This month, BackerKit reached an exciting milestone: over 3,000 crowdfunded projects have now used our pledge management software to manage their post-campaign and deliver rewards to backers.
BackerKit projects represent over $549,048,021 in total funding across Kickstarter and Indiegogo– a number that is certain to grow.
In 2015, BackerKit helped 1,000 crowdfunded projects deliver on their promises to 2 million backers. This month, we’re well on our way to helping six million backers receive their rewards through BackerKit and should reach that mark by the end of June.
Our first 1,000 projects raised $12,351,904 through pre-orders and add-on sales in BackerKit. That figure has now swelled to $60,168,130.
Top Ten Largest Projects
- Kingdom Death: Monster 1.5 ($12,393,139)
- The Everyday Backpack, Tote, and Sling ($6,565,782)
- Fidget Cube: A Vinyl Desk Toy ($6,465,690)
- Bring Back MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 ($5,764,229)
- Reading Rainbow: Every Child, Everywhere ($5,408,916)
- Dark Souls™ – The Board Game (£3,771,474)
- The Everyday Messenger: A Bag For Cameras & Essential Carry ($4,869,472)
- KAISR Original: The Ultimate Inflatable Air Lounge ($4,125,804)
- Micro Drone 3.0: Flight in the Palm of Your Hand ($3,589,946)
- G-RO: Revolutionary Carry-on Luggage ($3,307,773)
Our top 10 most-funded projects list has almost completely changed since we last listed them in our 1,000 Projects blog post. Over half of the projects that raised over a million dollars on Kickstarter in 2016 used BackerKit to manage their backers post-campaign.
Reading Rainbow, which previously held the number one spot, now stands as our fifth largest project. Kingdom Death: Monster 1.5, the highest funded tabletop game on Kickstarter to date, tops the list. Peak Design has two projects in our top ten with The Everyday Backpack, Tote, and Sling and The Everyday Messenger.
Million-dollar projects tend to hog the spotlight, but BackerKit caters to projects across the funding spectrum: 30% of our projects raised over $100,000, 45% raised between $20,000 and $100,000, and 15% raised less than $20,000.
BackerKit’s most popular categories for crowdfunding campaigns are tabletop games, product design, and technology, but we’ve helped plenty of creators with interests spanning video games, fashion, food, comics, publishing, and many more.
The diversity of categories represented in our top ten list is striking: tabletop games, product design, hardware, apparel, and TV projects have all captured the imagination of backers on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
Support
Providing responsive frontline support has always been a fundamental part of BackerKit’s commitment to project creators and backers. Our dedicated support team has handled 308,845 support tickets from January 2013 to present. Their hard work has helped countless project creators navigate the post-campaign phase with confidence.
BackerKit has implemented a number of self-service tools to lessen project creators’ workloads and give backers more flexibility to update their addresses and make changes to their surveys on their own.
New Features
Our product team has worked tirelessly to improve the BackerKit experience for creators and backers alike. We’ve introduced shipping tables, which allow project creators to design more complex fee structures according to item quantity or weight; coupon codes, which lets project creators to give backers discounts on pre-orders or add-ons; and partial fulfillment support, which makes it easier for creators to manage split shipments.
At BackerKit, we know that learning by doing is an important part of the crowdfunding journey, which is why we’re creating tools to empower project creators. One such tool is BackerTracker, a projection model that predicts how much a crowdfunding campaign will raise based on the historical performance of past campaigns. BackerTracker’s trending page showcases high-performing projects on Kickstarter and Indiegogo and is an invaluable research tool for project creators.
We’ve also revamped the BackerKit blog to provide project creators with the tips and tools they need to succeed in their crowdfunding journey, and have published in-depth guides to answer questions for crowdfunding novices and veterans alike.
Events
We’ve been energized by the breadth of ideas and products we’ve seen in action at festivals and conventions like XOXO, Essen Spiel, CES, and PAX East. This weekend, the BackerKit team will be making our third trip to Maker Faire; in August, we’ll be exhibiting again at GenCon, the largest tabletop game convention in the United States.
We also travelled to China and Taiwan to gain a firmer grasp on the challenges that our creators face when choosing factories for manufacturing, and learned about the regional differences in crowdfunding communities in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
In March this year, BackerKit held its first-ever panel event with Kickstarter at San Francisco’s The Archery, featuring Eddie Lee from Podo Labs; Greg Long, co-founder of product design firm GAMAGO; Emily Nathan photographer and creator of Tiny Atlas Quarterly; Kickstarter design and tech outreach lead Clarissa Redwine; adventure apparel-maker Zane Lamprey, and BackerKit’s own Rosanna Yau. The panel discussed post-funding triumphs, interactions with backers, and fulfillment war stories with an eager audience of prospective creators.
We hope to host more events at our spacious new digs in the heart of SoMa. The new HQ is light-filled, expansive, and well-equipped to accommodate our rapidly growing team of BackerKats.
A vibrant community of creators and backers make the crowdfunding economy like no other: it’s driven by collaboration, openness, and a fondness for new and unusual ideas.
Thank You, Creators
We’re thrilled to have helped 3,000 creators take control of the post-campaign stage of their projects, and would love to extend our thanks to all that have trusted us to manage their projects. We’re always inspired by the ingenuity, innovation and passion of our creators, and look forward to working with more of you in the future.