Our best investments have emergent use cases that the founders never considered when they launched them. Kickstarter is showing that in spades right now. When Perry initially imagined Kickstarter almost ten years ago now as a way to raise money for a music festival, he certainly never thought a golf pro would use Kickstarter to raise the sponsorship money he needs to play a season on the pro tour. And yet that is exactly what is happening right now.
I just contributed to Mike D's campaign to raise enough money to spend a year playing professional golf (and make a documentary about it). The rewards are particularly interesting and include golf lessons, a round with Mike D, and even an entire corporate outing. In a sense, Mike is taking the classic big brand sponsorship model and crowdsourcing it with Kickstarter. Awesome.
