About us
RADFUND
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Our team.
We're an independent company of about 91 people working together, many of us in an old pencil factory in New York City. We spend our time designing and building Kickstarter, forging community around creative projects, and supporting the creative ecosystem around us. We’re developers, designers, support specialists, writers, musicians, painters, poets, gamers, robot-builders—you name it. Over the years, our team has backed more than 50,000 projects (and launched plenty of our own).
Our history.
Kickstarter launched on April 28, 2009. A lot has happened since.
We became a Public Benefit Corporation to commit to our principles as much as our profits. We launched The Creative Independent to share resources and advice for all types of makers. We invited the local community into our Brooklyn headquarters with the Creators-in-Residence program.
Projects won Grammys and Oscars. London’s V&A Museum curated a show about Kickstarter design projects. Hank Willis Thomas and For Freedoms’ political billboard project across all 50 states became the largest creative collaboration in U.S. history. We celebrated our tenth birthday. We joined the Global Strike for Climate Change and went Climate Neutral—we’re doing everything we can to build a long, healthy future for the creative culture we helped cultivate. This is just the beginning.
Our story,
as told by founder Perry Chen“I was living in New Orleans in late 2001 and I wanted to bring a pair of DJs down to play a show during the 2002 Jazz Fest. I found a great venue and reached out to their management, but in the end the show never happened—it was just too much money...”
Read the full story
The Creative Independent.
Kickstarter’s support for creative work goes beyond our platform. We publish The Creative Independent (TCI) as a way to share advice and illuminate the many, many routes to living a creative life. We’ve featured wisdom from over 800 working artists so far—including David Byrne discussing failure, Poet Ocean Vuong on the generosity of reading and writing, Sufjan Steven rejecting the “tortured artist” schtick, and Laurie Anderson on finding inspiration in oppressive times. We’ve shared guides on everything from getting press for your creative work to reinventing yourself. And you’ll always find new voices in our newsletters and Chrome extension.