kickstarter by the numbers

By the Numbers

June 2012 Michael Wolf

about.me/wolf

2012 -‐ Michael Wolf -‐ h>p://about.me/wolf

What categories are king on Kickstarter?

•  Music and Film/video make up over 50% of finished projects.

•  Technology only represents 2% of total finished projects, but expect that to rise fast

•  Finished publishing projects likely kept low due to ease of self-‐publishing on e-‐book plaMorms

Art;%9%%Comics;%2%%Dance;%2%%

Design;%3%%

Fashion;%3%%

Film%&%Video;%30%%

Food;%3%%Games;%4%%

Music;%24%%

Photography;%3%%

Publishing;%10%%

Technology;%2%%

Theater;%5%%

Today’s its music and video, tomorrow will see other categories grow

Total Finished Projects by Category


How often to projects succeed?

•  Dance and theater have the highest success rates, in part due to lower average financing goals

•  Fashion has the lowest success rate at 21%, but overall there have been only 391 fashion projects as of June 26th

•  Music’s 54% success rate is impressive given that music represents nearly a quarter of all finished projects

44%#48%#45%#

69%#

35%#

27%#

40%#41%#34%#

54%#

38%#32%#

29%#

64%#

0%#

10%#

20%#

30%#

40%#

50%#

60%#

70%#

80%#

All#

Art#

Comics#

Dance#

Design#

Fashion#

Film#&#Video#

Food#

Games#

Music#

Photography#

Publishing#

Technology#

Theater#

Success Rates by Category

Well, it differs by category…


What is average size of a successful project?

•  There are three major outliers when looking at average project size: Design ($49k avg), Games ($38k avg), Technology ($36k avg)

•  Large average successful project sizes are driven by large outlier projects. An example is the Pebble watch ($10.3 million), which drove average project size for design way up

•  On average, certain categories such as art and dance tend to have smaller project sizes due to lower overall financing needs for typical projects in this space

Average Successful Project Size ($)

The average size of a successful project varies dras?cally by category…

!$8,784!!!$4,301!!

!$9,438!!

!$3,460!!

!$49,095!!

!$6,982!!!$8,854!!

!$9,226!!

!$38,152!!

!$5,346!!!$4,980!!

!$5,599!!

!$36,396!!

!$4,199!!

!$.!!!!

!$10,000!!

!$20,000!!

!$30,000!!

!$40,000!!

!$50,000!!

!$60,000!!

All!

Art!

Comics!

Dance!

Design!

Fashion!

Film!&!Video!

Food!

Games!

Music!

Photography!

Publishing!

Technology!

Theater!


How big is each Kickstarter category in total successful projects and aggregate revenue?

•  As can be seen by size of categories and ver_cal placement, music and film lead all others by large margin

•  Art, theater and publishing have significant numbers of projects, but total revenues are more on part with other topics

•  The size of games and technology circles indicate bigger average successful finance thresholds reached

Some categories have small total project counts, but big total financing totals due to outliers

Art$2,548$$13M$

Comics$605$

$6.5M$

Dance$582$$2M$

Design$674$$40M$

Fashion,$391$

$3.7M$

Film$&$Video$6,713$$72M$

Food,$698$

$8.7M$Games,$709$

$31.7M$

Music$7,446$$45M$

Photo,$753$$5M$

Publishing$1,861$$13.5M$

Technology,$333$

$14.6M$

Theater$1,910$$9M$

Key: Size of circle indicates rela?ve size of aggregate successful project revenue, ver?cal placement indicated rela?ve # of total successful projects in a given category.

Total Successful Projects and Revenue ($USM) by Category


What are the fastest growing categories on Kickstarter?

•  When comparing the current share of a live projects by category to what the historical share a category has had of finished projects, games, publishing and fashion seem to be growing fastest.

•  While a category may have gone up or down rela_ve to others and its historical share, it’s likely ALL categories of projects are growing as the crowdfunding _de li`s all boats

RelaBve Difference in Share Between Live Projects and Finished Projects

20%$

24%$

26%$

34%$

35%$

37%$

0%# 5%# 10%# 15%# 20%# 25%# 30%# 35%# 40%#

Design$

Comics$

Food$

Fashion$

Publishing$

Games$

Note: This chart show the percentage difference between a category’s current share of live projects (live cat/total live projects) and historical share of category (finished proj’s by cat /total finished projects)


How successful are each project by size?

•  Art, dance and theater tend to have the smallest projects by size band, with 90% of projects in these categories under $10 thousand

•  Design has the largest percentage of successful projects over $10k or bigger, with nearly 50% of successful design projects in that funding band

•  Design and games have the largest percentage of successful projects at $100k or larger, with 6.5% and 4.9% respec_vely

Successful Projects Percentage by Size & Category by Category

There is slight varia?on by category, but not much…

0%#

10%#

20%#

30%#

40%#

50%#

60%#

70%#

80%#

90%#

100%#

Art$

Comics$

Dance$

Design$

Fashion$

Film$&$Video$

Food$

Games$

Music$

Photography$

Publishing$

Technology$

Theater$

$1M+$

$100kC$$999.9k$

$20kC$$99.9K$

$10K$C$$19.99K$

$1K$C$$9.99K$$

>$$1k$


How do unsuccessful projects break down by percent funded?

•  While projects that don’t achieve their goal usually miss by over 50%, there are some that come very close. Technology has the most near-‐hits, with 1.6% of projects geang over 80% of goal.

•  While 22% of total projects get no funding, some categories usually do be>er in garnering some support. Only 10% of food projects get no funding, and 11% of design projects see no support.

•  When projects do fail, it’s in part because they can’t get past a certain threshold. This is illustrated by the fact only 5.6% of unsuccessful projects raise over 40% of their target

Unsuccessful projects by percentage funded by category

Looking at complete misses and near hits…

0%#

10%#

20%#

30%#

40%#

50%#

60%#

70%#

80%#

90%#

100%#

Art$

Comics$

Dance$

Design$

Fashion$

Film$&$Video$

Food$

Games$

Music$

Photography$

Publishing$

Technology$

Theater$

81-99%#Funded#

61-80%#Funded#

41-60%#Funded#

21-40%#Funded#

1-20%#Funded#

0%#Funded#


Is there a magic threshold which projects must hit to gain momentum?

•  The vast majority of unsuccessful projects get stuck at 20% or below of funding

•  Talking to crowdsourcing plaMorms, some believe once you cross 30% funded threshold, it gains momentum by moving outside of your own personal network and a>racts strangers. This distribu_on appears to confirm that.

DistribuBon of Unsuccessful Projects by Funding Threshold Hit

It appears once projects get past 20% funded, likelihood of success goes up


Methodology

•  All founda_onal data is from Kickstarter available on their stats page

•  Kickstarter updates their data daily, so the data does change slightly every day. The date of the sta_s_cs used for this analysis was June 26, 2012


kickstarter by the numbers

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