Both Patreon and Kickstarter is oriented towards consumer goods but Sciter is a B2B product. Software-wise people use Kickstarter and Patreon for consumer goods like games where you need literally thousands of fans to be profitable.
Sciter is a really good quality software and I believe it can overtake QT in future, but I got a feeling you might want to go with VC funding and possibly change the business model.
"VC funding and possibly change the business model"
I was thinking about something like that. But again, realistically speaking, what would be interesting for VCs in such project to even bother about it?
I honestly don't know your business so I can't personally say it but in essence:
Do you think market(consumers) for GUI design software will increase or decrease in future? I do believe it will increase as more and more companies need in-house software. Also, it is worth noting QT has ~60 million dollars in revenue and that is definitely in the ballpark of VC backed money. You would probably have to deliver 10 million on a 1 million investment.
It mostly boils down to marketing and some quality of life improvements. Do you got a sales staff? Again, I'm in the gamedev business so I got no deep-down knowledge about GUI designer market but marketing costs are about 100% of development costs for desktop games (at the very very low end) and up to 1000% of development cost for mobile games. So in game development, marketing is the bulk of the cost, and development costs aren't all that important.
What do you think marketing costs are for GUI designers, or do you know how much QT spends on that? As an user I feel like Sciter is lacking good marketing at this stage but you can only know that and chart your way.
Please don't take any of the above advice too seriously because again I'm just a game developer, you will have to figure out this stuff yourself.
"Market(consumers) for GUI design software will increase or decrease in future?"
In regard of this, there are three types of consumer roles:
1. "readers" - all of us reading the internet, e.g. me and you reading HN now.
2. "creators" - all of us who create IT stuff and content at some extent- sites and content, browsers will never be quite adequate for that role, for many reasons. Compare desktop Word and those desperate and ugly attempts to reproduce it for browsers.
3. "app users" - you or me consuming modern applications, Slack, Skype, etc. That must be lightweight desktop apps, IMO. Sciter.JS (as does Sciter) is the best candidate for such cases.
Groups #2 and #3 are smaller but proportional to #1. As soon as #1 will grow as #2 and #3 will grow too.
So the need for desktop UI will definitely not go away in foreseeable future - only grow. And so the need of HTML/CSS in UI too - due to flexibility of Web stack and developers base.
I can think of one case where it works, the Octoprint software for managing 3D printers. The main developer Gina Häußge is fully financed by the Patreon. Though of course this is Germany, I think getting US developer salaries would be much less likely.
You probably need to be in the right niche for this model to work, I'd suspect it is quite hard to pull this off. But that goes for most ways to get paid for open source.
I think patreon would be great for your case. You already have 99 backers on Kickstarter who seemed to pledge a hefty average. It would take longer to get the Kickstarter lump sum but it would also keep generating income. If you make one you’ll have at least one patron (me)
Would depend on expenses and fanbase. Personally it seems more geared towards individuals and I've seen it do well for some. Not sure if any corporations sponsor people there or elsewhere. A lot of people like sponsoring at different tiers, like on kickstarter, which might be the key to success.
