An Interview with Zach Dunham

Welcome Zach Dunham of Kickstarter!

• Zach has a music background with experience in pro audio (he obviously didn't record this show because it doesn't sound all that great). He later dreamed of becoming a Foley artist.
• His first Kickstarter project (before working there) was the public radio. This has recently relaunched as a Kickstarter Gold project!
• The original project had 1700 backers and sold an additional 400 after the campaign. The project was on Grand St, which was purchased by Etsy.
• Zach took the MIT 6.002x class with some friends, including former guest Todd Bailey.
• Bolt Boston meetup
• Their manufacturing was with friends in a warehouse, referred to as "Manufacturing salons".
• A Raspberry Pi running PiFM would help to program the radios.
• The radios contain the FM IC from Silicon Labs, the SI4702
• Hackaday post on FCC
• Kickstarter is a "public benefit corporation" which is even more stringent than a B corp.
• Each year they publish their stats
• They have a Policy and Integrity team that helps to fight scam projects.
• Read more about their Community here
• The Neolucida was another successful project that was at Maker Faire Bay Area. It's coming back as an "XL" version.
• If you want updates from any project, back the project with $1.
• A while back, Kickstarter sent out a request for projects. Zach is the outreach coordinator on creative tools. Heather in the UK works on design projects and Clarissa in the Bay Area does science and exploration.
• Wazer was a good example of one of the projects they'd look to have on their site.
• Kickstarter is not a store.
• A while ago they launched Kickstarter Live which is meant to connect project creators directly with backers.
• Their newest initiative is the Hardware Studio, which is a joint venture with Avnet and Dragon Innovation.
• Founder of Dragon, Scott Miller has been on the show in the past.
• Andrew Seddon was also mentioned, a past guest.
• They needed to troubleshoot the radio front end. It turned out to be the Class D amp interfering with the frequencies.
• Ben from Bolt wrote that "Kickstarter is debt". This was also said by Kane Hsieh who gave a talk at Chris's meetup recently.
• There is a "Right way to fail"
• The Toolkit knowledge base will be one of the first things to launch from the Hardware Studio.
• Connection is a program members will be able to apply for (the "approved" projects)
• Perpetual motion TED talk
• Check out Zach's personal site or follow him on Twitter.
• As a reminder, they recently relaunched the Public Radio on Kickstarter and you can back it!