the picture can be far less rosy. If you haven’t put effective prototyping, distribution, or customer service systems into place, how will you handle these needs if your project receives significantly more interest than you expected? As you prepare your Kickstarter campaign, make sure you address your product’s scalability.

AJ Kumar is the co-founder of Single Grain, a digital marketing agency based in San Francisco. Single Grain specializes in helping startups and larger companies with search engine optimization, pay-per-click, social media and various other marketing strategies.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization composed of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC recently published #FixYoungAmerica: How to Rebuild Our Economy and Put Young Americans Back to Work (for Good), a book of 30+ proven solutions to help end youth unemployment.

Note: An earlier version of this story stated that Kickstarter takes a 4 percent cut of funds raised. The correct number is 5 percent.

Image via redfox/Flickr

Dareme.to is Kickstarter for “Dares.” Want a friend of yours to do something? Motivate them with some crowd-sourced cash.

iCrumz is a free cloud-based personal bookmarking platform where you can easily organize 100+ bookmarks on a single page without being crowded. Available from any computer, mobile phone or tablet.

Sofulo is a mobile application startup that is focused on future location social networking, answering the question “Where are my friends going to be later?”

Hitch Radio is a social media platform for global real-time broadcast radio airwave search.

Invested.in sees itself as a technology leader in crowdfunding; it partnered with BoostFunder to help power the site.

Vergence Labs is re-inventing the future of the human-computer paradigm as a stylish pair of glasses with a computer inside. The computer can record, share, and augment your reality.

Uncorkd is a SaaS platform that allows restaurants to create and manage interactive iPad menus.

Phone Halo creates software that keeps track of your valuables. Its products are Cobra Tag and Headset Trackr.

Mobber.net creates a social bomb based on hundreds of aggregated tweets and Facebook messages.

MoPix is giving content creators a framework for creating, distributing, and monetizing video.

Bottlenose is a new way to search and keep up with social networks.

Fancorps is a word-of-mouth marketing and brand-advocacy technology solution for consumer brands and organizations.

These startups are currently using Boostfunder’s platform to apply and raise up to a million dollars. Before they can be featured on the site, the BoostFunder team must approve the application. Once selected, accredited investors can check out the profile pages and reach out if they are interested in pledging investment. With all the uncertainty regarding the JOBS Act, no transactions actually occur; rather the site acts as a place where vetted startups and investors can size each other up.

Draper decided to create BoostFunder after witnessing how challenging it could be for fledgling companies to close deals with older, established investors. As someone fully immersed in the investment world, he wanted to lend a helping hand.

“When a startup begins, it often has no idea how to raise capital,” he said in an interview. “There is a big gap between a verbal agreement and the actual signing of paper. BoostFunder is a way to bridge that gap by providing a place to pledge investment immediately. It creates social pressure to follow up.”

Social pressure can be a powerful force. Dareme.to, one of the featured companies, combines social pressure with crowdfunding. By contributing small amounts of money into a pool, friends can motivate each other to carry out dares. The dares can be something silly, like walking into a business meeting wearing boxer shorts, or more constructive.

Founder Marc Chambers shared the example of his friend who liked a girl but was too afraid to ask her out. His friends said if he shored up his courage and invited her on a date, they would pay for it. They each threw $20 into the pot, and then he had financial as well as social incentive to go through with it.

Draper said he was drawn to Dareme.to because it was a fun product that he would use himself. Both he and Chambers were excited by the opportunity to get it off the ground.

“On BoostFunder, I am connected to a community of investors looking for cool ideas,” Chambers said. “When they say they are in, I can ask them right there what the terms are. Offline, this is very uncomfortable. You don’t know how to talk about it or if you should ask for money. On BoostFunder, it is easy to communicate.”

Asking for money is never easy, particularly if you’re looking for massive amounts of it. BoostFunder strives to take the awkward out of fundraising and turn verbal commitments into actual paperwork. So far, around $400,000 in pledges have been made.

Ferriss is all about impact. His #1 New York Times Bestselling books “The 4-Hour Workweek” and “The 4-Hour Body” deal with achieving maximum results in the most efficient way possible. In 2010, he channeled this ethos towards fundraising for charitable organizations by initiating his Give-Back Birthday campaign.

This year he chose Vittana as his cause of choice, a non-profit startup that raises micro loans for students through crowdfunding. The deadline is tonight at 11:59 pm PST, and Ferris will match every dollar given up to $60K. At the time of publishing, the total was at $94,822. Just over $5,000 to go.

Vittana gives loans to students in developing countries who are seeking to further their education. The emphasis is on one additional year of training that provides specific skills and trade development.

