A short history of crowdfunding

Older than the internet

The idea of the crowd funding a project is centuries old.

• 1700s — Subscription publishing: books were printed only once enough readers paid in advance, their names listed inside. An early All-or-Nothing model.
• 1885 — Joseph Pulitzer asked newspaper readers to fund the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty; over 160,000 people chipped in, most giving under a dollar.
• 1997 — Fans funded a US tour for the British band Marillion over the internet — often cited as the first online crowdfunding.

The platform era

• 2009 — Kickstarter launches in the US and makes reward crowdfunding mainstream worldwide.
• Indiegogo, GoFundMe and others follow, splitting into reward, donation and equity models.

Crowdfunding in Japan

• 2011 — READYFOR launches in March as Japan's first crowdfunding service; CAMPFIRE follows. The timing — weeks after the Tōhoku earthquake — ties Japanese crowdfunding closely to disaster recovery and social good from the very start.
• 2013 — Makuake (CyberAgent) and kibidango launch, building the product-launch culture of “attractive purchase (応援購入).”
• 2014 — Government Crowdfunding (GCF) lets people direct furusato nozei hometown-tax to specific municipal projects.
• 2017 — Equity crowdfunding becomes possible under revised financial law; FUNDINNO opens.
• 2019– — Lending/fund platforms like Funds broaden crowdfunding into fixed-income-style investing.

Where it's going

Japanese crowdfunding has matured from novelty to infrastructure: a normal step for launching a product, saving a building, funding research or reviving a town. The next frontier is ongoing, membership-style support — backing not just a project, but a creator's whole journey.