Crowdfunding, 5 Years and 81 Projects Later

Post from November 4, 2015 (↻ August 7, 2021), filed under Everything Else.

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 cancelled	2
↳ of which unsuccessful	6
↳ of which successfully funded	73
↳ of which still open	11
↳ 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 in the three digts). 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 seriously considered. And yet failed higher value campaigns can have rather disastrous effects for crowdfunding as a business.

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

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

About Me

I’m Jens, and I’m an engineering lead—currently manager for Developer Experience at LivePerson—and author. I’ve worked as a technical lead for Google, I’m close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly. I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.

If you have a question or suggestion about what I write, please leave a comment (if available) or a message. Thank you!

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