Experiment

Active

crowdfunding platform for science

Winter 2013Founded 20121 peopleHonolulu, HI, USA; Remote

experiment.com ↗X ↗Crunchbase ↗See on the Idea Map Healthcare momentum

About

Today's funders are so conservative they only fund the most obvious ideas. At Experiment, we fund the ideas that they won't fund; the ideas that matter. Since founding, over 47,000 citizens have pledged $9 million dollars supporting 900 scientific projects on the platform. 46% of all projects on Experiment are successfully funded. When the projects are finished, the scientists share the scientific results with their backers as lab notes and peer-reviewed publications. Scientists from Stanford, Harvard, and Yale have chosen to use Experiment instead of writing grants. Bill Gates recognized Experiment by saying "this solution helps close the gap for potentially-promising but unfunded projects."

From their website

as of Jun 7, 2026experiment.com ↗

MarketplaceSubscription

Experiment is a crowdfunding platform that connects scientists with funders to support hypothesis-driven research and grant programs. It positions itself as a community-driven hub for scientific storytelling, collaboration, and open science.

Scientists create and organize projects with an open grant application, receive reviewer feedback from a community of peer scientists, raise funds from funders of all sizes, and track progress with open lab notes and results. The platform supports project artifacts, flexible fund receipt, collaboration management, analytics dashboards, and the use of free DOIs for funded projects. It also enables discoverable or private projects, grant programs, and a combined pathway to crowdfunding and grant applications.

Who it’s for: Researchers and scientists seeking funding for hypothesis-driven projects, academic labs, and science-focused teams looking to engage funders and public supporters.

Features

Create and organize your project
Get project feedback from Experiment reviewers
Raise project funds
Stay in the loop with lab notes and results
Manage collaboration and access
Project analytics dashboard
Open or private project visibility

Evidence of traction with 1,400 projects funded, 56,000 backers, 250 institutions; mentions of grant programs and a decade of experience; active user-facing features and public project examples.