Kickstarter

Empowering young girls everywhere.

Kazoo Magazine

Brooklyn, NY

In response to media-wide messaging that there’s only one right way for a girl to be, former Condé Nast writer and editor Erin Bried created Kazoo Magazine to inspire young girls to be smart, strong, fierce, and above all, true to themselves. The magazine will be published quarterly and feature science experiments, comics, art projects, recipes, and interviews with inspiring women from athletes to astronauts, and fun activities like secret codes, mazes, jokes, and more to help engage young girls around the world. Erin raised $171,215 from 3,136 backers on Kickstarter.

Kazoo Magazine

Erin Bried

3136

backers

$171,215

amount raised on Kickstarter

“Being my own boss and running my own magazine has given me more creative freedom than ever before, and it’s also given me the opportunity to learn new sides of the publishing business, where I’ve spent my entire career. For the first time in my life, I’m limited only by my own imagination and not a second goes by when I don’t feel grateful for that freedom.”

Erin Bried

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Gigabot

Austin, TX

From the get-go, re:3D’s mission was to provide accessible methods to empower remote communities to solve their problems through 3D printing. With the shared conviction that they could impact social issues through technology, the founders created Gigabot — the world’s largest, most affordable 3D printer — inviting the average person to “think big and print huge.” After raising $250,474 from 270 backers, they have grown their company to nearly 20 employees and Gigabot is now available on five continents. While there’s lots of momentum in design prototyping, aerospace, government, art education, and mid-sized small manufacturers, they see the potential for monumental impact in medicine, such as custom prosthetics and orthotics.

Gigabot

re:3D

270

backers

$250,474

amount raised on Kickstarter

13

grew from six employees to 13 after first successful project

Open Gigabot

re:3D

57

backers

$50,239

amount raised on Kickstarter

20

grew from 13 employees to 20 after second successful project

“Our company would not exist without Kickstarter — it gave us the confidence, the market, the enthusiastic community base, the traction, and the reason to keep going. Some of our customers include a public school in LA that owns six; a renewable wind turbine farm; an artist bridging physical installations with virtual reality; and small injection mold factories all over America. Gigabot is just one piece of the change that is happening all over the world.”

Katy Jeremko

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Ukiyo-e Heroes & Mokuhankan in Asakusa

Provo, Utah & Tokyo, Japan

Inspired by his friend Jake Parker’s successful Kickstarter campaign, illustrator Jed Henry launched his project Ukiyo-e Heroes in 2012, taking traditional Japanese art and giving it a modern pop flair. After enlisting renowned Japanese woodblock printer Dave Bull to collaborate with him, Jed’s project raised $313,341 from 2,422 backers, giving Ukiyo-e global exposure and creating steady business for Dave in Japan. Dave launched his own Kickstarter project in 2014 to help fund his printmaking shop in Tokyo’s historic Asakusa neighborhood, raising $40,250 from 297 backers. The shop now employs 15 people, mostly women and foreign nationals like himself who would otherwise have a difficult time breaking into an established and sometimes impenetrable industry. So far, the team has shipped their handcrafted woodblock prints to more than 60 countries around the world.

Ukiyo-e Heroes

Jed Henry

2422

backers

$313,341

amount raised on Kickstarter

10,000+

woodblock prints shipped to date in the Ukiyo-e Heroes Portraits subscription series

Mokuhankan in Asakusa

Dave Bull

297

backers

$40,250

amount raised on Kickstarter

15

number of people employed in Dave’s print shop

“Before Kickstarter appeared, niche groups could consume and share their passions, but they had no reliable way to participate in the market with their own products. I think this is Kickstarter's biggest strength. It allows people to create niche products that would not succeed on the general market. It's likely that the Tokyo wood printing scene will be much more diverse in the future, thanks to our little project.”

Jed Henry

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Reboot the Suit

Washington, DC

Spacesuits are among the most fragile artifacts in the Smithsonian’s collection, so a team has been working hard since the turn of the century to identify ideal storage conditions for these historic relics. After establishing a new state-of-the-art, climate-controlled storage container for the spacesuits, their next goal was to translate these conditions for display, and they chose Neil Armstrong’s iconic Apollo 11 spacesuit as their starting piece. The museum launched their project Reboot the Suit to much excitement and enthusiasm, helping the institution reach a younger and more international audience and showing potential private donors the public’s interest in the story of the moon landing. Thanks to 9,477 backers, the Smithsonian surpassed its initial goal of $500,000 and raised $719,779 to conserve, digitize, and display both Neil Armstrong and Alan Shepard’s spacesuits. The spacesuits will officially make their debut on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing at the National Air and Space Museum in 2019, honoring the accomplishments of the astronauts and inspiring the next generation of space explorers.

