In 2011, the year of Kickstarter’s second birthday, the crowdfunding site recorded nearly 11,836 successfully funded projects (about 44% of all the projects submitted) with more than $99 million pledged.
The year showed phenomenal growth over the previous one when 3,910 successful projects were launched with $27 million pledged.
Kickstarter is already the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects. The majority of projects on Kickstarter are creative ones involving film, art, or music.
But product design and startups can be just as creative. Perry Chen, CEO, describes the funding model on Kickstarter as “somewhere between commerce and patronage.” And some of the most notable projects are technology products, including open social network Diaspora and the TikTok iPod Nano watch that raised almost $1 million.
One successful Kickstarter project is Startup Fever, a board game in which the players are company founders in Silicon Valley and manage money and employees (engineers, sales, executives) and allocate them to the right products. Investing in engineers creates better products, who attract more users, who in turn generate money. They achieved 380 backers who pledged $30 thousand, though only $10 thousand was sought. The game sells at $60 and will be available in February 2012.
The number of crowdfunding sites around the world grew by about 68% between 2010-2011. This is a finance vehicle that is not going away.