I’m not sure how many of you have been with us long enough to remember, but 2.5 years ago Jason Seiden and I put together a job search prep course called Found Your Career. We did it for two reasons. First, we saw a need. Most entry level job seekers need some serious help. Second, Jason was looking for a way to productize his content, and I was looking for a way to develop new revenue streams (since selling advertising to employers in the middle of a recession is kind of hard). We tested the waters with some introductory content and got a good response, so we went all out and developed an awesome course for job seekers. We charged $152 for the course, and it actually sold pretty well in its first week. It did ok over the next month or so. Then the sales dried up. We learned the hard way that selling products to entry level job seekers is really tough, which is why we’ve finally decided to make Found Your Career free–you can find all of the lessons here. If I were to do it all over again, I would have used Kickstarter to build support for the project before actually building the course. Kickstarter is a platform for funding creative projects. They’re based in New York, NY, and they’re making all kinds of awesome things happen by matching up creative people with customer/funders.

Give Your Career a Kickstart

Let’s say Kickstarter was around when Jason and I were coming up with the idea of Found Your Career. We could have posted our project on the site with a specific fundraising goal. Let’s say $10,000. We’d offer details about the project, and we’d offer rewards for certain levels of pledges. Maybe $30 would get you access to the course. $50 would get you the course and a signed copy of Jason’s book. $100 would get you a half hour phone call with me or Jason. $2,000 and we’d fly you out to Chicago and spend the day with you developing a job search plan. The project would run for a set amount of time, and if we reached our goal, everyone who pledged would get charged and get their rewards. If we didn’t reach our goal, nobody would get charged and we’d can the project. The best way to get a feel for this is to take a look at some real projects. For instance Minimal Inc. raised nearly $1,000,000 for their iPod Nano watch, EFFALO is trying to raise $5,000 to build software to help people make geodesic structures, and Nathan Bergey has already raised enough to fund his project of building lamps that light up when the International Space Station is in your view. You really should spend some time browsing Kickstarter and maybe even try funding a few projects that interest you.

The range of projects on Kickstarter is pretty amazing. At least for now, they limit projects to “the creative fields of Art, Comics, Dance, Design, Fashion, Film, Food, Games, Music, Photography, Publishing, Technology, and Theater,” but you can find a way to fit almost anything into one of those categories. Since there’s so much potential for abuse on a platform like Kickstarter, they have some pretty strict guidelines and a seemingly exhaustive FAQ. I’m completely amazed by what Kickstarter already is, and I can’t wait to see it keep growing. If you’d like to be part of that growth and you love the idea of helping make creative projects happen, you have to take a look at Kickstarter’s Jobs page. Right now they have two positions posted–Designer and Office Manager. Both look like they could be great fits for new or recent grads, so check them out.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• Kickstarter.com
• Jobs at Kickstarter
• Kickstarter’s Team
• Kickstarter’s FAQ
• Kickstarter’s Blog
• Kickstarter Guidelines

Have you used Kickstarter?

We've identified Kickstarter as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• administrative
• all employers
• arts
• design
• graphic design
• investment
• New York
• user experience
• web development

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