It took Kickstarter nearly five years to top $1 billion in total pledges. Last year alone, it did more than half that amount.
Kickstarter announced Monday that 3.3 million backers pledged more than $500 million (about $529 million, according to a rep) to projects on the site throughout 2014. All in all, 22,252 projects were funded successfully on the crowdfunding platform.
Impressive as those figures are for the almost 6-year-old crowdfunding platform, the rate of growth in total pledges is slowing noticeably. Kickstarter's annual pledges hit $480 million in 2013 and just under $320 million in 2012. Put another way, Kickstarter pledges grew by 50% year-over-year in 2013, but just 10% year-over-year in 2014.
On the other hand, the number of successfully funded projects -- another key figure for the company -- topped 20,000 for the first time and continued to grow at a little more than 10% year-over-year.
Kickstarter had a few blockbuster successes in 2014, including rock star Neil Young raising more than $6 million on Kickstarter for his Pono music player, Reading Rainbow raising $5.4 million and inventor Ryan Grepper raising more than $13 million for a high-tech party cooler, setting a new funding record for the site.
There were some quirkier highlights as well: a cat exercise wheel raised nearly $350,000, a hoverboard (billed as "the world's first REAL hoverboard") raised more than $500,000 and, of course, a campaign for potato salad brought in $55,000 and generated an ungodly amount of press.