“Helping bring creative projects to life” is crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter’s motto, and in 2021, the company hit a new milestone, announcing the total amount of funding pledged on the platform amounted to almost $6.3billion according to research from Buyshares.co.uk. Three out of Kickstarter’s 15 categories make up 70 per cent of this figure.
3 Categories Dominate With Almost 70 per cent of Cumulative Amount Pledged On Kickstarter
Kickstarter specialises in creative projects which can be broken down into 15 categories. Of the 15 categories on the platform, three categories dominate the Kickstarter landscape, making up 69.43 per cent of all money pledged on the platform in its history. The Games category leads the way with an estimated $1.8billion pledged followed by the Design category and the Technology category at $1.4billion and $1.2billion respectively.
This gives the three categories a combined total of $4.37billion pledged on Kickstarter. In contrast, the three lowest amounts pledged on the platform belong to Crafts, Journalism and Dance, which have a combined total of less than $60million pledged on the platform.
Rex Pascual, editor at BuyShares, commented:
“Kickstarter remains an influential force among the crowdsourcing platform industry, but it doesn’t dominate the space like it once did. Controversies and increased competition are the main factors, but nevertheless, the platform remains a popular presence as seen by the recent milestone reached.”
Established in 2009, and being named as one of the “Best Inventions of 2010” and one of the “Best Websites of 2011” by Time Magazine only a year later, Kickstarter has flourished. By July 2012, $276million had been pledged on the platform, which more than tripled just a year later. Fast-forward to 2021 and Kickstarter still remains a popular crowdfunding platform, albeit less so than its earlier years. As of December 2021, the cumulative amount pledged to projects on Kickstarter, breached the $6billion mark for the first time, reaching almost $6.3billion.
