Kickstarter Is King Of Crowdfunding With $2 Billion In Pledges From 9.5 Million People Since 2009
Crowdfunding giant Kickstarter has been around since 2009. In that time, it's raised more than $2 billion in pledges from 9.5 million people, having crossed the threshold last month on October 11. To celebrate the occasion, Kickstarter revealed a whole bunch of interesting (and mind boggling) figures on its website.
One of those details is that pledges contributed the second billion dollars to projects three times faster than they did the first billion dollars. That makes for a sharp upward curve when graphing out the crowdfunding site's growth since its inception on April 28, 2009.
The second billion dollars has also seen a huge uptick in the amount of money being pledged per minute. For the first billion, crowdfunders committed $391 every 60 seconds to various projects, while the second billion has averaged $1,182 per minute. That works out to $70,920 per hour -- let that figure sink in for a moment.
Yancey Strickler- co-founder of Kickstarter
That's a lot of money, and it's not coming in huge chunks. Just the opposite, the majority of pledges en route to $2 billion have been $100 or or less. The most popular amount has been $25, which is what over 2.4 million people have pledged on different projects, while over 2.6 million people have forked over either $10 or $15 towards various campaigns.
Part of what makes Kickstarter so appealing is that it offers "reward" tiers. It's not technically a pre-ordering system, though for successful projects, it can feel like one. Reward tiers typically offer the end product at a reduced rate compared to what it will sell at retail, though many campaigns also include incentives like plush dolls, t-shirts, and everything else.
Even so, not all pledges are motivated by physical and digital goods. Kickstarter says that more than $100 million of that $2 billion figure -- or 5 percent -- was pledged for no reward at all.
Kickstarter hasn't been without its controversies, but despite the occasional negative attention, it'd be hard to call it anything but a success. Just ask the teams behind the more than 260,000 projects that have launched on the crowdfunding site to date.
One of those details is that pledges contributed the second billion dollars to projects three times faster than they did the first billion dollars. That makes for a sharp upward curve when graphing out the crowdfunding site's growth since its inception on April 28, 2009.
The second billion dollars has also seen a huge uptick in the amount of money being pledged per minute. For the first billion, crowdfunders committed $391 every 60 seconds to various projects, while the second billion has averaged $1,182 per minute. That works out to $70,920 per hour -- let that figure sink in for a moment.
Yancey Strickler- co-founder of Kickstarter
That's a lot of money, and it's not coming in huge chunks. Just the opposite, the majority of pledges en route to $2 billion have been $100 or or less. The most popular amount has been $25, which is what over 2.4 million people have pledged on different projects, while over 2.6 million people have forked over either $10 or $15 towards various campaigns.
Part of what makes Kickstarter so appealing is that it offers "reward" tiers. It's not technically a pre-ordering system, though for successful projects, it can feel like one. Reward tiers typically offer the end product at a reduced rate compared to what it will sell at retail, though many campaigns also include incentives like plush dolls, t-shirts, and everything else.
Even so, not all pledges are motivated by physical and digital goods. Kickstarter says that more than $100 million of that $2 billion figure -- or 5 percent -- was pledged for no reward at all.
Kickstarter hasn't been without its controversies, but despite the occasional negative attention, it'd be hard to call it anything but a success. Just ask the teams behind the more than 260,000 projects that have launched on the crowdfunding site to date.
