Kickstarter celebrates a new milestone with $1 billion in pledges from 5.7 million people around the world in five years
Kickstarter, the popular crowd-funding source for independent projects, reached a new milestone in almost five years since it was first started in April 2009. The organization recorded $1 billion in pledges from 5.7 million people around the world and designed a special One Billion Dollars page to celebrate the achievement. The dedicated webpage shows the phenomenal journey with impressive statistics, from when it started with $1,084 in pledges from 40 people to 7 projects in April 2009 and how it reached $1 billion mark in March 2014.
Kickstarter funded some of today's most popular projects, such as the Pebble smartwatch, the Oculus Rift gaming headset and the upcoming "Veronica Mars" movie. Though the service has been around for more than four years, Kickstarter notes that in the last 12 months they raised more than half of the money. The organization raised the mark up from $554,421,672 in March 2013 to $1 Billion this month. The money was raised for different projects ranging from films to comics and books to tech gadgets and video games.
According to the statistics put together by Kickstarter, the United States contributed $663 million, followed by the UK with $54 million and Canada with $45 million. Other countries that topped the category include Australia, Germany, France, Japan, Sweden, Netherlands and Singapore.
Kickstarter raises money for ideas to turn into develop into fully fledged products. The site requires developers to choose a deadline and a target funding goal. Kickstarter takes 5 percent of successfully funded projects. If a project falls short of the pledged goal within the deadline, unlike Indiegogo, backers get refunds.
Games remained the most popular category on Kickstarter and people pledged $215.75 million, with $189.84 million reaching successful projects. Kickstarter may have surpassed $1 billion mark, the site notes $859 million was pushed towards successful projects.
Kickstarter had a similar interactive page designed to show its statistics throughout 2013. The crowd-funding source helped 19,000 projects reach their funding goals, with 3 million participants raising $480 throughout last year.
