I'm a bit worried about cases like this. A cash injection of 20x the desired budget is just as likely to lead to poor financial controls or tax errors as it is to enhance the prospects of the business in question, with potentially serious administrative liabilities that could end up hurting customers or lead to overreaction from legislators. Perhaps there should be some cap on Kickstarter fundraising, like if you raise more than 3x your initial goal, the rest goes into an escrow account or something until you begin to ship product.
Or it might be just the thing you need to put a good lawyer on retainer and hire a decent accounting firm to set up the kind of production company your fans seem to want to exist. 58k is bread for a year, and at the end you muddle through your own taxes with that flunky from the H&R Block in the strip mall. 1.2M is a real company that has the chops to do it right. I'd say the audit causing personal ruin is more likely in the former scenario.
Rich claims that most of this cash will have to go to fulfilling the orders from Kickstarter, postage, and ordering reprints of all the books he's written, many of which have long been out of print. I've been reading OotS for a long time now and I don't think this is going to cause him any problems.
If anything causes a problem for him, it will be trying to keep the comic updated while shipping out all this stuff out to people. If he has any weakness, it's keeping a regular update schedule.
In the US we already live in an increasingly padded walls nanny state. Personally I've had enough of it. Forbid we be daring and reach for the stars again, and take on the risk that goes with it.
There might or might not be truth to what you say, but if there's one area that you're wrong (regarding the U.S. having too much regulation), it's financial regulation. I thought we'd just spent the last five years learning that lesson. Admittedly, it may be overgeneralizing, to apply the lessons of investment banking to what amounts to small business financing. But you're the one that started reaching for the broad-strokes brush.
NB: I am not an American myself, and glad of it.
NB2: Not that I think the GP's suggestion makes sense in THIS case, because we know that Rich Burlew can ship product, because he's already shipped all this product.
America isn't lacking, in any regard, in financial regulation. There are more laws on the books regarding that industry than any other.
Regulation does not inherently = smart or good.
You know what isn't regulated? How stupid the Fed gets to be with our dollar. How careless they get to be with interest rates and QE programs.
The lesson we apparently didn't spend the last five years learning, is what happens when the Fed intervenes (2001 / 2002) with a massive liquidity pump to falsify a recovery and artificially avoid a worse recession for political points. Oh hey, what does that remind you of?
The chaos of 2008/09 was almost exclusively derived out of trillions in bad real estate bets, which took down other bets when they began to fold in 2006 and 2007.
It was the Fed that spurred the gambling with their crazy rate policies; the government threw gasoline on the fire with bad legislation. The Fed has admitted it has the ability to generate bubbles through rate policy mistakes; and a bubble is exactly what they created. If you inflate a $10 trillion real estate bubble, when it crashes it's going to wipe out your financial system.
Then it was the Fed that bailed out all the institutions they were previously dealing financial smack to. A trillion for Citi, a trillion for Bank of America, a trillion for Fannie/Freddie, and so on. During the recession post 9/11, the Fed 'encouraged' the banks to lend with the spigots wide open, and encouraged hyper risk with low rates.
2007/08 was a sugar crash, the Fed supplied the sugar. They're doing it all over again right now, and nobody gives a shit.
Comments
I'm a bit worried about cases like this. A cash injection of 20x the desired budget is just as likely to lead to poor financial controls or tax errors as it is to enhance the prospects of the business in question, with potentially serious administrative liabilities that could end up hurting customers or lead to overreaction from legislators. Perhaps there should be some cap on Kickstarter fundraising, like if you raise more than 3x your initial goal, the rest goes into an escrow account or something until you begin to ship product.
Or it might be just the thing you need to put a good lawyer on retainer and hire a decent accounting firm to set up the kind of production company your fans seem to want to exist. 58k is bread for a year, and at the end you muddle through your own taxes with that flunky from the H&R Block in the strip mall. 1.2M is a real company that has the chops to do it right. I'd say the audit causing personal ruin is more likely in the former scenario.
Rich claims that most of this cash will have to go to fulfilling the orders from Kickstarter, postage, and ordering reprints of all the books he's written, many of which have long been out of print. I've been reading OotS for a long time now and I don't think this is going to cause him any problems.
If anything causes a problem for him, it will be trying to keep the comic updated while shipping out all this stuff out to people. If he has any weakness, it's keeping a regular update schedule.
I understand the concern premise, but I disagree.
In the US we already live in an increasingly padded walls nanny state. Personally I've had enough of it. Forbid we be daring and reach for the stars again, and take on the risk that goes with it.
There might or might not be truth to what you say, but if there's one area that you're wrong (regarding the U.S. having too much regulation), it's financial regulation. I thought we'd just spent the last five years learning that lesson. Admittedly, it may be overgeneralizing, to apply the lessons of investment banking to what amounts to small business financing. But you're the one that started reaching for the broad-strokes brush.
NB: I am not an American myself, and glad of it.
NB2: Not that I think the GP's suggestion makes sense in THIS case, because we know that Rich Burlew can ship product, because he's already shipped all this product.
America isn't lacking, in any regard, in financial regulation. There are more laws on the books regarding that industry than any other.
Regulation does not inherently = smart or good.
You know what isn't regulated? How stupid the Fed gets to be with our dollar. How careless they get to be with interest rates and QE programs.
The lesson we apparently didn't spend the last five years learning, is what happens when the Fed intervenes (2001 / 2002) with a massive liquidity pump to falsify a recovery and artificially avoid a worse recession for political points. Oh hey, what does that remind you of?
The chaos of 2008/09 was almost exclusively derived out of trillions in bad real estate bets, which took down other bets when they began to fold in 2006 and 2007.
It was the Fed that spurred the gambling with their crazy rate policies; the government threw gasoline on the fire with bad legislation. The Fed has admitted it has the ability to generate bubbles through rate policy mistakes; and a bubble is exactly what they created. If you inflate a $10 trillion real estate bubble, when it crashes it's going to wipe out your financial system.
Then it was the Fed that bailed out all the institutions they were previously dealing financial smack to. A trillion for Citi, a trillion for Bank of America, a trillion for Fannie/Freddie, and so on. During the recession post 9/11, the Fed 'encouraged' the banks to lend with the spigots wide open, and encouraged hyper risk with low rates.
2007/08 was a sugar crash, the Fed supplied the sugar. They're doing it all over again right now, and nobody gives a shit.