Kickstarter: total amount of dollars pledged 2023

Between July 2012 and November 2023, the cumulative amount of dollars pledged to project funding on Kickstarter worldwide grew steadily. As of November 2023, the value of pledges exceeded 7.68 billion U.S. dollars. The most successfully completed project was "Surprise! Four Secret Novels by Brandon Sanderson", which collected more than 40 million U.S. dollars in 2022.

When did crowdfunding start?

The early 2000s saw the launch of one of the first internet crowdfunding platforms in the United States, ArtistShare. The main object of the platform was to help musicians complete their artistic projects, such as albums or tours, with the financial help of their fans. Upon the company’s success, similar crowdfunding websites started appearing around the world. Some of the most successful crowdfunding platforms today are IndieGoGo, GoFundMe, and Fig.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter, which launched in 2009, is one of the largest crowdfunding platforms in the world, having launched over 609,000 projects and received pledges worth more than 7.68 billion U.S. dollars as of November 2023. Unlike other crowdfunding companies, Kickstarter focuses on mainly creative projects, from craft ideas to music albums or technological innovations, and imposes a time limit for each campaign. If the project fails to reach its funding goal, it is dropped and the pledges are returned to the backers. According to statistics released by Kickstarter, the success rate of fully funding a project on the crowdfunding website was only 41 percent. The largest number of successful campaigns have raised between 1,000 and 9,999 dollars, although a select 779 campaigns have managed to raise over one million U.S. dollars.