Kickstarter in 2013: $480M contributed by 3M backers

Kickstarter set new records for fundraising in 2013, with $480 million contributed by 3 million backers over the course of the year, the company announced today in its year-end review.

However, Kickstarter's year-over-year growth is slowing. Total pledges more than doubled from 2011 ($99.3 million) to 2012 ($319.8 million), and increased by 50 percent between 2012 and 2013. Successful campaigns jumped 53 percent from 2011 (11,836) to 2012 (18,109), while the growth to 19,911 funded projects in 2013 represented an uptick of just under 10 percent.

Kickstarter pointed out in its year-in-review piece that 2013 was the year in which a number of the site's biggest projects came to fruition in one way or another, including the Pebble smartwatch, the Oculus Rift developer kit and the Ouya. In addition, Kickstarter entered the popular consciousness last year, appearing in a Jeopardy! answer and in Cards Against Humanity. Kickstarter also became available in Canada, Australia and New Zealand for the first time in 2013.