“The difference between basic literacy and being able to put in an IV needle, write a couple of lines of HTML, weld a metal joint, or speak English is profound,” said CEO Kushal Chakrabarti. “It’s a shift from farming in a cassava field to standing in front of a classroom filled with students. I can’t overstate the incredible economic and emotional transformation that occurs.”

On average, Vittana students see a 3x increase in income and have a 99% success rate paying back their loans. It achieves significant results with a small amount of time and money- the Tim Ferriss way.

Ferriss joined Vittana as an advisor last month after meeting Chakrabarti at an event. After hearing about the organization’s ability to turn a micro loan into a lifetime of benefit, he hopped on board and brought over 700 of his followers with him.

Chakrabati was formerly a software engineer for Amazon.com and described Vittana as a non-profit that “thinks like a tech company”. He tapped into Silicon Valley’s resources while fundraising and received money from Google and a team of angel investors.

With these investments, Vittana has grown to 22 programs in 12 countries and has sponsored over 4,000 students. The average loan is between $25 and $50, and users can search by multiple parameters depending on their interests. Some donors may only be interested in funding women, while others may focus on a particular country. Chakrabati chooses to funnel his loans towards aspiring teachers and programmers.

“The story you hear over and over again from parents is that they work so hard so their kids have a better chance at life,” Chakrabati said. “$4 of additional income a day, 365 days a year, for the remaining 40 working years of life is powerful.”

Chakrabati estimates that the $100,000 raised through the Give-Back Birthday will lead to $12 million in total impact.

Whether you’re interested in trading dollars for yen, donating to a school in Costa Rica, or buying a top-of-the-line office chair, tech companies are raising money across the board to help you do just that, as today’s funding news shows.

(And if you have funding news to share, send it to tips@venturebeat.com.)

Monex pays $100 million dowry to wed Schneider Foreign Exchange 

In a heart-warming display of cross-continental partnership, Mexican foreign exchange provider Monex acquired UK-based Schneider Foreign Exchange for around $100 million. The union will turn Monex Group into one of the largest commercial foreign exchange specialists in the world, turning over a combined $125 billion in currency transactions annually.

With this marriage, Schneider’s will assume the title Monex Europe. Its London office will become the European headquarters for Monex Group, as well as the point of deployment for an “aggressive” expansion of Monex into mainland Europe. Whether the bride wore white and the tune of the first dance have not been released, but rumors say the cake was Tres Leches accompanied by Spotted Dick. Read the press release.

Ask and you shall find: Ask.com buys early state startup nRelate

Ask.com announced the purchase of publishing support platform nRelate earlier today for an undisclosed amount. Ask.com‘s question-and-answer forum allows users to inquire about anything and everything and receive answers from the community. Curious about that weird rash on your leg? Wondering what to feed your ailing iguana? Uncertain as to whether a ninjato or a katana is a better weapon? Ask.com may be able to help. nRelate provides plugins for publishers, bloggers, and media outlets that increase traffic by providing targeted article recommendations. Both companies hope to benefit from the others’ expertise in content discovery. Read the press release.

Fundly customers raise over $250 million for causes without selling a single cookie

Crowd-funding platform Fundly passed the 25,000 customer mark and enabled customers to raise more than $250 million for social causes.

Back in the old days, raising money for good causes was primarily a bake-sale-car-wash-black-tie-dinner enterprise. Now that crowd funding is all the rage, fundraisers can meet their goals without ever tying on an apron or lifting a sponge. Major organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Teach for America have partnered with Fundly, as well as political candidates and small grassroots campaigns.

The company is backed with $8.2 million invested by Morgenthaler Ventures, Kapor Capital, and other VC firms.

Needle closes $10.5 million round to recreate in-store experience for online shoppers

Online shopping can be a challenge, which is why e-commerce company Needle raised $10.5 million in a second round of funding. Without the opportunity to grill an electronics store employee or receive a friend’s constructive analysis of your denim-coated backside, purchasing decisions are mostly guesswork. Needle strives to recreate in-store retail experiences by linking certified product experts and fans of brands to customers to provide guided shopping assistant using chat, video, or voice. The round was led by Shasta Ventures and Rembrandt Venture Partners and will be used to accelerate the company’s social selling platform and expand the pool of experts. Read more on VentureBeat: Needle sales chat gets big name retailer, looks for new funding.

Generation Y to have video network backed by $1.75 million and Oprah

Anything Oprah touches seems to turn to gold, which bodes well for video news network #waywire. The startup raised $1.75 million in seed money to launch a video network geared towards Generation Y. It will feature original, syndicated, and community-sourced content intended to serve and inspire an audience raised on technology. #waywire will launch in beta later this summer. First Round Capital and Innovation Endeavors led the round, with participation from Oprah, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, and Lady Gaga’s manager, Troy Carter. Read more on VentureBeat: #waywire, a video news network for Gen Y, gets backing from Eric Schmidt and Oprah.

