Total Amount Pledged On Kickstarter Hits $6.3B; 3 Categories Account For Almost 70%

Popular crowdfunding platform and one of the industry’s modern pioneers, Kickstarter, crossed an important milestone in 2021 in terms of the amount of funding pledged on its platform. According to data presented by Buyshares.co.uk, the total amount of funding pledged on Kickstarter amounted to almost $6.3B as of December 2021 – almost 70% of which belongs to three categories.

Kickstarter Breaches $6B Mark In Total Amount Pledged

Kickstarter was founded in 2009 and then fast became the darling of the US tech scene. The website runs a crowdfunding platform that aims to “help bring creative projects to life,” as per the company’s stated mission. A year later it was named by Time magazine as one of the “Best Inventions of 2010” and one of the “Best Websites of 2011.”

By July 2012, $276M had been pledged on the platform, which more than tripled just a year later. Fast-forward to 2021 and Kickstarter still remains a popular crowdfunding platform, albeit less so than its earlier years. As of December 2021, the cumulative amount pledged to projects on Kickstarter, breached the $6B mark for the first time, reaching almost $6.3B.

3 Categories Dominate With Almost 70% of Cumulative Amount Pledged On Kickstarter

Kickstarter specializes in creative projects which can be broken down into 15 categories. Of the 15 categories on the platform, three categories dominate the Kickstarter landscape, making up 69.43% of all money pledged on the platform in its history. The Games category leads the way with an estimated $1.8B pledged followed by the Design category and the Technology category at $1.4B and $1.2B respectively.

This gives the three categories a combined total of $4.37B pledged on Kickstarter. In contrast, the three lowest amounts pledged on the platform belong to Crafts, Journalism and Dance, which have a combined total of less than $60M pledged on the platform.

Rex Pascual, editor at BuyShares, commented:

“Kickstarter remains an influential force among the crowdsourcing platform industry, but it doesn’t dominate the space like it once did. Controversies and increased competition are the main factors, but nevertheless, the platform remains a popular presence as seen by the recent milestone reached.”