'More than $133m raised from crowdfunding' in first quarter, says industry body

“Veronica Mars” made history, raising more than $2 million in a record-setting Kickstarter campaign (2013 Warner Bros)

More than $133m was raised from crowdfunding – rewards and equity - in the first quarter of the year and 500 new projects are being launched daily on crowdfunding platforms around the world, according to a new report from the UK’s CrowdDataCentre.

In the first comprehensive study of this fledgling industry, the CrowdDataCentre reports that a new project is being set up every three minutes, and that the numbers are doubling every 60 days.

Barry James, founder of The Crowd Data Center, a new online facility which collects the industry data which is being launched alongside the report, says: “We are now providing an online living-map, a kind of Google Earth for Crowdfunding. No one need any longer be in the dark about this growing industry."

Mr James adds: “We have been able to track about 22,000 new projects which are raising funds at any one time but we reckon that this is only half of all activity around the world. The industry is growing at 10 times the rate of Moore’s Law of computing power that has revolutionised business and society.

More than four million people have now pledged money to 75,OOO projects.”
By far the fastest rate of growth is in the UK where there are now 22 equity crowdfunding platforms, 28 rewards based platforms and five offering both.

Between February and March this year the numbers of money pledged grew at 350 per cent, with more money pledged in the UK in March than the previous two months combined.

The UK’s equity crowdfunding platforms such as Crowdcube, which raised $5m, and Seedrs, are the most successful. But the two big rewards platforms, Kickstarter and Indiegogo were streets ahead with the former raising $88m and the later $37m. Crowdcube

With more than a 1,000 platforms around the world, some 16,363 projects have been funded with 187 average backers per project and total pledges of 1.8m. Technology projects are the most successful in raising pledges although the sector came in fourth place after gaming, film and design in numbers, raising $23m in the first quarter.

@maggiepagano