Kickstarter loses one Portland connection but gains another. (And it happens to be their most successful project ever.)

Now, you may have seen mention that Kickstarter had a Portland connection. It did. That was when Andy Baio was working there from his home here in Portland.

But Andy has moved on to another project and another town. Which meant that—unless one of you went after funding on Kickstarter—I wouldn’t really be writing about it. Well, turns out that a company with a Portland tie did just that. And their bid for funding just happened to be oversubscribed by about 6200%.

That’s right. MINIMAL—a Chicago design shop that has a Portland office and was founded by a former Nike creative director—pitched the Kickstarter crowd on a compelling entrepreneurial idea: a multitouch watch based off of the Apple iPod Nano.

Seems like a good idea, right? And how.

Turns out the project—which was asking for $15,000—wound up receiving nearly $1 million in funding. All in small increments from thousands of people.

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Not only is it Kickstarter’s most successful project to date, it also kind of turns the idea of bootstrapping and fundraising on its ear. And it shows that there may be other ways and other models for getting projects off the ground.

Think about it. They now have $940,000 to spend on the project. No equity given up. Just people interested in their product.

So if you’re an entrepreneur looking for ways to fund your idea, you might want to take a page from Minimal and their TikTok+LunaTik Multi-Touch Watch Kits. At the very least, it’s an interesting study of how to find funding to bring your dreams to fruition.

(Hat tip ReadWriteWeb)

Published by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy View all posts by Rick Turoczy