Almost 50% hit funding goals on kickstarter.com

Almost 50% hit funding goals on kickstarter.com
PHOTO: Almost 50% hit funding goals on kickstarter.com

More than four million people have pledged over US$649 million (S$810 million) to fund 42,000 creative projects in just four years on Kickstarter.com

No other online crowdfunding platform can boast the success the site has had since its launch in 2009.

The site is driven by its philosophy that people will give money to support good ideas. And the way it works is simple: Creators from the United States and Britain can post a project - something that has an end product - on the American-based Kickstarter so long as they fall within one of 13 categories from art to technology and theatre.

Creators from elsewhere can use the site if they have sub-divisions in the US or Britain, as Singapore company Pirate3D does with its office in California.

Fund-raising projects on Kickstarter can last anywhere from one day to 60 days, and creators declare a target to be reached within that time.

If a project is successfully funded by the end of the campaign period, Kickstarter applies a 5 per cent fee to the funds collected. Unsuccessful projects do not receive any of the money pledged.

To date, about 44 per cent of projects posted have reached their funding goals.

All kinds of ideas from wacky to super cool have surfaced on Kickstarter - among them, the Warner Bros-backed film adaptation of the defunct TV series Veronica Mars and even a bus stop in Georgia, in the United States.

Creators can also reward their backers to say thank you, typically with products of the project itself.

For Pirate3D, anyone pledging US$297 and above will receive a unit of the Buccaneer 3-D printer.


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