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风投力挺“占领华尔街”运动

Brendan Coffey 2011年10月24日

这场抗议运动似乎已经演变成为大众融资平台Kickstarter的亮相派对。

“占领华尔街”运动（Occupy Wall Street movement）或许痛恨商界的贪婪，但他们不排斥像任何一家优秀的初创企业那样去募集种子资金。抗议运动之前已经通过自身网站募集了的300,000美元，存于工会所持银行联合银行（Amalgamated Bank）的账户。目前，该运动的组织者们正在通过两年前由布鲁克林人扬西•斯楚克勒、查尔斯•埃德勒和派瑞•陈创立的创意项目大众集资平台Kickstarter为抗议活动的系列报纸筹款。

Kickstarter在科技界以外鲜为人知，但它已经帮助占领运动的组织者们募集到了75,690美元，并于上周推出了《占领华尔街日报》（Occupied Wall Street Journal），募集到的这笔资金数额大约是最初目标的6倍。如今，波士顿的占领团体业在为自己的《占领波士顿环球报》（Occupy Boston Globe）筹措资金；还有一些团体则在为拍摄反映抗议示威活动的照片和电影募集资金。

Kickstarter成立之初专注于为布皮书、iPhone手机套等创意项目提供大众集资资金，它对全额融资项目收取5%的佣金（部分融资则不收取佣金）和相关的信用卡手续费。虽然Kickstarter主要从事小额捐赠，但公司自身已获得总计高达1,000万美元的投资。投资者中不乏大名鼎鼎的风投机构和其他投资者，包括Twitter联合创始人杰克•多西、合广投资（Union Square Ventures，定位社交网站Foursquare和社交游戏开发商Zynga的投资者）和企业孵化器Betaworks （社交网络分析服务提供商bitly,和轻博客服务平台Tumblr公司的投资者）。

占领运动是Kickstarter的亮相派对吗？我联系了多家风投置评，但是目前都没有得到回音。然而，从支持者名单来看，Kickstarter确实被寄予厚望。

科技行业免费数据库Crunchbase网站的数据显示，除了上述三位投资方，参与Kickstarter这轮1,000万美元融资的投资者还有：

斯科特•埃费尔曼, 社交网络Meetup首公司席执行官

扎克•克莱恩, 流媒体视频网站Vimeo联合创始人

卡特琳娜•费克, 照片共享网站Flickr联合创始人

乔什•斯蒂尔曼, 涉猎广泛的天使投资人，包括投资团购聚合网站Yipit

彼得•赫斯伯格, 社交媒体营销平台SocialFlow总裁

克里斯•萨卡, Twitter投资者，前谷歌（Google）雇员

伊藤穰一, 麻省理工学院大学媒体实验室（MIT Media Lab）董事

约书亚•沙克特, 书签分享网站Delicious创立者

贾德•库斯纳, 《纽约观察家报》（New York Observer）的所有人，地产大亨之子

麦特•豪希, 社区博客网站Metafilter缔造者

克里斯•卡斯基, 独立在线音乐媒体Pitchfork Media总裁

克里斯•迪克森, 消费点子网站Hunch联合创始人

丹•罗森维格, 教科书租赁网站Chegg.com首席执行官

克雷格•夏皮罗, 联合基金（Collaborative Fund）创始人

Thrive Capital投资公司, 该公司是库斯纳家族旗下的一家风投基金

The Occupy Wall Street movement may hate corporate greed, but they're not averse to raising seed money like any good start-up. In addition to the $300,000 the group has raised through its website and deposited at union-owned Amalgamated Bank, organizers are raising money for their Occupy newspapers using Kickstarter, a crowd-source funding platform for creative projects started two years ago by Brooklynites Yancey Strickler, Charles Adler and Perry Chen.

Little known outside of tech circles, Kickstarter enabled the Occupy organizers to raise $75,690 to launch its Occupied Wall Street Journal last week, about six times the group's initial goal. Now Occupy groups in Boston are raising money for their own Occupy Boston Globe paper, while other groups are raising money for photos and films about the protests.

Founded to focus on crowdsoucing funding for creative projects such as cloth-backed books and iPhone cases, Kickstarter takes a 5% commission on projects that get fully funded (no fee for partial funding) and passing along credit card processing fees. While Kickstarter may be enabling small donations, the company itself has gotten big donations totaling $10 million from an impressive list of VCs and other investors, including Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Union Square Ventures (Foursquare, Zynga) and Betaworks (bitly, Tumblr).

Is the Occupy movement the coming out party for Kickstarter? I haven't heard back from any of the VCs I contacted for comment, but judging by the list of backers, there are high hopes:

In addition to the three investors mentioned above, the other $10 million funding round investors, via Crunchbase:

Scott Heiferman, CEO of Meetup

Zach Klein, Vimeo cofounder

Caterina Fake, Flickr cofounder

Joshua Stylman, wide ranging angel investor including in Yipit

Peter Hershberg, president of SocialFlow

Chris Sacca, Twitter investor, former Google employee

Joi Ito, director of MIT Media Lab

Joshua Schachter, Delicious creator

Jared Kushner, New York Observer owner, real estate empire scion

Matt Haughey, builder of Metafilter

Chris Kaskie, president of Pitchfork Media