I’m not a huge stats geek, but I do enjoy looking at things like Kickstarter’s yearly round-ups. However, it’s apparently hard to dig up more specific details about Kickstarter projects which did not hit their funding goals. Kickstarter’s own stats page says there were 27,086 total projects launched in 2011, of which 11,836 were funded. But then what?
What is it that makes a project succeed or fail? Is it better to run a long campaign or a short one? Should you be counting on Kickstarter or other crowdfunding sites to make your fortune?
Jeanne Pi from AppsBlogger wrote about trying to find info about unsuccessful Kickstarter projects — and was then informed by Professor Ethan Mollick of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania that her statistical analysis was, well, wrong. So Pi and Mollick teamed up to do a little more research, which they’ve recently unveiled.
I think, at a time when high-profile campaigns are hitting incredible stretch goals and raising millions of dollars, it’s easy to forget that Kickstarter is not a guaranteed path to fame and fortune. There are plenty of projects (the majority of successful projects, in fact) that just scrape by their goal, and the overall success rate in 2011 was only 46%. The other 54%? Well, chances are you didn’t hear about them — and never will.
You can read the whole story here, or keep going to see the infographic which summarizes some of the key findings.
