Kickstarter announces launch in Singapore and Hong Kong, its first Asian markets

Kickstarter co-founder and CEO, Yancey Strickler, at the Rex Hammock.

Good news for local creators who have a cool crowdfunding idea: Kickstarter, the world’s most famous crowdfunding platform, announced it will soon launch in Singapore and Hong Kong, its first two Asian territories.

Update, 31/8: Kickstarter is now launched for creators in Singapore and Hong Kong, according to an official blog post. Project creators can now raise funds in Singapore and Hong Kong dollars and use their local banking and business details for their crowdfunding campaigns.

“There’s already a large, supportive community of Kickstarter backers in Singapore and Hong Kong — people who have been supporting the creative ideas of others for years,” Julie Wood, director of global communications for Kickstarter, tells Tech in Asia. “Now they’ll have the opportunity to become Kickstarter creators, sharing their own ideas with the world and finding the support they need to bring them to life.”

Singapore and Hong Kong are Kickstarter’s first Asian markets.

It’s true that Singaporeans are already passionate about the platform. The campaign for the Pebble 2 smartwatch set, which netted a massive US$12.8 million, had almost 2,300 backers from Singapore. That’s more than any other city in the world and ranks it seventh in the top countries for this campaign.

But of course there have already been loads of Kickstarter projects coming out of Singapore in the past. Universal remote SmartEgg and hi-tech bicycle helmet Lumos are just a couple of successes.

Every Singaporean project to date has had to clear some serious hurdles to make it on the platform, though. Kickstarter is currently available to project creators in 18 markets, including the US and the UK, Australia, and a slew of European countries.

This means that companies from Singapore previously needed at least a legal presence, bank account, and credit card in one of those countries and raise funds in those specific currencies.

Knowing is half the battle

“You have to jump through quite a number of hoops to get on the platform,” Ian Gregory, co-founder and director of Witching Hour Studios, tells Tech in Asia. His company successfully crowdfunded its upcoming video game, Masquerada: Songs and Shadows, raising £60,162 (around US$80,000).

Masquerada: Songs and Shadows met with crowdfunding success on Kickstarter. The game is expected later this year.

To accomplish that, however, they had to set up an entity in the UK, deal with tax, have a local representative, and so on. And that doesn’t even begin to get into the challenges inherent in running a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Ian thinks not having to deal with all that additional burden can be good for local companies, as is the opportunity to raise funds in their own currency. But he’s also cautious about potential adverse effects.