Selfstarter: open source platform for independent crowdfunding

Recently, crowdfunding has increasingly gone beyond the boundaries of large specialized sites. The model of collecting funds for a specific goal within a specific timeframe on the “all or nothing” principle has proven so successful that it works perfectly even without the support of reputable crowdfunding sites. For example, an App.net startup (paid Twitter without ads) recently raised $ 800,000 on its own, with an initial goal of 300,000. And Lockitron's “smart lock” collected 1.5 million in just five days, which is ten times more than the plan. Today, the amount on their website is close to two million. After such a successful campaign, the Lockitron team decided to lay out its engine to raise funds for GitHab.

It is written in Ruby on Rails, SCSS and CoffeeScript and uses Amazon Payments to make payments. If desired, you can bind another payment system. The engine is a site template with a description of the project, the FAQ section, the usual counter of the number of backers and the payment page.

Lockitron had to create his own crowdfunding decision not from a good life. Their project did not pass moderation on Kickstarter, since the rules for “iron” startups have recently become tougher there. I had to write my platform for fundraising at the last moment, so the engine is quite minimalist - it has no authentication mechanisms, admin panel, mail distribution and analytics. The code is not yet covered with tests. However, the Selfstarter project has already attracted community attention on Github (300 subscribers and 80 forks in less than a day), and has good chances for further development.