On October 31st, Kickstarter finally made good on a promise to open up to UK-based projects. Today, the company is letting us know how the first month has gone. In a word, promising.
in the first month, UK-based projects saw £2,069,164 in funding across 45,799 individual backers. 407 total projects have been launched since Halloween, and 30 of them have been successfully funded.
“Of the 400 projects that have launched, 30 have already been successfully funded and many more are on their way. A public art project called the Chime Pavilion was the first successfully funded project, with triple its funding goal. The very first project to launch, a hardware project called Picade, was successfully funded with £74,000 pledged — double its funding goal,” says Kickstarter.
Funding for these UK-based projects has been global. While 78% of backers for US projects come from the US, only 39% of backers for UK projects come from the UK.
Back when Kickstarter opened up to UK creators, company co-founder Yancey Strickler hinted that more international expansion may be based on the success of the UK launch.
“The request to expand internationally has long been one of our most requested features. We certainly are interested. We’re going to see how the UK launch goes and figure out the next moves from there. There’s a lot of places that will be interesting,” he said.
After the first month, it looks like Kickstarter is calling the UK expansion a success. They note that the over £2 million in pledges is “amazing” and that they are “thrilled by [creators] success.”