Kickstarter officially launches in Ireland

16 Sep 2014

Budding entrepreneurs can now turn to Kickstarter to fund their projects as the company formally launch its service in Ireland after making the announcement a few months ago.

Until now, many Irish start-ups turned to the site’s international competitors including Indiegogo as well as indigenous crowdfunding sites Fundit.ie and PledgeSports, according to the Irish Independent.

As of next month, Irish entries will be able to sign up for funding from the beginning of next month, but as of now, can register interest in starting a crowdfunding project with the website which will be open to donations from around the world.

Last July it was announced that Kickstarter would be coming to Ireland, but it has now been confirmed that it will now be open to donate to Irish companies.

This brings up the number of countries who have access to Kickstarter to 10 which, excluding Ireland, includes the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden.

So far, according to Kickstarter’s website, over US$1.3bn of donations have been pledged since the site began operating in 2009 across 7m donators, 2m of which are repeat donators.

The decision to set-up an Irish version of the website was quite easy, says its co-founder Yancey Strickler: “The Irish cultural scene has always been incredibly vibrant, and we can’t wait to see what amazing, ingenious and unique ideas will now be part of the Kickstarter universe.”

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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