[Top image credit: ChrisGoldNY/Flickr]

Crowdfunding has become an increasingly popular option for independent game developers who would otherwise be unable to finance the projects they are passionate about. Senior Vice President of Origin at EA David DeMartini says it’s incredibly healthy for the gaming industry. “The public support for crowdfunding creative game ideas coming from small developers today is nothing short of phenomenal,” he says.

By taking advantage of EA’s generosity, crowd-funded games stand to reach Origin’s growing audience of more than 12 million users worldwide. However, EA says the offer applies only to fully-funded, complete, and ready-to-publish titles, and developers will still have to provide ongoing support.

Some high-profile indie developers seem already on board. inXile Entertainment CEO Brian Fargo, who recently raised nearly $3 million on Kickstarter to create a sequel to his classic post-apocalyptic survival game Wasteland, calls EA’s offer a “major economic bonus for small developers.”

“Crowd-funded projects are like the ‘people’s choice awards’ — a way for gaming fans to express what they want to buy and play,” adds Pinkerton Road’s Jane Jensen, who also recently met her Kickstarter goal for a new adventure title called Moebius.  “It’s great to see a big publisher like EA acknowledging that and opening up distribution opportunities for these games.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Image via Order of the Stick

It was big news when a Kickstarter project broke the $1 million dollar mark for the first time on February 9th. More amazingly, two projects shattered that record in the same day. Now another project, The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive, has passed $1 million in pledges. This all begs the question: is this just a coincidence, or has Kickstarter hit an inflection point in its growth, with a lot more seven-figure projects coming in the near future.

Graph via Kickstarter

To understand the site’s recent success, it helps to look at its growth over the last two years. Kickstarter’s Fred Benson made this graph, which shows the acceleration in new backers who are funding Kickstarter projects. It’s the kind of chart venture capitalists drool over, because while it might not be the hockey stick growth of a site like Pinterest, each one of these new backers represents someone who was willing to give cold hard cash through Kickstarter, which collects five percent on every successful funding.

While only around 44 percent of projects on Kickstarter succeed, 89 percent of backers have funded a successful project. That’s the kind of positive reinforcement that turns many people into serial backers. As I wrote after my fiancée completed a successful Kickstarter project, a full third of the people who donated were complete strangers, but looking closer, many of those contributors seemed to have backed a dozen or more different projects.

There is another factor at work here, which is that more established artists are turning to Kickstarter. Both Order of The Stick and Double Fine Adventures, which has now passed the $2 million mark on Kickstarter, are projects from creators who spent years building up their fanbases. It has led to internal debate at the company. “There is some level of conflict here — we used to have a no-businesses approach,” said co-founder Yancey Strickler. “But, really, this was just a guy with an idea, and design is art. We limit Kickstarter to projects. Startups come to us when they don’t want to go to venture capitalists, and we say no, it has to be a project. It’s complicated.”

Brian Fargo

Double Fine Productions turned video game funding practices upside down last week when it raised more than $1.75 million through the crowd-funding site Kickstarter in record time. That money will go toward the development of a new adventure game that would otherwise never have been made.

Lack of funding has been putting a squeeze on a lot of mid-sized game development companies, but crowd-funding might turn that trend around.

“This could bring a wonderful dynamic change to our industry,” said Brian Fargo, chief executive of InXile Entertainment, in an interview. “It is a very exciting time to be a developer again.”

Fargo has been making games since the 1980s, first at Electronic Arts, then at his own company Interplay Productions, and now at InXile. He owns a variety of properties that are beloved by gamers who grew up with titles such as The Bard’s Tale. His only problem is that he doesn’t run a gigantic video game publisher.

He recently relaunched The Bard’s Tale — originally developed in 1985 and remade in 2004 — on the iPhone and saw an outpouring of appreciation from nostalgic fans. The game made it into the top 10 ranks on the App Store in December. A full remake of the game might be possible if Fargo can raise the money through crowd-funding sources.

But before he takes on The Bard’s Tale again, Fargo is thinking of dusting off his game Wasteland and funding it through Kickstarter. He wants to hear more fan feedback before starting the funding process, but he is seriously contemplating raising money through the crowd-funding process.To do the game right, he would need more than $1 million.

“In almost every single interview I do, the game press asks me if I’ll ever do Wasteland again,” Fargo said.

