Kickstarter is a crowdfunding site that allows people to financially back all kinds of projects, including board games, video games, movies, music, theatre performances, books, and more. The site was founded in 2009 and almost immediately hit it big—its angel investors included Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Zach Klein of Vimeo, among others. As of 2023, Kickstarter backers have pledged more than $7 billion to more than 230,000 projects. The company is led by CEO Everette Taylor and is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York—though the company’s workforce is fully remote.

A variety of well-known products began on Kickstarter,  including the games Cards Against Humanity and Exploding Kittens, Oscar-nominated short films “Sun Come Up” and “Incident in New Baghdad”, the toy line GoldieBlox, and m...