Table tops are still an important focus area, says Backerkit's CEO

When Backerkit's crowdfunding platform formally launched in mid-2023, the company quickly made headway on the tabletop, primarily by courting disgruntled Kickstarter users. Now co-founder and CEO Maxwell Salzberg tells Polygon that his company already has twice as many tabletop campaigns betting on the platform in 2024 as it did in all of last year — which isn't bad for what he calls a "bootstrapped" company. The goal for 2024? Keep the crowdfunding ball rolling while managing its expansive pledge management services.

Backerkit was founded in 2012, just as the rise of crowdfunding for both tabletop and video games began in earnest. But while Kickstarter spent the last decade bringing people together for the now customary month-long push that helps get new games paid for, Backerkit can handle pretty much everything else. Its pledge management business picks up where Kickstarter's crowdfunding business leaves off, helping creators and their customers arrange things like late pledges, extensions, shipping and customer service. Today, Salzberg tells Polygon that his organization handles projects that account for "40 to 60% of the [tabletop] dollars on Kickstarter [in] a given month."

Table creators and their customers are the biggest part of it, which is why it made sense for Backerkit to start offering its own crowdfunding solution – directly competing with Kickstarter.