Kickstarter

• 1. Introduction

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  Kickstarter launched on the 28th of April 2009, and within a few years it had channeled more than four billion dollars into creative projects that traditional funders would never have touched. By April 2025-24.1 million backers had pledged a combined US$8.71 billion to fund 277,302 projects. Films, board games, documentary shorts, technology hardware, even a card game that started on a $4,000 ask: all of it flowing through a Brooklyn-based platform that its co-founders said was not really about crowdfunding at all.

  Three people built Kickstarter: Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler. Their stated mission was blunt enough to fit on a coffee cup: "help bring creative projects to life." But the model they chose, and the controversies that followed, raised questions that persist today. What does a platform owe the people who build on it? What happens when a backer's money disappears? And what does it mean to be a tech company that insists it is something else entirely?

• 2. The Patronage Bargain

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  Perry Chen, when asked what set Kickstarter apart, offered a telling answer. He questioned whether anyone had agreed on what crowdfunding even means, and said the company had not actively promoted the term because it caused confusion. What Kickstarter offered, in Chen's framing, was a middle ground between patronage and commerce: "People are creating these mini-economies around their project ideas."

  The roots of that model stretch back to arts patronage, where artists went directly to audiences to fund work before it existed. Kickstarter formalized the exchange by attaching tangible rewards or experiences to each pledge tier. Back a musician's album and receive a copy; back a gadget and receive the finished device.

  The platform set the terms of that exchange carefully. Kickstarter takes a 5% fee on total funds raised, and its payments processor adds another 3-5%. The company claims no ownership over the projects or the work they produce. Project pages are permanently archived and cannot be edited or removed after funding closes. And crucially, if a project does not reach its funding goal by its deadline, no money changes hands at all: a structure Kickstarter describes as a kind of assurance contract.

  Research conducted by Wharton professor Ethan Mollick and Jeanne Pi between 2012 and 2013 mapped the mechanics of success. Projects featured on the Kickstarter homepage reached success 89% of the time, compared to 30% for those that were not. A 30-day project running at an average $10,000 goal had a 35% chance of success; stretching the campaign to 60 days dropped that figure to 29%. And projects that crossed 20% of their goal succeeded more than 80% of the time across all categories.

• 3. Early Milestones

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  In 2010, its first full year of meaningful activity, Kickstarter recorded 3,910 successful projects and nearly $28 million in pledges. By 2011 those figures had roughly tripled: 11,836 successfully funded projects and just under $100 million pledged. The company moved fast beyond New York, too. Time named Kickstarter one of the "Best Inventions of 2010" and one of the "Best Websites of 2011." The New York Times called it "the people's NEA," a reference to the National Endowment for the Arts.

  On the 9th of February 2012, the platform hit a series of records in a single day. A dock designed for the iPhone by Casey Hopkins became the first Kickstarter project to surpass one million dollars in pledges. Hours later, the computer game developer Double Fine Productions crossed the same threshold for a new adventure game, having launched the campaign less than 24 hours earlier. That project finished with over $3 million pledged. It was also the first time Kickstarter raised more than a million dollars in pledges in a single day.

  Two and a half years later, on the 30th of August 2014, a cooler designed by Ryan Grepper set a new record: the "Coolest Cooler" collected US$13.28 million, breaking the record previously held by the Pebble smartwatch. The early funding totals felt like proof of concept not just for individual creators but for the platform's central argument: that audiences, given a direct channel, would support work that the traditional gatekeepers had passed over.

• 4. What Gets Made

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  Creators on Kickstarter sort their projects into 13 categories and 36 subcategories: Art, Comics, Dance, Design, Fashion, Film and Video, Food, Games, Music, Photography, Publishing, Technology, and Theater. Film and Video along with Music are the two largest categories by dollars raised. Games joins them to account for more than half of all money raised on the platform. Video games and tabletop games alone account for more than $2 out of every $10 spent.

