Gamefound wants to beat Kickstarter at its own game

polygon.com:

Serial entrepreneur Marcin Świerkot, founder of board game publisher Awaken Realms, has a hot hand. Not only is his ISS Vanguard among the most anticipated new board games arriving this year, but his newfangled crowdfunding platform Gamefound is poised to become a serious competitor to Kickstarter. He tells Polygon that it will exit beta in the next several months, opening its doors to more tabletop creators the world over.

Kickstarter launched in 2009 with the goal to revolutionize how creative projects get funded. While consumer electronics like the Coolest Cooler and the Pebble Smart Watch garnered headlines, tabletop gaming has grown to become the tech company’s largest single source of crowdfunding revenue. But the platform was not originally built to be a platform to pre-order miniatures-heavy board games and tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs).

Gamefound absolutely was, and Świerkot says he’s ready to compete with the Brooklyn-based crowdfunding platform toe-to-toe. His ambitious goal is to match the tech company’s tabletop crowdfunding revenue by 25% in 2022. Kickstarter brought in more than $270 million for tabletop games last year. That means Świerkot’s goal is a non-trivial $67.5 million.

Based on his 2021 results, he definitely seems to have some momentum behind him.

Gamefound has been around for a while, serving as a BackerKit-style, post-campaign platform for taking late pledges, coordinating global fulfillment, and handling payments. But its new crowdfunding features include lots of bells and whistles. Stretch goals are fully integrated, as are add-ons and upgrades — popular features on just about every tabletop crowdfunding campaign these days. It allows creators to run their campaigns from many