Speaking at LeWeb last week,  co-founder of crowdfunding platform Indiegogo Danae Ringelmann spoke about Indiegogo’s progress in helping projects get funded. With Kickstarter having announced their launch in the UK, Indiegogo looks to get ahead of them on continental Europe, and announced today that they would be soon accepting euros & pounds sterling, in order to expand locally into the France, Germany & the UK. As reported on GigaOm, Indiegogo will be looking to get head of Kickstarter, who already has a head start on the UK market, and has received the most public attention around its very large & successful fundraising campaigns.

Crowdfunding sites – an API into funding

Available in France in early 2013, Indiegogo boasts that it already has 30% of its campaigns happening outside of the US. Of course, there are local players in each of these markets – KissKissBankBank in France (among others), Seedrs in the UK, etc. – however  it has become very clear that, in this market, it is not a question of first to market, but who can attract the best talent, the best projects. Much like Spotify & Deezer fighting it out to attract developers to their music App store, Indiegogo will look to get in touch with the local market first, and thus attract the attention and projects in each market before Kickstarter arrives. Indiegogo has already lost the 1st place position in the US to Kickstarter, despite being the first to launch in 2008.
Despite its 2nd place status, Indiegogo has carved out a nice image as the place to crowd-fund for artistic projects – films, works, etc. Launching internationally, it will be interesting to see if Indiegogo looks to occupy a similar branding, or if it will try to take the entrepreneurial/hardware market as well, which has had such well-publicized success on Kickstarter in the US.