What’s next for Indiegogo after leadership shakeup #makerbusiness
The iBackpack, which raised over $700,000 on Indiegogo and failed to deliver a product. The FTC is now investigating.
CEO David Mandelbrot has left Indiegogo amidst a report of multiple departures in what seems to be a staff shakeup. Mandelbrot had been with the company for 5 years and at the helm for over 3. TechCrunch noted that he oversaw key partnerships established with GE and Lego, but that there are still challenges ahead.
Crowdfunding was once hailed as democratizing production and investment, but has started to gain a reputation closer to gambling. Businesses in this realm are trying to dampen this negative perception. Kickstarter and Indiegogo are working to increase viability of campaigns by assigning professional staff to help manage successfully backed initiatives.
Indiegogo is considered to be the more flexible, but also more unreliable of the two leading crowdfunding platforms. Kickstarter is the biggest of the bunch, larger in just about every available metric. Indiegogo’s flexibility and risk might seem only like a liability, but if backers are willing to accept crowdfunding as a risky investment—a long shot as opposed to a preorder—a wider diversity of campaigns could be a strong advantage.
Andy Yang, a former Product Manager at Reddit has taken the role of CEO, but it remains to see what direction he’ll take the company. Will they do more collaborations with established business like Lego? Will it try to compete head on with Kickstarter for the general market? Perhaps it will go in a different direction entirely.
We’ll see what Yang and Indiegogo manage to do in this important and transformational period for crowdsourcing businesses. You can read more here.
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