Is Kickstarter Only Getting Started?

Countless visionaries and risk takers seek funding for their creative projects. Many of them spend countless years and resources in projects that fail to ever see daylight. Kickstarter was created back in 2009 with the aim of solving these dilemmas faced by creative entrepreneurs. Now, four years later, Kickstarter has become the biggest crowdfunding platform in the world, with more than 51,000 funded creative projects and nearly $868 million dollars raised (1). The website is simply; first, project creators set a funding goal and a deadline for their creations, then people can back it up with pledge money, and finally if the project reaches its funding goals it makes money for the creators and investors. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing platform, which they admit can be risky, but advertise as extremely successful rallying great amounts of investors in a small period of time.

Kickstarter has been going through some rough moments recently following a CEO change, however, the company has guaranteed that it will not deviate from its mission (2). Media sources such as IGN and Forbes have expressed concern about Kickstarter recent letdowns in projects returns and the possible dangers in funding projects after “hoax” incidents (3)(4). Still the company continues to impress with the quantity of funded projects and its 44% success rate of projects that reached their funding goals. There is still much to explore in a world of possibilities between new projects genres and improving interface communication between creators and funders.