The archive · Hardware & Devices · Financial decision · 2012
Lockitron open-sources Selfstarter, the app behind its own crowdfunding
After pre-selling its phone lock outside Kickstarter, Lockitron open-sourced the Rails app behind the campaign as Selfstarter in October 2012.
Lockitron
What the business is
Lockitron sold a phone-controlled door lock through pre-orders on its own website, and released the app that ran those pre-orders as the open-source project Selfstarter.
How it started
By October 2012 Lockitron was taking pre-orders for its lock through its own crowdfunding page instead of Kickstarter. On 2012-10-11 a team member posting as ccamrobertson announced on Hacker News that the Ruby app running that page was now open source under the name Selfstarter.
What happened
The post drew 463 points and 74 comments. The team said the campaign 'took on a life of its own'; commenter rkaplan noted that projects like Lockitron and App.net were raising outside Kickstarter because they were not allowed on the platform, while the thread debated whether Kickstarter's 5% fee buys discovery. A creator running a Kickstarter campaign said the platform itself typically supplies much of a project's traffic, and commenter marknowotarski pointed out the key structural difference: Kickstarter transfers money at the end of a successful campaign, while Lockitron's backers' money was not transferred until the product was ready to ship, letting committed orders work as bridge funding. Commenters who had ordered units said they could not wait for arrival, and several startup founders said they would use Selfstarter for their own upcoming campaigns.
No ending yet — it is still running.
Background
Lockitron was selling a phone-controlled door lock, and instead of running the campaign on Kickstarter it took pre-orders on its own website. On 2012-10-11 the team posted to Hacker News that the Ruby app behind that page was now open source under the name Selfstarter, with the announcement scoring 463 points and 74 comments.
Selfstarter was deliberately lean — a single-product pre-order app, not a pledge-reward platform — built on Kickstarter's own open-source amazon_flex_pay gem, with the team noting the code was simple and users should add their own authentication, administration and product management. The page carried a fork button alongside the Lockitron pre-order link, and the team said the campaign 'took on a life of its own.'
The discussion turned the release into a referendum on platform crowdfunding. Commenters said Lockitron and App.net had raised off Kickstarter because they were not allowed on it, weighed Kickstarter's 5% fee against the discovery its traffic provides, and singled out the escrow difference: Lockitron's backers' money was not transferred until the product was ready to ship, so committed orders could back bridge financing. Several commenters reported their own Lockitron orders, and startup founders in the thread said they would run their next campaigns on Selfstarter.
What has to be true
- Self-funding removed two gates at once: no 5% platform fee and no Kickstarter curation decision, which a commenter said had pushed Lockitron and App.net off the platform.
- The escrow structure was the real product: money only moved when the lock was ready to ship, so committed pre-orders could support bridge financing without staking backers' cash on the company.
- Open-sourcing turned one company's workaround into shared infrastructure: hardware teams in the thread immediately said they would run their own campaigns on Selfstarter.
What can be applied
Open-sourcing the tool that worked turns a company's own fix into a standard: Lockitron's release made self-hosted pre-orders a credible alternative to Kickstarter for hardware teams.
Aftermath
As of 2012-10-11 Lockitron was live and taking pre-orders for its phone lock through its own site, and Selfstarter was public for anyone to fork. The announcement logged 463 points and 74 comments on Hacker News, with commenters reporting Lockitron orders and startups planning Selfstarter campaigns; the thread's open question — whether a self-run page can replace Kickstarter's discovery — was left to the next campaigns. Later Lockitron history is not covered by this source.
Sources
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe what you are building, and see who is betting on the same thing.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card