Indiegogo, the crowdfunding platform famous for financing films, tech startups and the Jamaican bobsleigh team, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $40m in funding as it looks at global expansion.
A third round of funding has raised more than twice the $15m the company raised in 2012 and comes after two films backed by Indiegogo, Dear White People and Life Itself, were big hits at the Sundance film festival.
Co-founder Slava Rubin said the financing would be used to make key hires, expand globally and focus on mobile users, personalisation and trust. Rubin said that within a decade crowdsourcing for projects will be seen as a standard source of funding.
“If the 80s were about desktops, the 90s were about commerce and the 00s were about social, then the next decade is going to be about crowdsourcing,” he said. Rubin said the company now had close to 1,000 competitors but as the largest player it was well positioned to maintain its lead. “We bring the crowd to crowdsourcing,” he said.
Indiegogo has hosted more than 190,000 campaigns from nearly 190 countries since its debut in 2008. In the past two years the company said funds raised on Indiegogo have grown by 1,000%. The company’s online platform currently supports contributions in five currencies (US dollar, Canadian dollar, euro, pound sterling and Australian dollar) and four languages (English, German, French and Spanish).
The new round of funding was led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), with additional funding from existing investors Insight Venture Partners, MHS Capital, Metamorphic Ventures and ff Venture Capital.
“Indiegogo is playing a central role in the transformation of the global economy,” said John Doerr, general partner at KPCB. “We are excited to partner with Indiegogo to help support the dreams and aspirations of the Indiegogo community and continue establishing Indiegogo as the leading international platform for funding new ideas and innovation.”
Jules Maltz, general partner it IVP, said: "Indiegogo’s flexible funding model and open platform are helping it become the market leader in the rapidly growing crowdfunding space. The company is the Android of crowdfunding – easily accessible and open to all.”
In January, Indiegogo raised more than $50,000 to help send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. Rubin said more than 40 companies at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month had been funded by the site.
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