Reboot the Suit

Smithsonian Institution

9477

backers

$719,779

amount raised on Kickstarter

270

approximate number of spacesuits in the museum’s collection

“The funding of this project is allowing us to engage with other professionals in a way that we could not afford to otherwise. We will be able to conduct micro-CT scanning of the spacesuit that would not have been possible without the money. There are technologies that have grown in other fields that will benefit us and our work. This also has allowed us the opportunity to prototype ideas for display that we would normally not have the resources or time to do. The consequence is that we now have the time to determine what our best practices will be for the next generation of preserving spacesuits. We will be able to publish our results as a direct response to the high media interest at the outset of the project.”

Dr. Cathleen Lewis

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Vital Matters

Minneapolis, MN

Experimental dance troupe BodyCartography Project set out to captivate the Twin Cities with its very own contemporary dance festival, Vital Matters. Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad, along with fellow performers and choreographers Anna Marie Shogren, Dolo McComb, and Justin Jones, have collaborated on new works and tapped into the local maker pool to create an event that highlights how audiences and artists use their bodies to channel art works and connect to each other, bringing their city’s denizens together in the process. The group raised $15,257 from 195 backers on Kickstarter to put together a festival featuring performances, public workshops, talks, and dance parties — giving people multiple entry points into the experience of dance.

Vital Matters

BodyCartography

195

backers

$15,257

amount raised on Kickstarter

22+

number of new dance works, workshops, artist talks, and dance parties at the festival

“Our Kickstarter campaign has enabled us to commission new work from other artists and pay performers a decent wage for their work. Our hope is that it creates an opportunity for radical new dance works to be made and shared in a celebratory festival where audiences and artists can engage with one another through performances, public workshops, talks, and parties. This will be a new way for Twin Cities’ audiences to come together around experimental work.”

Olive Bieringa

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Blaze

London, UK

After spending a summer cycling through the tranquil English countryside, Blaze founder, Emily Brooke, realized how dangerous, exhausting, and terrifying cycling in the city can be in comparison. For her final product design project at the University of Brighton, she decided to tackle a major problem for urban cyclists — personal safety — and soon discovered that a staggering 79% of cyclists in accidents are traveling straight ahead while someone else maneuvers into them. She came up with The Laserlight to address this blind spot head on, patenting it before her final exhibition and getting plenty of press and traction over the last few years to help make it a reality. After raising £55,000 from 782 backers, The Laserlight is now shipping to over 65 countries, and can also be found at retailers like Mission Bicycles in San Francisco and the MoMA Design Store in New York. Emily’s second project — The Burner, a smart LED back light — raised £153,636 from 2,208 backers and reinforces her mission to create innovative products for urban cyclists.

Laserlight

Emily Brooke

782

backers

£55,000

amount raised on Kickstarter

65+

number of countries The Laserlight ships to

The Burner

Emily Brooke

2208

backers

£153,636

amount raised on Kickstarter

10

number of full-time employees

“Kickstarter allows you to put an early version of your idea out there and test the market to see if there is a demand for it — if people think it is a good idea and ultimately something they’d pay for, then this proves demand. I was in a much stronger position after Kickstarter, and having proved myself I could then go and speak to manufacturing partners, investors, and retailers. Now that our technology is being built into bike sharing schemes around the world, we are an urban mobility brand — people who would never call themselves a ‘cyclist’ will get on a shared bicycle and cycle to work for transport using our products.”

Emily Brooke

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North Drinkware

Portland, Oregon

Matt and Leigh Capozzi and their friend Nic Ramirez started North Drinkware to bring the glassware market up to speed with the booming craft beer market. With more than 30 years of product design, engineering, and marketing experience combined, the team created The Oregon Pint, a quality, handcrafted beer glass inspired by Portland’s mountains, coasts, trails, and rivers. After raising $531,581 from 5,620 backers on Kickstarter, the team has been growing their company steadily, expanding their product line to include coasters, prints, and more hand-blown tumblers and pints that pay homage to other states with vibrant craft beer and outdoor scenes.

The Oregon Pint Glass

Nic Ramirez, Matt and Leigh Capozzi

5620

backers

$531,581

amount raised on Kickstarter

5

number of full-time positions created

29,000+

handblown pints and tumbler glasses produced to date

“We felt that Kickstarter fast-forwarded our business by five years. Had we started our business in a more traditional way, we would have taken on more debt, and our growth would have been much more slow and organic. With Kickstarter, we were able to minimize our debt and reach a relatively large sales volume for a startup business in a short period of time. We paid for this advantage with stress and hard work, but it has been totally worth it. We are very proud to have created new jobs in Portland.”

Leigh Capozzi

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On Our Radar

Empowering young girls everywhere.

Solving social issues through technology.

Breathing life into a niche Japanese industry.

Preserving history for the future.

Bringing a city together through dance.

Keeping cyclists safer on city streets.

Staying local and true to your roots.

More stories to come.

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