I'm planning on doing a crowdfunding with a twist:
If I do not reach the goal (to be determined) by the deadline (to be determined). I will refund everyone. I will also give a refund bonus of 20% your pledge as a thank you for supporting this project
If I do reach that goal by the deadline. I keep all the money and use it to develop a platform that allows you to raise money in the same way (crowdfunding with a refund bonus) to fund your art projects, software projects, etc. — anything you are willing to give a way for free.
If I don't reach the goal then I stand to lose up to $165.80. Since I don't want that to happen, I'm asking manifold what should my goal be to maximize my chance of success.
I reserve the right to set the goal at any amount. I might take the information this market gives into account, or I might not.
More info:
I will publish a website with a PayPal Button that must be used to send me money. The website will also have a progress bar showing how much has been donated so far. I list of all donors and a timer counting down to the deadline.
I will advertise this on lesswrong (it will be approximately a 4500 word post).
I might do some other marketing
Feel free to ask any clarifying questions in the comments.
Also join our Discord https://discord.gg/KGeCTx33g if you think this idea is interesting.
@CodeandSolder If you are concerned about cheating (e.g. I donate to my own project so that it crosses the threshold), I agree this is a problem. That's why I included a list of funders at the bottom of the page to improve transparency (just their first name and initial of their surname to preserve some level of anonymity).
This is my first time doing this so I don't know if that's enough to prove that this is legit. Tell me what you think.
@moyamo Im not saying you will do it, I'm saying that's what the mechanics promote and what people will suspect with little evidence needed, leading to lack of trust between creators and users. I don't have any good ideas how to address it at the moment
I ended up decided to price this at $629. Here it is https://dac.mowzer.co.za/
Here is the accompanying lesswrong post https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CwgHX9tbfASqxjpsc/the-economics-of-the-asteroid-deflection-problem
@CChameleon Unfortunately not many systems support "sending refund bonuses". The other one that might work is Stripe, but it's more expensive.
@moyamo Automatically you mean? I imagine Venmo would capture most of the non-PayPal crowd, but you would presumably have to manually calculate and send any refunds.
@PaintedChameleon I will look into Venmo for the future. Unfortunately it's US only, and I'm not based in the US. It's probably possible to get around this, but I think too much work at this point.
Here is a early market I made with slightly different outcomes. https://manifold.markets/moyamo/can-my-metacrowdfundwithrefundbonus