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Kickstarter Profile: Pandemic Layoffs, Business Model, and Current Status

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Updated
  • Category: events, venues, and creator marketplaces
  • Pandemic layoffs: 39% of a 140-person staff through layoffs and buyouts (Business Insider, May 2020)
  • Last updated: 2026-09-25

Pandemic-role map

  • Reader shorthand: the crowdfunding site whose newly unionized staff bargained the severance terms when live projects fell about 35% in spring 2020 and the company shed 39% of its roles.
  • What Kickstarter did for customers: let creators raise money for projects directly from backers, and earned its revenue from the projects listed on the site.
  • What changed in the pandemic: in April 2020 the number of live projects was about 35% below a year earlier, and pledge volume and revenue fell with it; by year-end it had 90 staff, and backers had pledged a record $777,750,950 for 2020.
  • Relief role: none in government programs; it was a private crowdfunding channel.
  • Own relief: SBA's PPP loan data list no loan to Kickstarter.

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.

During the Pandemic

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.

The union, Kickstarter United, said its members faced involuntary layoffs with two to three weeks of severance per year of employment. After two weeks of bargaining, its 86-member unit ratified four months of severance pay, four months of health coverage for higher earners and six months for lower earners, a release from their non-compete agreements and a year of recall rights. The union said dozens of its highest-paid members volunteered to go. The health-coverage line sat at $110,001 in salary.

On May 13 a company spokesperson said Kickstarter was "reducing the number of roles at the company by 39%," mostly through voluntary buyouts, with "similar packages" for non-union staff. The notice Kickstarter, PBC filed with New York's labor department, dated May 7, listed 25 affected workers, layoff dates from May 15 to September 30, 2020, and the reason "Unforeseeable business circumstances prompted by COVID-19." Business Insider reported that the count left out an international employee and everyone who took a buyout. The CEO'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." Kickstarter reported a team of 90 at the end of 2020, 50 fewer than the 140 in the April memo. Layoffs.fyi's severance tracker, published in June 2020, listed Kickstarter among the startups that gave more than eight weeks of severance pay and more than four months of extended health coverage.

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.

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.

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.

Source Notes

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