Kickstarter opens in Asia, starting in Hong Kong and Singapore

Kickstarter officially launched on Wednesday in Singapore and Hong Kong, a move the company expects will smooth the way for startups in the region keen to be part of the crowdfunding phenomenon.

This represents the company's proper entrance in Asia, and it hopes to attract more companies from the region onto the platform that helped launch hits like Oculus, the Pebble watch and Coolest Cooler.

Before this, entrepreneurs who wanted to be on Kickstarter needed to either be a resident in, or have a registered company in regions such as North America, Australia or Europe. Now, Hong Kongers and Singaporeans are added to the list.

Yancey Strickler, CEO and cofounder, told Mashable that while "tens of millions" of dollars have been pledged from backers in the two Asian countries, most projects aren't from the region, in part due to the earlier requirements.

"The hurdle will now be lower for entrepreneurs here," he said.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

So far, 100,000 people from Singapore and Hong Kong have backed Kickstarter projects in the seven years since the company was launched. Residents in Singapore — a country with around 5 million people — have pledged nearly US$30 million to around 35,000 projects, he noted.

Still, that's just a tiny fraction of the 11 million people who have backed some 110,000 projects since Kickstarter launched in 2009, so Strickler is expecting backer participation to grow after the expansion.

He wouldn't specify how much he expects the audience numbers here to grow, but said he doesn't expect it to catch up to the U.S. market. "My hope is to see a nice, steady presence of projects coming from creators in Asia ... We've always grown organically. We don't spend money on marketing or advertising or big launch events."

He said Hong Kong and Singapore were picked as the first two markets to kick off Kickstarter's Asian expansion because "there is already substantial backer communities here."

This means the company has less education to do with regard to managing expectations.

Often, newcomers to crowdfunding think the concept of backing a project is the same as buying a confirmed product off-the-shelf, and get annoyed when projects fail to deliver on time — or at all, he noted.