CommitPay: Escrow-Backed Idea Validation & Pre-Commitment Platform for Makers

I built a simpler crowdfunding platform for people who make things

Nice project. One thing from my own experience on a different kind of marketplace: getting listings live turned out to be the easy part, and getting buyers to show up was the hard part. I had a dozen verified listings and zero hires, because supply doesn't create demand by itself. So my question is about the backer side. Where do your first backers come from, your own audience or each creator's? The pre-launch pages sound useful for that, since a creator can see real interest before asking anyone for money. I haven't run a crowdfunding campaign myself, so I can't compare it to Kickstarter, but I'd be curious how you plan to get creators to bring their own audience.

The flexible funding question in the comments is the one I'd focus on. Backers trust Kickstarter partly because the all-or-nothing model protects them from paying for something that never had enough support. If money changes hands the moment someone backs a project regardless of whether it hits its goal, you need to be really clear upfront about what a creator commits to delivering at different funding levels, not just after the fact. On the backer question, most crowdfunding platforms that got traction did it by having the first handful of creators bring an audience that already trusted them, not by counting on the platform itself to supply demand. I'd lean hard into helping your early creators build the pre-launch waitlist before they publicly launch, since that gives you proof of interest and gives them a reason to promote it themselves. Also worth thinking about: payment trust is a bigger barrier than interface simplicity for most people backing something for the first time.