You often hear about Kickstarter and tech startups as this match made in heaven, startup founders attributing a large part of their success to crowdfunding. Is Kickstarter really that great for startup projects? Should you consider it?

Let’s find out.

Crowdfunding? Yes, Please!

Kickstarter and technology or not, people love fundraising for things they feel passionate about.  This includes anything from VR headsets and 3D printers to board games and cool watches, especially if you get to secure the product fresh off the presses.

Here are some numbers, because everyone loves numbers:

• the crowdfunding market was worth ~$13.5 billion in 2021
• it is projected to reach $28.2 billion by 2028
• i. e. the market is going to double
• fully funded projects have an average of 300 backers
• the average pledge is $96 (again, this is for a fully funded project)

This means a whole lot of people are interested in crowdfunding. It’s getting trendier. More and more customers are familiar with the concept. For both tech geeks and entrepreneurs, this is great news.

Why Kickstarter Is Special

If you look for popular crowdfunding platforms, Kickstarter is always on top of the list. In fact, you might have found this page while researching it specifically.

All because Kickstarter is huge.

No, wait.

Kickstarter is HUGE.

The community has grown over the years. These days there are marketing agencies dealing with crowdfunding on Kickstarter and nothing else, which is pretty telling.

Is Kickstarter a good place if you look to fund your technology project? Let’s check our numbers again.

Turns out, among the 16 million active backers there is a high demand for technology. The projects in this category raised a total of $1.22 billion since January 2022, second only to Games.

The fun part? The average pledge for Technology equals around $520. For the Games category mentioned above, this number is $160. Backers in the Technology category do not mind paying more to get their hands on innovative products.

You Make the Rules

The Kickstarter community appreciates things unique and creative, so you can expect as much freedom as possible. On Kickstarter, the project creator has full control of their campaign; great power, great responsibility & all that jazz.

• use your own analytics tools to assess the campaign
• get detailed statistics from Kickstarter (in real time)
• customize the campaign page design at any point
• communicate with users via updates, comments, direct messaging, etc.
• team up with other creators to advertise efficiently

The only standard is transparency. Other than that, you can raise any sum for any product and advertise the campaign wherever. This is great for tech products.

Everyone Is Ready To Like You

Probably the most important point here. The secret advantage of a crowdfunding platform as big as Kickstarter is simple: users are biased towards your project.

Remember the 16 million active backers? Well, 6 million out of the 16 are repeat backers.

Have you advertised your campaign beforehand? Of course you have, and now that it’s up on Kickstarter most people perceive the product as innovative even before they’ve read the specs.

The crowdfunding culture creates spaces for open-minded consumers who are more likely to pay attention to “the cool stuff” and are proactive when it comes to improving their daily life.

If you are considering crowdfunding for your technology startup, Kickstarter might just be the perfect choice for you.

Last year we raised $112,000 on Kickstarter and made our portable-smart speech-to-text recorder a reality. Want to know more? Check out our home page at senstone.io.