Fundry.com offers crowdfunding for developers

By Laura Khalil Published December 7, 2010

The site already has a variety of projects available for investment, from open-source projects and WordPress plugins to iPhone or Android apps.

If you have an app that you’d like to see supported, your donation means that you can contribute to funding the features you’re most interested in seeing developed.

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“The crowdfunding model is a natural fit for development projects and we see Fundry.com as a win-win for both developers and users. The site helps developers get paid for their projects while a community of funders can contribute to the creation of features and applications they want to see,” said Guy King, co-founder of Stateless Systems. “The feedback we’ve received from developers who used Fundry.com during the beta is that this platform has been a long time coming.”

Fundry.com is simple to use and puts a lot of control in the hands of the investors. Developers add a project and list features they plan to develop as well as accept or reject feature requests from the community. Funders then decide on which features they want their investment to support. When a feature is completed and released, everyone who has pledged to the funding of the feature has seven days to accept or reject it. Developers receive the pledged amounts if the majority of funders accept the feature.

To make a pledge, funders deposit money with Fundry.com using a PayPal account. There is no minimum and funds can be withdrawn at any time before a feature is completed. Fundry.com’s business model is to charge five percent on any successful funding paid to a developer.

It’s unclear how receptive developers will be to having the funding of each feature beholden to a group of anonymous investors, but the idea is unique enough to pique our interest. What do you think about Fundry.com? Would you invest or develop a project using the site? Let us know in the comments.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Laura is a tech reporter for Digital Trends, the editor of Dorkbyte and a science blogger for PBS. She's been named one of…

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