Highlights from Kickstarter’s year in review

It’s not a publicly traded company (avowedly), but Kickstarter still does an annual report that it releases on its website. As of this writing, Kickstarter has successfully collected $1.26 billion for projects that raised money on the site.
Here are our favorite tidbits offered up in this year’s report:

• People were pledging an average of $1,000 a minute last year.
• Technology was the hottest category in terms of money raised, with design and games coming in second and third, respectively. However, in terms of sheer number of successful projects, music won by a long shot.
• The U.S. still leads, far and away, in number of backers on Kickstarter, but that may be because other crowdfunding companies have sprung up in other countries. There also seems to be a relationship in terms of cultural ties to America and backers. So, for example, Canada and the United Kingdom backed far more projects than France did (170K, 261K and 41K, respectively), despite the fact that France has the largest population of the three.
• Famous people Kickstarting is also a theme in the report. Celebs featured include Marina Abramovic, Ai Weiwei and Neil Young.

It’s important to note that “pledge” means just that, and not all pledges are collected, either because projects don’t succeed or other snafus come up.
Check out the report
Kickstarter is not the only crowdfunding firm in Brooklyn. Gowanus is home to nonprofit crowdfunder ioby.