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Indiegogo, crowdfunding's number-two player, raises $40 million to take on Kickstarter

Indiegogo, crowdfunding's number-two player, raises $40 million to take on Kickstarter

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A cash infusion to power aggressive hiring and international expansion

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Indiegogo Kickstarter
Indiegogo Kickstarter

The world of online crowdfunding has grown rapidly over the last few years, producing a number of high-profile tech projects. Kickstarter has long been the largest and most well known, but its rival Indiegogo has also fostered a number of interesting campaigns, raising an impressive $10 million last year for the Ubuntu Edge and $2 million for the Canary smart home security system. Today Indiegogo announced it had raised $40 million in venture-capital funding, money it says will be used for "making key hires, expanding globally, and improving the user experience with a focus on mobile, personalization, and trust."

Indiegogo is structured differently than Kickstarter, which has an all-or-nothing approach to raising funds. On Indiegogo, projects that don't hit their funding goal can still keep the amount pledged, although they must pay a higher commission to Indiegogo for the privilege of the flexible funding option. Indiegogo also does not mandate that projects must have a creative element, as Kickstarter does, and allows campaigns for charitable causes, which Kickstarter does not.

It will take a big push, however, for Indiegogo to catch up with Kickstarter. According to an independent study — which scraped data from both sites but was not peer reviewed — Kickstarter has raised $612 million while Indiegogo's numbers total just $98 million. A study by The Verge found that while more than 40 percent of Kickstarter projects succeed, only one in ten Indiegogo projects meet their funding goals.