When Kickstarter Was Kickstarted!

The summer of 2009 was quite remarkable for Perry Chen, Yancey Stricker and Charles Adler. It was that time of the year when their dream website Kickstarter was launched! Kickstarter is a New York based public benefit corporation known for building a global crowdfunding platform. The company brings creative projects to reality and is the go to platform for many entrepreneurs! There ain’t no middlemen, no loans and no grants. Sounds cool, right?

The inception of Kickstarter!

Back in 2005, the mastermind Perry met Yancey Strickler and they became good friends. In a friendly conversation, the duo started scribbling on a whiteboard their exceptional thoughts with regard to a crowdfunding platform! Later, Perry convinced his friends to give him a little bit of money. Months later, Perry was introduced to Charles Adler and so the rest you know! The three of the great minds started working on their ideas and turned it into a website.

After years of research, they finally launched the website in 2009 which was then flooded with tons of investors and projects.

Perry Chan, along with the American media editor, Yancey Stricker and American Web designer, Charles Adler came up with the idea of launching a website for the purpose of crowdfunding. Post the launch of their website, the founders spread word about Kickstarter in their friends circle. However, projects started coming in and people stepped up to support projects consequently. In January 2010,  the team moved into a tenement building in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. From 3,910 successful projects and $ 27,638,318 pledges in 2010, the firm was reaching new heights already! This was followed by 18,109 successfully funded projects and $ 319,786,629 pledges in the year 2012. In the year 2013 Perry stepped down from the position of the CEO and went on to become the Chairman. He was replaced by Yancey Strickler. The year of 2014 brought the company a huge raising $ 13.28 million, which became the most funded Kickstarter project in history!

Here’s what makes Kickstarter so interesting!

Kickstarter does not rely on affluent investors. The company opts for crowdfunding, in which loads of smaller investors make contributions. The investment could be as little as a $ 1 and there are basically no restrictions. The company generated its revenue by assessing a fee of 5 percent from projects that reached or surpassed their funding targets. Projects that did not meet their funding goals within a specified time period did not receive any money pledged to them, and they were not subjected to the fee. The company so far has funded thousands of projects from investor donations resulting in several hundred million dollars. Isn’t that huge?

Kickstarter has become extremely important in the startup ecosystem! From entrepreneurs to investors, Kickstarter is one damn platform that could get you what you desire!