Answer
Who actually receives the money when you back a project?
Short answer
Nobody, at first. Your pledge goes into an on-chain escrow account, not to the founder and not to us. It reaches the founder only if the campaign hits its goal, minus the platform fee and the flat 0.99 per pledge.
The order of events is the part worth knowing, because it is where platforms differ most and advertise least. When you back a campaign here, the money moves from your balance into an account controlled by a program, with an address you can look up and a balance anyone can see. It is not in a company account, and it is not in the founder's.
If the campaign reaches its goal by the deadline, the founder can claim it, and that is the moment the fee is taken. If it does not, every backer can withdraw what they put in. Those are the only two ways the account can empty, and which one happens is decided by the numbers rather than by anyone's decision.
We never take custody at any point, which is a deliberate structural choice rather than a courtesy. A platform holding user funds is a platform whose failure takes those funds with it, and the escrow being a program means our going out of business does not strand anybody's pledge.
The founder's own withdrawal is theirs to manage after that. What they build, when they deliver and how they spend it is between them and the people who backed them, which is why reading a campaign properly matters more than any guarantee a platform can offer.