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The guys talk about Kickstarter and who exactly is responsible for when campaigns fail to provide rewards to backers. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: And welcome to our Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for what? For ourselves, right? We’re just going to take the money and leave. MATT: I don’t know if that’s allowed under their terms of service, but how much are we looking to raise? NASIR: Well, it’s for our podcast – to help us fund the podcast. As far as how much we’re looking to raise, I think I would say a minimum of $1.00 but maximum $2 billion. MATT: The minimum is the important thing because, if you set your minimum and, in order to actually get the proceeds from Kickstarter, you have to reach your minimum. If not, then nothing happens. NASIR: Oh, okay. MATT: So, yeah, we’ll just have to make sure that we’re following the rules that Kickstarter has on its terms of service and this is actually what it truly says. “Don’t break the law. Don’t lie to people. Don’t offer prohibited items. Don’t victimize anyone. Don’t spam. Don’t harm anyone’s computer. Don’t abuse other users’ personal information.” NASIR: Yeah, I think we can do that. MATT: Sufficient for me. But let’s say we do get that investment, well, I guess, first, let me backpedal a little bit. We have to offer some sort of reward or benefit in order for people to give us the money. NASIR: I already have a list. Like, for example, okay, if you pay us $5.00, then you get a free download of our episode. If you pay us $10.00, then you get to listen to an episode before it comes out and that’s about, like, six hours or so before. We can go on from there. I have a lot of ideas. MATT: Yeah, all very good, of course. NASIR: Yeah, all very good. MATT: So, if we do that and then people give us money, we don’t fulfil those, I mean, those would be easy rewards to fulfil. But, oftentimes, people start these Kickstarters and have these rewards. A lot of times, if it’s product-based, it’s going to be based on giving them some form of the end product and, what happens when the people that ran this individual Kickstarter don’t end up giving the rewards to the people they’re supposed to, I guess that’s what we’re going to talk about here – the issues behind that – because it happens. I don’t know what percentage of the time it happens but it happens, I’m sure, I was going to try to ballpark a percent but I’m just not even going to do that. NASIR: I mean, obviously, I think most people are honest but, at the same time, it’s not about honesty. It’s also about how many projects just fail. I think our perspective may be a little warped because we tend to hear those stories more often than not. I mean, we’ve had personal experiences with our clients who have either done campaigns or have had relations to it and so forth. It’s not uncommon for just a group of people to go in there with positive, wholesome intentions. They raise the funds and they find out, “Oh, there’s some kind of kink in the production,” or whatever and they need more funds and it just falls apart or one of the partners leaves and doesn’t go anywhere. That happens. I mean, that happens with any project which shows you there’s always going to be a time where you need more money. Sometimes, what you raise in the Kickstarter campaign maybe not be enough. MATT: Yeah, that’s a good point. I don’t think there’s too many people out there that are just trying to scam the system and get free money. Maybe that guy who did the Airbnb thing. NASIR: Of course. We covered that a while ago, that guy that was overstaying in an Airbnb also had onne failed Kickstarter campaign where he didn’t do anything with the money and then he was working on a second one, right? MATT: Right. It was a sizeable amount, too. I think it was $40,000. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: But, yeah,