Kickstarter broke $1 billion in pledges this weekend

Having quietly moved to Greenpoint early this year, Kickstarter, the giant in crowdfunding, crossed the billion dollar mark for money pledged to projects at 4:03 am Monday morning.

See the Kickstarter stats page, which shows all the big picture statistics of their crowdfunding business.

The company has not made much of this milestone yet. In fact, as of this writing, their press page currently says, “Since our launch on April 28, 2009, over $1000 million has been pledged by more than 5.7 million people, funding more than 57,000 creative projects.” [Emphasis added]

Looking at those stats, you can draw a few inferences:

• Total pledges per backer averages about $175 (this would be more than one pledge).
• The average pledge is $72.
• The average backer has gotten involved with 2.4 projects.

Games have raised about 10 percent more money than films have. On the other hand, almost four times more people have given money to films than games. So it’s still too early to tell whether the fortunes of one industry may begin to change at the expense of another, but these stats may be an indicator going forward.