Kickstarter Reveals Record Year

Crowdfunding website Kickstarter has announced in its end-of-year report that its users pledged a record total of $480m to projects in 2013.

This is up from $319.8m the previous year, and works out at just over $1.3m pledged each day, which equates to $913 per minute. In the report, the company revealed that 19,911 projects successfully reached their funding targets in 2013, backed by over three million people based in 214 countries, up from 2.2 million users in 2012.

The report noted that more than 807,330 people backed more than one project in 2013, while 81,090 backed ten or more, and 975 incredibly generous people backed more than 100 projects.

Pledge drive

Since its launch in 2009, Kickstarter projects have attracted over $1 billion in pledges, with just over half of those pledges made in 2013 alone. In those four years, 54,803 projects have successfully reached their target goal amount, and the report singled out a number of notable Kickstarter successes. These included the Pebble smart watch, (the site’s most successful campaign, where nearly 70,000 backers raised over $10m in 2012, with devices shipped out to investors in April last year), the Oculus Rift virtual reality gaming device, and Android games console Ouya.

It also highlighted several entertainment-related projects, featuring the Oscar-winning documentary Inocente and the film Blue Ruin which won a prize at the Cannes International Film Festival.

The company says it is now looking forward to expanding further in 2014, stating that, “we’re all capable of creating incredible things”. In the face of increasing competition from the likes of Indiegogo and Crowditt, Kickstarter will be looking for even more success stories to highlight this time next year.

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