Kickstarter announced today that it’s crossed $2 billion in pledges, as of October 11, from over 9.5 million backers since the crowdfunding platform launched in April 2009.
The company built a special page to highlight notable facts and figures, and there are lots of them to give you an idea of how crowdfunding has grown in the past six years.
It took nearly five years to hit the $1 billion pledge mark in March 2014; the next billion was raised in just a third of that time — 19 months, to be precise.
Kickstarter notes that most pledges are under $100, and $25 is the most frequently pledged amount. Nearly $150 million was pledged for no reward in return.
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Of the 9.5 million backers from 230 countries, a third of them supported multiple campaigns. Interestingly, more than 35,000 people have backed 50 or more campaigns. The company also counts 49 Kickstarter addicts, who have pledged money to more than 1,000 projects.
More than 260,000 projects have been launched on the platform, and games took the lion’s share of pledges at $412 million, beating out technology projects at $360 million and design campaigns at $351 million.
Film and video projects are next at $302 million. They had 50,852 projects and 18,904 successfully funded campaigns — both counts being higher than all other categories.
The numbers are certainly looking good for Kickstarter, which enabled projects like the Veronica Mars movie, Neil Young’s high-definition Pono music player and the Pebble Time smartwatch.
The company reincorporated in September as a public benefit corporation, indicating that its primary motivations for growing and sustaining itself are towards helping society rather than only making money.
Sadly, even though crowdfunding is on the up-and-up, platforms are still grappling with the problem of campaigns that fail to follow through with their promises to backers. It’ll take more than trust and good faith to solve that one.
➤ Two Billion Dollars [Kickstarter]
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