Kickstarter, the New York-based startup that has become nearly synonymous with the trend of “crowdfunding,” or soliciting online donations to produce a project in exchange for a portion of the results or other gifts, on Wednesday made its international debut in the UK.
“Since our announcement three weeks ago that people in the UK could begin building projects, more than 1,500 people have started making one,” wrote the website’s co-founders Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler in a blog post announcing the debut.
Kickstarter’s co-founders went on to note that the UK projects are mixed in with the rest of Kickstarter’s U.S. projects on the main website, but list their donation amount categories in pounds sterling and that payments are accepted through Kickstarter rather than Amazon Payments, possibly signaling a shift away from the service. But most importantly, the UK launch could be the first a larger international move by Kickstarter.”
“We certainly are interested [in expanding outside the UK and US],” co-founder Stickler told the BBC. “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.”
