From the Sarah Goodman-directed film Hidden Driveway, financed in part by Kickstarter.
Just look at what Canadians have made: Insulin, the electric cooking range, and, how could we forget, the bust enhancing Wonderbra. The creators behind all of which needed time and capital to see their ideas to fruition.
Today, thanks to the Internet and crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, there are avenues beyond the bank and granting agency where entrepreneurs and artists can go for a little start-up coin. The only catch: establish a fundraising goal and meet it before a target date–otherwise you get nothing.
Hidden Driveway, a short film by Sarah Goodman that premiered at TIFF last week, was financed in part by a campaign on Kickstarter. Which got us poking around the popular crowdfunding site for examples of other Toronto-based projects. Surprisingly, we didn’t turn up much. But among that group, one initiative has proved a model Kickstarter success story. That would be Surf Easy, a USB stick that enables users to access websites that are blocked or restricted on certain computers (music to the ears of disgruntled employees can’t access Facebook and YouTube at the workplace).
In only three days, the company reached their funding target of $12,500; by the time the campaign was completed, they’d taken in a whopping $69,404–six times their goal. They also managed to pre-sell 15,000 units in the process.
“I had backed projects on Kickstarter before and I think it’s a great way to get feedback from consumers,” says Chris Houston, the founder of the company behind SurfEasy.
“It also allows you to see if there’s an interest out there for the product.”
Houston, who has a background in product marketing, thought up the idea for SurfEasy out of concern for his own security online, after realising how many different computers and internet connections he was using on a weekly basis.
“I was popping in and out of Wi-Fi hotspots and using over 30 different internet connections a week. I realized that my data was not secure and that there was room for some sort of a device to solve this problem.”
Aside from enabling users to bypass censorious firewalls, the USB key also encrypts all your web browsing, thereby preventing anyone from monitoring your activity online.
“I wanted to make it something that was easy to use, something my mother could use,” Houston says. “The great thing about SurfEasy is that you don’t have to install any software onto your computer. You can leave the computer untouched and all the information stored on the web browser is kept private.”
As for Hidden Driveway, it was writer/director Goodman’s first stab at fictional films after making two highly-regarded feature-length documentaries (Army of One and When We Were Boys). It’s the story of two young brothers trying to make sense of family dynamics when they feel left in the dark. Alex, 11, and Chaz, 14, get a call from their mother, who unexpectedly announces a family meeting. As they walk home, they argue about what could possibly be wrong with their parents.
Goodman wanted to start with “a very simple and short film… something I could chew, a practice run for a longer feature I intend to start filming next year,” she says.
“I didn’t want to have to spend a long time waiting for grants to come through,” she says, “so Kickstarter was really attractive as I could implement it immediately.”
Goodman raised over $4,700 through Kickstarter, slightly more than her initial goal of $4,600; she also received a Bravo! Fact grant. Like Houston, Goodman believes the presence of her project on Kickstarter created a level of excitement around the film.
“That was an unexpected benefit from the campaign, having a web presence that created an interest in the project, a sense that it’s real. In particular, for those people that gave backing to our Kickstarter campaign, it was great for them to feel part of the process. It gave them a bit of a narrative of how tough it actually is to make a film.”
Other Toronto-based Kickstarter campaigns aren’t winning the same support. The Life and Times of Shawn Tompkins, a proposed documentary film about the martial arts coach, has yet to receive any pledges toward its rather ambitious target of $45,000. Meanwhile, an art installation called Shed scheduled for the next Nuit Blanche in Toronto has only pulled in a mere $100 of its $2,000 goal so far with four days to go.
