Kickstarter surpasses $6 billion pledges

Crowdfunding company, Kickstarter has surpassed $6 billion pledges to over 200,000 projects, despite the pandemic.

A few weeks before the company announced its milestone, the company had reduced staff by 39% through layoffs and buyouts, while observing a 35% drop in new projects. The pandemic caused many projects to be left unfinished, while gifts were undelivered and many seemed reluctant to fund projects in a time of complete economic standstill. However, with $1 billion pledge in 15 months, Kickstarter has beaten the odds as the pandemic stimulated the reprioritizing and recentring of new ventures.

Aziz Hasan, CEO of Kickstarter, discusses the milestone he’s achieved amidst the ongoing pandemic, in an interview with Tech Crunch.

Hasan sees crowdfunding as “one of the best mechanisms” to independently create and find the support and resources you need to begin a new projects. He comments on how the company has for the longest time dedicated its resources to focusing on creator tools and giving them ease of access, forgetting that the backers are an “incredible part of this puzzle”. He believes that backers too are involved in this important process of creating projects, since they too experience the joy and curiosity of new projects.

Hasan has invested more time into creating the backer experience on Kickstarter more efficient and easy, providing them recommendations of projects that they may care about and might want to fund, and providing emailed newsletters to keep them informed.

The CEO discussed how the pandemic affected the company as projects slowed down and 40% of the pledge volume dropped, which consequently caused a number of projects to fall out. Towards the end of 2020 backers on Kickstarter eagerly funded new projects, even if they were a few of them being launched. Many creators came back online after seeing the determined support of backers on the crowdfunding site. The company pushed back successfully after the initial dip experienced in the beginning four to five months of 2020.