CrowdsourceThis.com | All Things Crowdsourcing

crowdSPRING was so confident that crowdsourcing was the way of the future that they used their own marketplace to design their website. The company posted a project and offered a $5000 prize asking creative people from around the world to contribute designs. in the end eighty individuals from dozens of countries submitted over 330 designs. “We couldn’t have asked for better proof of our model,…. we definitively proved the power of the crowdSPRING model,” said Ross Kimbarovsky, co-founder of crowdSPRING “We also showed that great creative talent exists in every corner of the world and comes from people you would never have guessed.” Marc Köhlbrugge, a new media student in The Netherlands, submitted the winning design during the competition, which ran for three weeks this spring. “I devoted all my free time to the project to make sure I would stand out from the crowd,” said Köhlbrugge “It worked”

crowdSPRING, is a online marketplace for creative services, and puts the power of crowdsourcing in the hands of individuals and businesses, giving them access to a largely untapped global pool of talent. CrowdSPRING is focused mainly on creating, Logos, Web designs and marketing materials. crowdSPRING allows buyers to post a creative project, and before you know it they have several different designs on their desk and they choose the one they like. On the flip side creative people use crowdSPING to get though the fount door, to prove that experience and title doesn’t make the best designer.

“When people buy art or music or movies, they see all the options available to them and then decide which they’d like to purchase. But the purchase of many other creative services has traditionally been a lot more risky,” said Mike Samson, co-founder of crowdSPRING “Buyers are asked to dig through portfolios, review past work and make a commitment before seeing the end product. crowdSPRING offers a better way. Buyers can now purchase the work they love at a price they set, without the risk.”

Risk is reduced on both sides because crowdSPRING guarantees that you (as a buyer) will get a minimum of 25 on any given project or you have the opportunity to back out of the deal. This makes it so that the creative people are not left at the mercy of the buyers with a lot of hard work going into a design and then a buyer pulling out. Instead a buyer must pay up front with the money being held in escrow waiting until a winner is chosen. In addition they use a rating and feedback method that shows how many projects they’ve posted (and completed), how many entries they’ve submitted, and what kind of feedback they’ve received. Best of all your intellectual property is protected by a free, customized written legal agreement for every transaction.

Hmmm perhaps I need crowdSPRING to help redesign CrowdsourceThis.com? What do you think?

Cambrian House the home of Crowdsourcing is no longer in the community development business. In fact they have sold their community along with their platform called Chaordix to a new company called VenCorps which is funded by Spencer Trask

“The Cambrian House crowdsourcing community has attracted 50,000-plus smart, creative people who work together to turn ideas into real, successful businesses,” said Michael J. Sikorsky, chief executive officer of Cambrian House. “We really are built (the CH Community) to flip. I’m the only guy who says that out loud. I don’t know why everyone lies.”

Vencorps is a multi-million dollar venture capital fund that leverages the wisdom and participation of the crowd to build better startups. VenCorps is partner with Spencer Trask (since 1870 funded the light bulb, GE, saved the New York Time from bankruptcy and recently first AIDS vacine, Stem Cell, The company that made the Internet possible by exploding fiber optic capacity with the first wave division multiplexing systems)

Sean Wise, a Collaborative Venture Partners founder, says he has high hopes for the site. “No matter how good a V.C. I could be,” he said, “I could never be smarter than the wisdom of a collective community.”

VenCorps will be the first community that enables the crowd to find, filter and fund startups. Members compete in the Startup Showdown for $50,000 initially, and up to $5 million through VenCorps partners over the lifecycle of a startup.

Cambrian house will continue to operate more like a holding company or a VC fund, developing projects that have been in the works for some time like : Gwabs, Greedy or Needy, Knottle, FilmRiot and Chaordix.

“People (just) hated the the vikings” said Michael J. Sikorsky.

Kluster switched directions today and launched Knewsroom.

“our product is not nearly as cool as our process, lets ditch the product and make the processes our business” founder Ben Kaufman said in a video he posted to YouTube. “Seven weeks in and a million dollars down the drain, we know what works,”

Kluster launched 6 weeks ago at TED to tones of fanfare as community members crowdsourced a game in 72 hours. Its interesting to see such a huge change in only 6 weeks. The cluster platform can be used by different companies, where it can be used for to make crowdsource amongst employees, partners, and customers. Apparently for several company’s have already partnered with Kluster and will be announcements in coming months.

Knewsroom, is a daily “paper” users submit new topics and stories each day and then members invest in them using a currency called “watts”. Once the “Paper is published” members get paid out based on their investments, users actually get a % of advertising revenue. If an original story you create makes it to the fount page you get paid $150. Klusters also have a new partnership with Master Card which allows members to spend their hard earn cash thought their new debit card.

you have 16 hours left to invest and create content for this new project.

Tonight VenCorps new splash site went live, the site dose not provide much information as of yet.

Retrieved from the site:

What is Community Powered Capital?
VenCorps is a network of founders, funders and facilitators focused on discovering, funding and growing startups.

About Us
VenCorps brings together the power of collaborative innovation and venture capital. VenCorps taps into the global community to discover, fund and grow Internet and mobile startups. VenCorps connects entrepreneurs, investors and facilitators together in a community of shared interest: startup success.

