Kickstarter, a crowd funding website where individuals pitch their ideas to the masses and ask for funding, just celebrated its three year anniversary. The site opened on April 28, 2009 and since then, nearly 50,000 projects have sought financing with about half reaching their fund-raising goals.
The site was originally founded in 2008 by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler and Charles Adler as a way for people to raise money for unusual projects like global boating trips, offbeat documentaries and pop-up wedding chapels. Since then, project categories have expanded to include endeavors such as video game production, innovative technology products, indie films, music and food-related projects. Over $175 million has been pledged thus far.
The NY Times has posted an interesting infographic that shows where the majority of money funneled into Kickstarter is going. Since its inception, $10 million has been donated to roughly 360 different technology projects, good for an average of $27,677 per successful project. $20 million has been pledged to various video games, with each game netting an average of nearly $27,000 in donations.
By far, the most successful project to date is the Pebble E-Paper watch for iPhone and Android. Pebble is described as a smartphone watch that interacts seamlessly with your mobile device to display a wealth of different information without having to check your phone constantly. As of writing, the project has generated well over $7 million from almost 50,000 backers. The original goal was to hit $100,000 and there’s still 18 days left in the campaign.
Other notable campaigns include the Double Fine adventure game, the Elevation Dock for iPhone and Galileo, and iOS-controlled robotic iPhone platform.
