Indiegogo announces Enterprise Crowdfunding for big companies like GE and Hasbro to test and launch new products
and donations Lulu Chang / Digital Trends : Indiegogo just launched a new ‘Enterprise Crowfunding’ platform for large corporations Ian Barker / BetaNews : Enterprise Crowdfunding will help big companies pilot and launch products Max Taves / CNET : Big business turns to the crowd for advice — and donations Samantha Hurst / Crowdfund Insider : Indiegogo Goes Big. Targets Large Enterprises with Product Development & Marketing Tools Tweets: @mikeisaac : if this actually works, maybe this is what Quirky SHOULD have been for GE, instead of a colossal clusterfcuk http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Enterprise Crowdfunding lands a year after CircleUp raised $22M to invest in consumer brands through crowdfunding, signaling that institutional players were already circling the space — but Indiegogo is the first to sell its 38-million-member audience directly to corporations as a product-validation and launch channel. The move also reads as an answer to Quirky's collapse, which the coverage frames as GE's cautionary tale in crowdsourced hardware.
The bet pays off unevenly downstream: GE Appliances keeps experimenting with the model, eventually spinning out Giddy, its Quirky-like crowdsourced product-development platform under Haier, while Indiegigo itself keeps diversifying beyond donations — adding a Marketplace taking a 10–15% cut on crowdfunded product sales and later listing ICOs.
First-order effects
- GE and Hasbro gain a pre-sale channel to test demand and fund pilots against Indiegogo's 38 million members before committing to manufacturing, turning campaign data into a go/no-go signal for new products.
- Indiegogo adds a B2B revenue line alongside its per-campaign fees, shifting its business from serving independent creators to selling reach and validation tools to large consumer companies.
Second-order effects
- Rival crowdfunding and consumer-brand investment platforms like CircleUp face pressure to add equivalent enterprise offerings or cede the corporate segment to whoever owns the largest backer audience.
- Independent creators on the platform risk being crowded out by branded campaigns with marketing budgets, forcing Indiegogo to manage discovery so its original base doesn't churn.
Third-order effects
- If enterprises keep adopting it, crowdfunding converges with corporate research tools — the same space Atheneum serves with survey-based enterprise research at 500 large customers — making demand validation a procurement category rather than a fundraising novelty.
- GE's path from Quirky's failure to spinning out Gidy suggests corporates will ultimately want owned crowdsourcing infrastructure rather than rented platforms, capping how much leverage intermediaries like Indiegogo can hold over big clients.
The trend: Crowdfunding is evolving from a financing tool for independent creators into a demand-testing and product-launch channel that consumer giants buy as a service.