It's been a crazy journey so far for Kickstarter. Launched in 2009, the site quickly became the darling among the big crowdfunding player. Fast foward five years and the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based startup has reached an important milestone today: it passed $1 billion in pledges, from 5.7 million people.
And to better illustrate the exploding popularity of crowdfunding in general, Kickstarter says that more than half of that amount was pledged in the last 12 months alone. That's pretty impressive.
It's worth noting that the $1 billion refers to the total amount of money pledged. On Kickstarter, pledged money is only distributed if the project reaches its funding goal.
The people behind the $1 billion in pledges come from 224 countries around the world, Kickstarter says. The U.S. was the country that pledged the most money, with morw than $66.3 million promised. The United Kingdom was second with $54.4 million pledged. Canada was third with $44.9 million.
Related: Before You Launch a Crowdfunding Campaign, Do These 6 Things
Kickstarter also says that its funders are engaged. Nearly 1.7 million people have backed more than one creative project on the site. Of them, almost 16,000 people have backed more than 50 projects.
OK, one more fun fact from Kickstarter (two, actually): When the site launched on April 28, 2009, 40 people pleadged a little more than $1,000 total to seven projects. On March 13, 2013, more than 54,000 backers pledged some $4 million to nearly 2,000 projects.
"$1 billion means that people care about new ideas and that sharing them with our friends, our families and the entire internet can lead to some amazing stuff," Kickstarter says.
Related: How This Fashion Startup Beat Their Kickstarter Goal in 4 Hours
