Kickstarter is an online crowdfunding platform and community that enables artists, musicians, filmmakers, designers, and other creators to raise funds for various community projects. Individuals who back these projects are offered tangible rewards and one-of-a-kind experiences in exchange for their pledges. Headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, the platform was founded by Charles Adler, Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler in 2009.

#1: As of December 2019, Kickstarter has received more than $4.6 billion in pledges from 17.2 million backers to fund 445,000 projects, such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video games, technology, publishing, and food-related projects.

#2: The words crowdsourcing and crowdfunding were coined in 2006; the latter by Michael Sullivan, an entrepreneur looking for backers to help fund his video-blog project.

#3: In March 2020, employees at Kickstarter became one of the first high-tech labor forces to unionize and establish Kickstarter United—the now-official organization for company employees.