VenCorps is a program of Spencer Trask Collaborative Venture Partners. Winners of the VenCorps Startup Showdowns will receive funds anchored by Spencer Trask along with founders, funders and facilitators.

I wonder how much of the TechCrunch stuff will blow over?

Jeff Howes new book on Crowdsourcing is due out in July 29. Jeff says

The most salient, witty or astute remarks will be published as an appendix in the final chapter of the book.

So check out Jeff blog and get reading.

Post

Today TechCrunch reported that Cambrian House (a leader in crowdsourcing) has been sold to Spencer Trask and will form a new company called VenCorps.

Sources inside Cambrian House have denied that the company has been sold and point to a New York Times article, about the company that points out the opposites. With more information on VenCorps coming soon.

So who would you trust the New York Times or TechCrunch?

Update: Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch admits to reporting unconfirmed info:

Erick Schonfeld
May 12th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Cambrian House confirmed most of this post. It wouldn’t comment on the price of the asset sale.

I know for a fact that they were trying to raise more funding, couldn’t, tried to sell the whole company, couldn’t, and finally settled for what they could with the asset sale. I also know the price Spencer Trask was willing to pay kept going down.

I can’t get into my sourcing. Suffice it to say, when I called Cambrian House, the details panned out.

NOT IMPRESSED!

Update 2:

Post by Cambrian Houses CEO Michael Sikorsky (MJ)

Michael Sikorsky (CEO – Cambrian House)
May 12th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Erick:
Indeed, our model failed. We’ve spent many hours reflecting on it, and, I’d be happy to share our learning’s in detail with anyone keen on the crowdsourcing space.
But, in short: we became a destination people loved to bookmark more than they loved to actively visit (our traffic pattern was scarily VC-ish). The limiting reagent in the startup equation is not ideas, but amazing founding teams.
A key assumption for us, which proved out NOT true: given a great idea with great community support and great market test data, we would be able to find (crowdsource) a team willing to execute it OR we could execute it ourselves. We needed amazing founding teams for each of the ideas – this is where our model fell short.
What we learned: it would have been better to back great teams with horrible ideas because most of the heavy lifting kept falling back on us, or a few select community members. A vicious cycle was created leading all of us to get more and more diffuse.
Hence: the wisdom of crowds worked well in the model, but it was our participation of crowds aspect which broke down. Trying to find people willing or capable to take on the offspring (our outputs) of the CH model was hard and/or incredibly time consuming.
For clarity of your story, and perhaps, just pride for my team and my investors:
- You missed http://mob4hire.com in your original post. Paul and his team launched this completely using the CH platform.
- The team and community at CH are top-notch. I’d be proud to follow them anywhere.
- We were and are still able to attract investment (this you just have wrong). However, we believed the model was off (once you have this feeling in your stomach you don’t take on additional capital until you’ve figured it out).
- Fire-sale of our IP – two points: #1) We haven’t sold our IP – we still own it – and the IP of the portfolio companies. #2) Erick – you know as well as I we won’t comment on the deal specifics. However, I believe deeply this was the right move for the community.
- The ‘rebirth’ with VenCorps goes to fix the failures I identified above. With VenCorps, the ideas don’t matter anywhere as much as the teams do.
- I’m bullish crowdsourcing but how/what you can apply it to is still under-test.
- Deadpool – yes, our original model can clearly be put to rest. However, the same can’t be said for the company.
Michael Sikorsky, CEO of Cambrian House

Thanks for clearing things up.

updated info on VenCorp here

Do you want to designs video games? Want to get your feet wet, but just not sure how? How about collecting royalties on a game you helped create?

If this sounds interesting then check out Crowded Games.

Crowded Games was launched in 2007 for one reason, to enable the community to design a xbox arcade game called Pond Hockey. Bruno Steppuhn of Zensoft Studios (which developed soft modeling, 3D rendering and multi-player algorithms through various projects) saw the potential of a crowdsourcing game design community and bought Crowded Games in 2007.

“Pond Hockey is new twist on casual games” say Bruno “Its Mario Kart meets no rules hockey, in this funny comedic and chaotic family 4 player hockey game. Its a great game to play as a family or with a bunch of friends.” Pond Hockey is expected to start beta testing next month.

The real jewel is not the game. Its the community game developers. Crowded Games has a community of 50 members with many different backgrounds, from veterans of the game industry to high school students. These members are investing their time into these games for potential royalties down the road. But thats not the most important reason for many members, its the experience and the prestige of creating a new game. Members can win a one year XNA membership each month.

So if you want to get some experience developing games and see your name in the credits, head over to Crowded Games and join the Crowd.

Just a few hours after my last post Jeff posted part 1 of Chapter 6 The Most Universal Quality – Why Diversity Trumps Ability

Jeff Howe’s Book Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business came out of story that he wrote for Wired in June 2006 The Rise of Crowdsourcing. His book is set to be released July 29 of this year. You can however read 4 chapters of his book here:

Chapter 2 Rise of the Amateur

Chapter 3 From So Simple a Beginning Part 2

Chapter 4 Faster, Cheaper, Smarter, Easier: Democratizing the Means of Production Part 2

Chapter 5 The Rise and Fall of the Firm: Turning Community into Commerce Part 2

Enjoy