Kickstarter: project funding success rate 2023

As of November 2023, the success rate of fully funding a project on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter was 41.02 percent. In other words, more than four out of ten projects on Kickstarter was successfully funded, while roughly six out of ten projects were unsuccessful.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter is an American-based crowdfunding platform that was created in 2009 and has reportedly received pledges worth approximately 7.68 billion U.S. dollars as of November 2023. The company focuses on creative projects and functions on a reward-based system, where backers of a project are promised a little something in return for their financial contribution, such as personalized merchandise, invitations to events, public acknowledgement or updates regarding the project’s development. Kickstarter also applies one of two types of reward-based crowdfunding, namely 'All-or-Nothing' support, where project initiators set a funding goal and receive the donations only if the goal is reached, as opposed to 'Keep-it-All,' the funding model used by other platforms, where the money raised is kept regardless of whether it meets the funding goal.

Which are Kickstarter's most popular projects?

As of November 2023, the most popular category of projects featured on Kickstarter was games, with roughly 2.3 billion U.S. dollars pledged. Design projects were the next most funded, followed by technology and film & video. One of the most funded games as of November 2023 was Exploding Kittens, a card game designed by Elan Lee, Shane Small and comic creator Matthew Inman, a.k.a. The Oatmeal. Their initial funding goal was only 10,000 U.S. dollars, which was reached within eight minutes. Exploding Kittens received over 8.7 million U.S. dollars in pledges from more than 200,0000 backers in less than a month, making it one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of all time.