
Kickstarter passes $1B in pledges - mecredis
https://www.kickstarter.com/1billion
======
basicallydan
Congratulations, Kickstarter.

In my opinion, Kickstarter is one of the most important tech startups of the
last few years for democratising the process of project funding so
significantly. It's started to change the way people do business and create
things in such a fundamental way.

One of my favourite examples to give is the way in which games can now be
funded. The truth of the matter is that games can cost a _lot_ more than they
used to, but for the last 15 years Publishers have had such a strong influence
over which games do or do not make it to market and they _know_ that a mass
market game is going to be less risky than something like Double Fine's
_Broken Age_. So they probably won't fund it, and I can kind of see why.

Now thanks to Kickstarter _et al._ , a developer just has to be able to say to
potential fans, "is this a game you want?!" and if they say yes, they
essentially pay in advance for their game. It's so direct, it's so wonderful.

Yes, there's still an element of having to sell the idea, but at least the
idea is being sold to a bunch of regular folks, who have a little bit of money
as opposed to somebody in charge of a large business. The decisions are much
easier to make, and the risk is much lower for the investors.

I hope crowdfunding in this way isn't just a flash in the pan. I hope we
continue to see projects funded in this way for a long, long time to come.
Here's to another billion, Kickstarter!

~~~
mazumdar
As a backer and project creator who's running a Kickstarter funded startup, I
couldn't agree more.

I love your example but I want to point out that the same obstacle you mention
with games is applicable to most of the other industries that are funded on
Kickstarter. The root problem in all cases lay in a startup's:

1) need for an audience

2) need for capital

What kickstarter has successfully done is build a loyal audience that's
massive in size. I came to really appreciate this after seeing more than 80%
of my funding come from people visiting kickstarter.com who didn't know about
my project beforehand. This was huge. And not only does it give you the
visibility and the capital required to execute, it validates your idea to a
large extent.

~~~
basicallydan
Good luck with your campaign! If you don't mind I have a few questions if you
happen to know the answers:

1\. Did those 80% of people see it through a "featured campaigns" thing or was
it totally organic? 2\. How did the remaining 20% find your campaign? 3\. Can
we see the campaign page? :)

~~~
mazumdar
Thanks. The campaign ended a while ago but here are the answers:

1\. We weren't featured by KS but it was on the "popular projects" page
throughout the life of the campaign. It initially got there by a combination
of backers finding it through "Recently launched projects" \+ backers who
signed up on our website to be notified of the launch (the former being the
majority). By the end of Day 1, it was #1 in its category and stayed there for
a while. Here is a link that shows the trend of the project funding if you're
interested: [http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/yathletics/silverair-
odorle...](http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/yathletics/silverair-odorless-
athletic-shirts-made-with-pure/#chart-daily)

2\. Remaining 20% found it through our own marketing efforts + other
websites/blogs writing about the project

3\. Sure thing - [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yathletics/silverair-
od...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yathletics/silverair-odorless-
athletic-shirts-made-with-pure)

~~~
basicallydan
Ah, cool. Good advice, and congratulations on smashing your target :D

------
toong
I skimmed over the map to find some interesting data:

* Averages are close to $200 per backer

* USA has $175 avg per backer, but makes 2/3 of that $1B

* The middle east (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Koeweit, ..) spends $400 up to almost $800 per backer

* Antartica has 11 backers @ $337/backer :-) 4th place, after the middle east, After that, Norway ($280), Belgium ($250)

Would be interesting to plot this data against the number of citizens, so you
can get a view of the participation rate of a country. (The US would top that
probably at around 1%)

Edit for readability

~~~
dzhiurgis
I was looking how to skim the data and I couldn't find a way.

Yes, it would be interesting to see the spending per capita & how it
correlates to GDP.

~~~
oblio
Now find a way to correlate that to language and project country stats. As far
as I can tell all Kickstarter projects have to be in the US/UK/Australia/NZ
and of course, the entire site is in English.