  Over two thirds of completed dance projects succeeded. Fewer than 30% of completed fashion projects reached their goals. Among the projects that did fail, the pattern was consistent across categories: most fell short of even 20% of their target.

  The projects that found success span an unlikely range. Amanda Palmer's album Theatre is Evil debuted at number 10 on the Billboard 200. Cards Against Humanity started with a $4,000 Kickstarter campaign in 2010. The documentary shorts "Sun Come Up" and "Incident in New Baghdad" each received Academy Award nominations. The art projects EyeWriter and Hip-Hop Word Count were both selected to exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 2011. Designer Scott Wilson won a National Design Award from the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt museum after the success of his TikTok and LunaTik project.

  The Oculus Rift launched as a 2012 Kickstarter campaign. Facebook acquired the company two years later for $2 billion. Peloton sold its first exercise bike on Kickstarter in 2013 at an early bird price of $1,500, then went public in 2019 via an IPO that raised $1.1 billion. Approximately 10% of the films accepted into the Sundance, SXSW, and Tribeca Film Festivals trace their origins to Kickstarter funding.

• 5. When Things Go Wrong

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  Kickstarter explicitly warns backers that there is no guarantee a funded project will deliver. The platform advises backers to use their own judgment, and warns creators that failure to deliver on promises could expose them to legal liability. That disclaimer has been tested repeatedly.

  Some projects collapsed under honest miscalculation: creators underestimating costs or technical complexity. Others turned out to be fraudulent. The Kobe Red project raised $120,309 for jerky allegedly made from Kobe beef before being cancelled on fraud concerns. The iFind item-tracking tag claimed battery-free operation through electromagnetic harvesting; after critics raised serious doubts about that claim and noted the absence of a working prototype, Kickstarter suspended the campaign after it had raised $546,852. The Skarp Laser Razor raised $4 million before Kickstarter cancelled it in 2015, citing the company's failure to demonstrate a working prototype.

  Patent litigation became a recurring complication. On the 30th of September 2011, Kickstarter filed a declaratory judgment suit against ArtistShare, seeking to invalidate a crowd-funding patent. ArtistShare countered with an infringement claim. In June 2015, Kickstarter won, with the judge declaring ArtistShare's patent invalid. A separate suit arrived on the 21st of November 2012, when 3D Systems sued Kickstarter and Formlabs over a 3D-printer patent, claiming Kickstarter's 5% fee made it a participant in infringement.

  In February 2014, the company disclosed a data breach affecting nearly 5.2 million users, exposing email addresses, usernames, and password hashes. Then in December 2021, Kickstarter announced a pivot to blockchain, backed by a $100 million investment from the crypto fund of Andreessen Horowitz. The announcement alienated users and damaged the company's reputation.

• 6. The Union Fight

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  On the 19th of March 2019, Kickstarter's staff announced plans to join the Office and Professional Employees International Union, which would have made Kickstarter the only major tech company with a union. Three senior staffers quickly released a memo calling the move an extreme step and a misappropriation of union structures for "privileged workers." CEO Aziz Hasan announced that the company would require a formal election rather than voluntary recognition.

  In September 2019, the employees filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board after two workers were terminated. The employees said the firings were retaliation for union organizing; Kickstarter said the terminations were for performance reasons. Writer Neil Gaiman publicly stated he would be unlikely to promote new Kickstarter campaigns as long as the company remained anti-union.

  The formal vote took place on the 18th of February 2020. Forty-six employees voted in favor of joining the OPEIU; 37 voted against. Hasan said afterward that the company supported and respected the decision. By the 2nd of May 2020-60% of the workforce had joined the union under the name Kickstarter United.

  Labor conflict returned in October 2025. On October 2, Kickstarter United went on strike, bargaining to preserve the four-day workweek and raise wages for the lowest-paid workers. After 42 days, workers voted to end the strike in November 2025, having secured a codified four-day workweek, salary floor increases tied to cost of living, and explicit protections against replacement of workers by generative AI.