Kickstarter: Cut 39% of Roles, Mostly by Buyouts

Category: events, venues, and creator marketplaces
Pandemic layoffs: 39% of a 140-person staff through layoffs and buyouts (Business Insider, May 2020)
Last updated: 2026-11-01

In the archive

Article: How 41 Companies Handled Pandemic Layoffs

Founders, executives and investors

Aziz Hasan was CEO in 2020. Business Insider described Kickstarter as a venture-backed company. Its staff voted in February 2020 to form a union, Kickstarter United, represented by the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU); The Verge called it the first major technology company whose workers had unionized.

Business before the pandemic

Kickstarter ran a crowdfunding marketplace for creative projects. Hasan described it in April 2020 as "a small business of 140 people with modest operating margins." It earned about $1.27 million in after-tax profit in 2019, all of which, he wrote, had been reinvested in the business during the first four months of 2020.

What the pandemic did to the business

Kickstarter earns its money from projects that creators launch and backers fund, so the number that mattered in 2020 was launches. On April 20, 2020, chief executive Aziz Hasan told staff that the live project count was "about 35% below what it was at this time last year with no clear sign of rebound." He added: "our pledge volume and revenue are tracking sharply down as well." The company's 2020 benefit statement later put the March-to-June drop at "nearly 40 percent year-over-year," with projects returning after about four months and eventually passing 90% of usual levels.

The memo said he had cut pay for senior leaders, himself and the board, instituted a hiring cap and stopped automatically refilling open roles. Those measures, he wrote, "aren't enough," and the company opened talks with the union about "potential layoffs across teams and at all levels of staff." About 60% of the 140 employees were in the bargaining unit.

Then the backers outran the creators. Kickstarter says 38,214 projects launched in 2020, down from 42,028 in 2019, yet 18,744 were funded and 3,465,769 people pledged $777,750,950, a record. That is $124,733,897 more than 2019's $653,017,053. The success rate reached 49%, against a 39% average since 2009. Games, publishing, comics and art grew; dance, theater, music and film fell.

Pandemic-relief role: open calls for creators

The customer programs were open calls. Lights On, launched in April 2020, invited creators to use Kickstarter to keep their businesses going. Music venues and small businesses offered live streams, limited-edition merchandise and other exclusive content; by June 2021, 124 projects had raised more than $1 million. Inside Voices, for small projects made at home, drew $2.3 million. The company also moderated COVID-19 projects to weed out misinformation and "phony solutions," The Verge reported. The 2020 statement does not mention fees, a fee waiver or the layoffs. It says the smaller team gave hands-on help to nearly 1,700 projects, down from about 2,200.

The same statement put the chief executive's pay at 2.82 times the median non-CEO salary, or 23.60 times with equity, and reported $475,000 in 2020 donations under the company's pledge to give 5% of after-tax profit. It gives no profit figure for 2020. SBA's PPP loan data list no loan to Kickstarter.

Layoffs

Kickstarter United's 86-member unit ratified four months of severance pay, four months of health coverage for higher earners and six for lower earners, a release from non-compete agreements and a year of recall rights. On May 13, 2020 a spokesperson said Kickstarter was "reducing the number of roles at the company by 39%," mostly through voluntary buyouts; the New York WARN notice of Kickstarter, PBC listed 25 affected workers, and the company reported a team of 90 at the end of 2020, against 140 in April. The chief executive's letter in the 2019 benefit statement, published in February 2021, called it "the deeply difficult decision to layoff many members of our team in May 2020." How Kickstarter handled layoffs →

After the first shock

In 2021, the company said, nearly 3.2 million people pledged more than $800 million and 54% of projects reached their goals. In 2022 it piloted a four-day work week and said it would keep it.

Where the company is now

Sean Leow, the chief operating officer, served as interim CEO from April 2022 until Kickstarter named Everette Taylor chief executive on September 28, 2022. In June 2026, Kickstarter United's website listed a 2022 contract and a 2025 contract alongside the May 2020 severance agreement.

Kickstarter