UK contribution - 54 million $, German contribution - only 21 million $.
Something is obviously off.

At this point I'd focus on horizontal growth - get in as many important
geographies as possible, focus on key languages: German, French, Spanish,
Chinese, Portuguese, Russian.

~~~
Dewie
> UK contribution - 54 million $, German contribution - only 21 million $.
> Something is obviously off.

The obvious solution is for people that want to be backed to offer versions of
their videos dubbed to German.

------
jonknee
That's pretty impressive. Kickstarter has a 5% fee (and Amazon their own
processing fee) which means ~$50m in revenue for Kickstarter and $25M in
revenue over the last year. I wonder how long they'll keep with Amazon as
payment processor, it seems like they're leaving a lot of money on the table.

~~~
selectout
Isn't the 1bn just for pledged money though? Is there a breakdown of what
percent of pledged dollars actually gets funded (when KickStarter takes their
cut).

Not saying they didn't do well, but I'd estimate the cut they make is
somewhere closer to 30-40mm and not 50mm.

~~~
jonknee
Correct, but the total is higher than your estimate:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats](https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats)

$859M in successful dollars which comes to $43M, though that doesn't count
current pledges for projects that will go on and succeed (there are currently
$24M "live" dollars).

------
BillyMaize
I just found out that my uncle, whom I thought very successful, failed to
fulfill his responsibilities to his backers. He was working on a 3d printer
that I was hoping to get to buy some day, but he never delivered more than a
few of them (most of which didn't even work) and now his backers are trying to
get together to sue him. A few days ago he filed for bankruptcy so they
probably won't get anything.

As much as I love the idea of kickstarter, I have now seen first hand how you
can be cheated and just can't trust the system to work (although many have and
it has worked for them). After the disappointment of Minecraft when Notch
started making a ton of money I have simply stayed away from all crowd
sourcing/buy-and-play-during-alpha projects for good. There is nothing wrong
with simply waiting until something is finished to buy it.

~~~
debt
What happened with Minecraft?

~~~
arjie
Notch was very free with his ideas. He'd often just propose them on Twitter.
Sometimes he'd say that a certain feature would be in but later drop it
because he thought it wouldn't be good. Also, the game has had a huge
community since when it was relatively young and it has evolved in a specific
direction (meaning people who started when it was new but expected a different
end result were displeased). Notch also seems to have become somewhat bored
with the game.

These things combined make some people upset with Notch. Apart from this,
nothing really happened with Minecraft. It continues to be a highly successful
game and frequently gets new features.

Nothing to be done about it, really. You can't please everyone.

------
crypt1d
These stats can actually be quite useful if you ever decide to create a
project on Kickstarter. For example, most of the money is granted on
Wednesdays and between 10 and 15th of the month, so you can plan your funding
cycle accordingly and increase marketing efforts during this period.

~~~
ktheory
Keep in mind that correlation is not causation. :-) (disclaimer: I work at
kickstarter)

~~~
girvo
I found it curious that it correlates to the middle of the work week plus
basically the middle of the month!

~~~
voltagex_
Pay-week for lots of people maybe?

------
greyshi
That's a pretty website. I was impressed by the animations. What is the term
for these kinds of slideshow-like sites?

~~~
aniketpant
That was simple one-page website with good transitions.

~~~
Robadob
I didn't much like how the first graph built up while scrolling, iirc other
sites normally make the graph static to the page while its built up during
scroll. This one the graph was moving across my screen as it assembled, quite
awkward.

------
samwillis
I would love to know what the successful payout total is.

~~~
k-mcgrady
That would be a much more useful figure. The only stats I can find are here[1]
but it just lists the number of successful projects not how much was pledged
to them.

[1]
[https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats](https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats)

~~~
rkuykendall-com
I feel like there are lots of people making sure no project stops at 99%. I
know I barely use KS, but even I've sorted by "ending soonest" before and
watched a few projects make it safely over to 100%.

