Ouya Raises $15 Million, Delays Console To June 25th

Ouya is an Android-powered gaming console that retails for $99.  The console was originally supposed to start selling on June 4th, but now it will be delayed to June 25th.  Ouya also announced that they have received $15 million in venture capital funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.  Other investors that were part of this round include Mayfield Fund, NVIDIA, Shasta Ventures, and Occam Partners.  This funding is on top of the $8.6 million that Ouya raised from Kickstarter in August 2012.

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Donald Trump Launches A Crowdfunding Service Called FundAnything

FundAnything is a new crowdfunding platform that was started by Learning Annex founder Bill Zanker and real estate mogul Donald Trump.  Trump will be fully funding some of the projects that are added to FundAnything himself.  He will even tweet some of the new projects on a weekly basis to his 2.1 million followers on the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account.  FundAnything competes directly against other crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo and Kickstarter.

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Zach Braff’s Movie Project Surpasses $1.5 Million In Kickstarter Funding Within 1 Day

One of my favorite TV shows is Scrubs.  The main character on that show, J.D., was played by Zach Braff.  In 2004, Braff directed a movie called Garden State, which was a cult hit.  Many of Braff’s fans on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit asked him when he would direct a movie again just like Garden State.  He said that there are numerous reasons, but the primary reason is funding and creative control.  When hearing about the success of the Veronica Mars movie on crowd-funding platform Kickstarter, Braff decided to utilize the same resources by posting on Kickstarter himself.  Braff’s Kickstarter posting went live yesterday and already hit $1.5 million out of the $2 million goal.

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Torment: Tides of Numenera Game Hits Over $4 Million In Kickstarter Crowd-Funding Donations

Torment: Tides of Numenera is a game that is being developed by inXile entertainment in Newport Beach, California.  Tides of Numenera, a successor to Planescape: Torment, decided to go the crowd-funding route on Kickstarter for development.  As a result, Tides of Numenera is now the highest funded game that Kickstarter has seen.  The game surged $200,000 past the Kickstarter-funded Project Eternity game with a final donation amount of $4,188,927 from 74,405 backers.  The company had a goal of raising $900,000 from Kickstarter, which was quickly surpassed.
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Funny Or Die’s April Fools Joke: Kickstarter Funds A “Family Matters” “Darkwing Duck,” Dinosaurs” “Sliders” and “Wings” Film

Funny Or Die, the comedy website founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, is the perfect platform to spread laughs on April Fools Day.  For this year’s April Fools Day, Funny or Die decided to parody crowdfunding website Kickstarter.  You may remember that last month, Kickstarter was used to successfully fund the Veronica Mars movie.  Funny Or Die has taken some of the most popular shows from the 1990′s put together fake Kickstarter profiles in order to ask for funding to promote a potential movie around that series.  Funny Or Die put together fake profiles for the shows: Family Matters, Darkwing Duck, Dinosaurs, Sliders, and Wings. Below are the vide clips of the fake Kickstarter profiles from Funny Or Die:
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Susan Wilson’s Kickstarter Campaign Caused Some Major Issues

Earlier this month, I wrote about how Susan Wilson was raising funds on Kickstarter on behalf of her nine-year-old daughter Mackenzie Wilson and use the headline: “Nine-Year-Old Mackenzie Wilson Raises Over $11,000 From Kickstarter For Video Game Project.”  The problem about the article I wrote was that I was notified by Penn State student Chris Seltzer that there could be a scam involved with her listing.  Apparently Susan Wilson runs a company called The Judgment Group and was a founding member of a technology startup that raised $12 million in venture capital, which became kinkos.com and was sold in 2000 to Kinko’s for $100 million.  In my opinion, Ms. Wilson has plenty of money to send her daughter to a computer camp, but has chosen to use Kickstarter to fund her life.

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Nine-Year-Old Mackenzie Wilson Raises Over $11,000 From Kickstarter For Video Game Project

Mackenzie Wilson, 9, has a goal to build a video game while seeking help from crowd-funding.  Wilson, wanted to raise $829 from Kickstarter to build a role playing game, but she already raised over $13,000 with 28 days still left to go.  “Mean older brothers say she can’t so my daughter’s proving she can do what they can’t – BUILD HER OWN RPG game AND pay for it!” said the description on the Kickstarter page.

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