What is Indiegogo?

After Steve told us we were switching crowd-funding platforms we were a little nervous, mainly because we had been researching Kickstarter for a while and learnt about it in a lot of detail. Steve explained that Indiegogo was better for the business because there was no working prototype yet and it was more suitable for the the business. 

I then researched the main differences between Kickstarter and Indiegogo: 

Kickstarter

There are three main differences and a bunch of smaller ones with Kickstarter:

1. “An all or nothing” funding model. In other words the funding goal gets reached, or the project founder gets nothing. While not always obvious, this is a good thing. We'll talk about why further down.
2. Launching a project if you're outside the US is harder.
3. Kickstarter only funds “creative projects”, that is projects where one specific thing (film, game, book etc) will be made. No “fund my college tuition” or “kickstart my new business”.

IndieGoGo

IndieGoGo aims to be a more flexible site which allows people from around the world over longer periods of time for basically anything (not just creative works). Unfortunately, IndieGoGo has a number of challenges that weigh against these benefits, namely:

1. They have a much smaller community of backers (think around 1/6th the size).
2. There is much less “buzz” around them. Many journalists keep tabs on new projects coming out of Kickstarter looking for story ideas. Kickstarter projects come with a certain amount of credibility that IndieGoGo has yet to match.
3. By avoiding the “all or nothing” model exclusively, backers have a much lower sense of urgency to fund projects. It becomes more like a donation, than something that makes a difference to whether the project lives or dies. This is HUGE, and massively underestimated.

As a general piece of advice, when comparing Kickstarter Vs IndieGoGo, it's worth going for Kickstarter if:

• Your project is eligible (ie you're creating something specific)
• You're reasonably confident you can rally the funds together within 60 days or less
• You're in the US, or are willing to do the work to get US representation for your project.

This Comparion chart shows the main differences between Kickstarter and Indiegogo

For Catnav Live, Indiegogo seems to be the best fundraising platform. The fact that you don't have go 'all or nothing' is a huge advantage over Kickstarter. However, there are disadvantages to this. 

The fact CatNav Live isn't an American based company means that going with Kickstarter might be more of a risk than Indiegogo. 

We think with the right marketing and social media advertising we will be able to create the same awareness for the project regardless of which platform we choose to go with, eve if Kickstarter is more credible with the media. 

Overall, there seems to be more advice and help available from Indiegogo as well as more flexibility which will be helpful for us both when we launch the campaign. 

Information Sourced from: http://crowdfundingdojo.com/articles/kickstarter-vs-indiegogo-choosing-your-crowdfunding-platform