(Newswire.net — July 16, 2019) — Kickstarter is a self-described ‘public-benefit’ corporation that ‘helps to bring creative projects to life. Since its launch ten years ago, Kickstarter has seen the funding of many notably famous and successful businesses. Although a gigantic number of individuals, such as inventors, artists and entrepreneurs have taken to the site to try and gain pledges for their ideas.
Crowdfunding can come at a risk. It can be an extraordinary gamble for any business to rely entirely on Kickstarter, as only 36% of the projects on the site reach their target amount. However, this hasn’t stopped Kickstarter’s popularity. To date, over $4.2 billion has been invested in every kind of project imaginable, and there are many notable examples of businesses that have flourished from crowdfunding. Here are the most famous examples:
Oculus Rift
Arguably the most successful project on the entire Kickstarter Website, Oculus Rift was a virtual reality advancement that has allowed to VR world to take flight. But Oculus did not do this by itself, it received a huge amount of interest from the crowdfunding page.
Despite the founder, Palmer Luckey, showing off the (future) famous headset, he needed to receive $250,000 in order to properly develop to VR technology. Because of the interest already surrounding the possibilities of virtual reality, the Kickstarter campaign managed to generate a total of $2.4 million in funds in the space of a month.
Although the crowdfunding project reached almost 1000% of its target, it is not the most financed crowdfunding project ever. However, what makes the Oculus Rift a true success story is the investment Facebook gave it. Just two years after its launch, Facebook invested an incredible $2 billion into the company, making it one of the greatest success stories on Kickstarter of all time.
Pebble Time
Pebble Time, a smartwatch company, currently holds the record for the most crowdfunded campaign on Kickstarter. Within 49 minutes of the project being on the website, the business received $1 million from various backers. In total, Pebble raised a whopping $10,266,845 in 2012.
Despite receiving an offer of $740 million from the watchmaker citizen, the company was bought n 2016 by Fitbit, who now use the technology in all of their watches.
Star Citizen
Despite not yet being fully formed, the ‘epic space adventure’ Star Citizen is one of the most funded campaigns to hit Kickstarter. It gained $2.1 million in funding from over 34,000 backers, and an additional $180 million has been raised on its own website through crowdfunding.
However, investors have since become impatient with the business, as it has been delayed for years. Many backers have wished to withdraw their money, which forced the company to tighten the strings on return policies.
Now, all backers can do is wait for the game to (hopefully) launch.
Exploding Kittens
The funny, self-described ‘highly strategic kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette’, this card game started with a funding goal of $10,000, but managed to completely exceed expectations by raising almost $8.8 million, with support of a record breaking 219,000 backers.
What perhaps made Exploding Kittens so great is the way the company enticed crowd-funders. The company managed to make the Kickstarter into a game, by encouraging backers to ‘post photos of 10 people wearing cat ears’ to win additional prizes.
Exploding Kittens provides a great idea on how to become a successful crowdfunding project.
Some of the information in this article was taken from Betway.