The 1988 version of Wasteland was a post-apocalyptic role-playing game with large parties. After it came out, Interplay switched over to making Fallout games as single-player titles But Fargo has wanted to make an online multiplayer version of Wasteland for the Internet, where large parties can come together and play the game. For now, Fargo doesn’t think that Kickstarter is big enough to fund big-budget console games.

Gamers might love a particular franchise so much that they will volunteer their own money to invest in the project. And the feedback that comes from something like Kickstarter could give a developer confidence that their game property has legs. If you try to raise money on Kickstarter and the project goes nowhere, that’s a pretty good indication that nobody wants to play that game.

InXile has a variety of properties that could use funding and 15 employees. Fargo shopped Wasteland around to publishers, but they were risk averse and really wanted to games that had a chance to rake in $1 billion in sales. If he does the project on his own, Fargo can make the game edgier, with a gritty world full of moral dilemmas for the players.

“The game industry has separated itself into the huge blockbuster companies and the independent developers in their garages,” Fargo said. “But it’s pretty hard to be in the middle. Is there any business model left standing for the mid-size developers?”

The important thing about crowd-funding is that it gives game companies in the middle an option that can preserve their creative freedom. Indie game developers might also turn to Kickstarter, but it could prove tough raising a ton of money for a game project if the developer is a relative unknown.

Sana Choudary, chief executive of the game startup accelerator YetiZen, said that she had tried crowd-funding with her accelerator’s startups and had a harder time raising money that way than through a conventional investing or publishing deal.

“Most crowd-funding platforms will tell you that the initial impetus must come from the developer’s own network,” Choudary said. “What they don’t tell you is to get to the point where they push the game to their own private lists of backers you need a lot of backing activity. This might still be the best route to go for traditional game developers and lifestyle businesses not wanting to lose control but the skills that often allow some developers to succeed at this kind of marketing are different than the type of skills needed to make game businesses” worthy of an exit.

On the other hand, famous game developers with older properties that can be remade into new games might prove very popular.

“Crowd-funding might give a second life to a whole class of companies,” Fargo said. “You can get a lot more creativity and innovation and you don’t have to kowtow to a major publisher.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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“Essentially, we’ve taken our favorite elements of crowdfunding platforms and provided them for groups of friends instead” Crowdtilt chief executive and co-founder James Beshara told VentureBeat in an email.

Crowdtilt’s focus is on smaller groups of people who are pooling their money for a common goal, such as friends who want to rent a beach house. The process is what you’d expect if you’ve ever used Kickstarter, a popular crowdfunding site. The person who creates the campaign sets a “tilt” point at which the campaign will hit its funding goal and creates an expiration date. Right now the service is completely free, but that could change as the site grows.

Crowdtilt, while similar to Kickstarter, has a different setup and doesn’t cater to the same market. With Kickstarter, you are often investing a new product, company, or project and you reap some tangible benefit, be it a new gadget, a piece of art, or a screening of film. Kickstarter also has an application process to weed out certain projects. Crowdtilt lets you fund campaigns for whatever reason and at whatever amount your choose, no limits.

Group funding for charitable causes was Crowdtilt’s original purpose, but Beshara pivoted the company to what it is now. People have responded well and flocked to the site for their group funding needs. The site now has more than 3,000 users.

Crowdtilt originally started in Austin and launched a beta version of the service several months ago. The site is now available to the public and the company has moved its offices to Palo Alto, California.

The agency is considering whether to let fast-growing companies use social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to raise funding by tapping thousands of investors for small amounts of money, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The move is part of a larger review by the Securities and Exchange Commission into whether to ease decades-old constraints on how companies can issue new shares to the public. The new funding techniques, known as “crowd funding,” could usher in a new era of capital abundance for Silicon Valley’s startups.

The technique has spread from artists looking to fund their creative works to entrepreneurs trying to bootstrap companies without giving up control to venture capitalists. Typically, a company might raise $100,000 from an internet site where users could sign up to buy $100 worth of shares.

Crowd funding could be a cheap source of cash, competing with angel investors who specialize in giving seed rounds to start-ups. Since the amounts of money are small, the downside risk isn’t too bad for investors. But the trick will be in protecting the public from scammers who have no intention of following through on promises.

Crowd funding could also be appealing to larger companies that are popular with consumers. Those companies wouldn’t have to go through all of the onerous legal disclosures required under securities laws. Mary Schapiro, chairman of the SEC, said in a letter to a law maker on Wednesday that the agency has been discussing crowd funding with small businesses and state regulators. A petition allowing crowd funding up to $100,000 has been backed by 150 organizations and individuals.

In 1992, the SEC allowed small companies to issue shares valued as much as $1 million to ordinary investors without full disclosure of financial information and other legal limits. That effort was abandoned in 1999 because of fraud concerns.

[image credit: Small Business Trends]