Kickstarter.com (Yancey Strickler & Perry Chen)

Projects that have popped up on Kickstarter -- a startup that allows artists to fund creative endeavors through online donations -- are all over the map. "Famulus," an inventor, recently raised $3,785 to build a fusion reactor in his Brooklyn apartment. Emily Richmond raised $8,142 to sail around the world. Then there are the bands who've funded debut albums and the directors who've been able to finish their short films. The site requires project creators to give rewards to backers (Richmond sends Polaroids of herself at sea to those who pledge at least $15), making Kickstarter a micro-marketplace that falls somewhere between commerce and finance. "We don't quite have the vocabulary for what we're doing yet," Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen says. "Sometimes people are customers, sometimes they're patrons. We let [project creators] sculpt the relationships they're comfortable with."

This formula seems to be working. In March, Business Insider named Kickstarter one of "The 20 Hot New York City Startups You Need to Watch." Of the more than 3,000 projects posted on the site, 900 have met their funding goal within the mandatory deadline of 90 days. "I've seen projects that succeed by virtue of being human," Chen's partner Yancey Strickler says. "When someone is being themselves and showing all of their awkward tics -- backers look at that and think, 'That could be my friend. I'll give him five dollars.'"

 Back in 2002, Chen found himself unable to fund a jazz concert he had organized. This, coupled with "a lifetime of seeing how funding keeps ideas from coming to life," planted the idea for Kickstarter. Strickler, the former editor of online music store eMusic, was also tired of watching musicians struggle to support themselves. They met in 2005 at Diner in Williamsburg -- where Chen was Strickler's regular waiter -- and Kickstarter launched in 2009. Strickler believes the site has succeeded because its reward policy brings artists and backers together in a more intimate way. "It feels much closer to what I imagine a millionaire patron of the arts feels when they see a Basquiat they helped fund," he says. "But with normal people."  ELIZABETH THOMPSON