Crowdfunding, 5 Years and 81 Projects Later

Published on November 4, 2015 (↻ August 31, 2024), filed under (RSS feed for all categories).

I’m a Kickstarter and Indiegogo backer. I’ve backed my first campaign in February 2011 (Detroit Robocop!), and the so far last one in May (Models on Phones). In the five years on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, I’ve bid on 81 projects of which 73 funded successfully.

Here I, an originally rather compulsive supporter, want to share some brief stats and ideas on how the crowdfunding life has been like so far.

Supported projects 81
↳ of which canceled 2
↳ of which unsuccessful 6
↳ of which successfully funded 73
  â†ł of which still open 11
    â†ł of which overdue 4
Total pledge amount $3,240.50
Average pledge amount $44.39
Oldest open projects Kickstarter: Magnetic Bike Lights, August 2012
Indiegogo: Tapp Water Filter, December 2012
Possibly fraudulent projects 1 (mPrinter (Kickstarter), August 2012)

Although I invested in more garbage than anything, I can’t really complain about neither Kickstarter nor Indiegogo. But then… I do have some beef with Kickstarter, and campaigns like mPrinter, Magnetic Bike Lights, but also CST-01 (two of which cost three digits). They are among those Kickstarter projects to suffer from long delays, failed expectations, and possibly fraud.

Delayed, failed, fraudulent projects are frustrating and thus, for me, begin to tip the scale to move to low-investment, low-risk, or high-involvement projects. I deem it likely that other backers contemplate similar steps. I had briefly talked to Kickstarter staff proposing to insure higher-value campaigns to offer partial refunds, but it didn’t seem like this was being seriously considered. And yet failed higher-value campaigns can have rather disastrous effects for crowdfunding as a business.

This has been my crowdfunding life so far. How’s yours going?

(This is one of five “lost” articles that I only published in 2021.)

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About Me

Jens Oliver Meiert, on September 30, 2021.

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a frontend engineering leader and tech author/publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google and as an engineering manager for companies like Miro, I’m somewhat close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development (and engineering management), but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.

If you’d like to do me a favor, interpret charitably (I speak three languages, and they do collide), yet be critical and give feedback, so that I can make improvements. Thank you!