That said, I'm glad to head the 20% number :)

------
famousactress
Tangential.. Kickstarter mentioned influential contributors but for whatever
reason didn't give links to their backed project and I was particularly
curious about what projects Neil Gaiman had backed. They weren't kidding, he's
quite the prolific backer!
[https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/108204027](https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/108204027)

------
Grue3
Wonder how much of this 1 billion actually successfully resulted in backer
rewards and wasn't indefinitely borrowed/outright stolen. Just recently a
webcomic artist John Campbell who raised $50000 wrote a long screed telling
his backers that they will never get the book they paid for. And a lot of
projects get completely forgotten about after they get fully funded.

~~~
ecopoesis
I realize it's hip to bash on Kickstarter, but in my experience it works out
well all the time. I've backed 28 funded projects: of those only one is
currently past their delivery date (the Almond+) and they've been very good
about updates. Other projects have also been late, sometimes by six months,
but they all get delivered.

I tend to think of Kickstarter schedules like I think of software developer
schedules: double it and add 3. Planning is hard, and for a lot of the
creators it there first attempt at a large project.

------
yohann305
It is very interesting to observe that countries who spend the most on
kickstarter are the same ones as the ones which spend the most in the Apple
app store.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Likely due to extreme wealth/access inequality. In countries where the
population is split between the extremely poor and the very rich the averages
are going to be skewed higher.

------
salmiak
Love the price comparison - what you can get for $1.000.000.000.

Also amazed that more money where backed from Antartica then some African
countries.

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rplnt
The share buttons at the bottom don't work.

------
mastersk3
The country wise breakdown is fantastic, roughly indicates the startup culture
present in the countries

~~~
aw3c2
Or just countries in which kickstarter is popular or even just available.

~~~
kijin
Even a simple color-coding scheme would have helped.

At first, I thought the blue color represented countries with at least one
backer. "Huh, North Korea? Really?" Turns out every country is blue. Was
disappointed.

------
vrikis
That's actually really, reallyyyyy impressive... Congrats to Kickstarter.

~~~
wudf
Congrats to all of us!

------
mpg33
When will we see crowd equity sites? Ie invest in early startups and get
equity in the company.

~~~
tim333
[http://www.crowdcube.com/](http://www.crowdcube.com/),
[http://www.seedrs.com/](http://www.seedrs.com/) \- UK companies along those
lines

~~~
Gustomaximus
Also www.wefunder.com for the US.

------
quarterto
"A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool?. A billion dollars."

~~~
resu_nimda
"No, it’s not. It’s not cool. I think being a wealthy member of the
establishment is the antithesis of cool. Being a countercultural revolutionary
is cool. So to the extent that you’ve made a billion dollars, you’ve probably
become uncool."

\- Sean Parker's response to his portrayal

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Sean Parker, net worth $2bn.

(I guess that he probably knew the implication of what he was saying when he
said it.)

------
jokoon
I live in france, and kickstarter doesn't seem available here :(

------
Thiz
Off topic but looking at the map, it validates the old libertarian axiom that
the more liberties, the more prosperous the economy, the more donations for
utilitarian causes.

Who will feed the poor? Liberty will.

~~~
logicallee
Or if not the poor, then the people with extra time on their hands and means
to create compelling videos for interesting projects, and if not to feed
anyone, then to allow allow them to work on creating something people with
disposible income find interesting enough to sponsor as an artistic project or
product pre-order. But yeah. Freedom and luxury lets some people and society
accumulate disposible income and focus it on discretionary products. A billion
dollars by 5.7 million people is $350 per person. Great that 0.1% (5.7 million
people) have that kind of cash. Doesn't say much about whether 99.9% of people
have any, or show that those $350 are a worthwhile cause for the 99.9% of
people who aren't donating.

This isn't to take anything away from Kickstarter - I think it's great. But
let's have some perspective.

