Kickstarter's 10 Biggest Success Stories
3) Double Fine Adventure Game – Tim Schafer is one of the most beloved video game developers in the industry. Still, when he launched a Kickstarter for a crowd-funded old-style adventure game (something that has long since fallen out of favor with most publishers), it was a gamble. Kickstarter wasn't well known at the time — and asking gamers to put their money where their mouth was could have hurt that fan adoration. Instead, it not only blasted past its goals, but it also effectively put Kickstarter on the map.
(Amount sought: $400,000. Amount raised: $3,336,372)
2) Ouya – The video game console world is littered with the corpses of companies that thought they could steal share away from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. Whether Ouya succeeds at that won't be known for a while, but more than 63,000 people are willing to bet it can hold its own. The Android-based gaming system has plenty of big names behind it (including Jawbone founder Hosain Rahman, Digg founder Jay Adelson and Flixster founder Joe Greenstein), but publisher support has been slow. With the funding goal obliterated, the company is currently working to secure a retail presence in brick and mortar stores for its Q1 2013 launch.
(Amount sought: $950,000. Amount raised: $8,596,475)
1) Pebble e-paper watch – The runaway success of this customizable watch is still astounding. To put it in perspective, Ouya finished its drive with funding that was nine times higher than the backers had asked for. Pebble topped its request more than 100 times over. The watch is designed to connect to smartphones via Bluetooth, alerting you to incoming calls and messages with a silent vibration. It will also download apps of its own, turning it into a bike computer (displaying speed, distance and pace) or as a remote control for the music on your smartphone. It's due to ship in early 2013.
(Amount sought: $100,000. Amount raised: $10,266,846)
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