What Succeeds on Kickstarter
For some research I’m working on, I scraped a bunch of data from Kickstarter. I’ve also participated in several Kickstarter campaigns, and I check the site frequently.
I’ve learned a thing or two about what tends to succeed on Kickstarter from these things. Let me share.
Design
Let’s start with the category. I used public Kickstarter stats to come up with expected values for each product category. Expected values are basically:
(category success probability) * (average money on success)
Here are the rankings:
- Design
- Games
- Technology
- Comics
- Film & Video
- Music
- Art
- Food
- Publishing
I haven’t been able to deeply investigate causality, so I can only speculate about why Design ranks at the top. My speculation is that Design is something that lots of people can appreciate, it’s easy to evaluate from a Kickstarter campaign page, and it fits the Kickstarter community quite well. Let’s delve into this last point.
Stuff White People Like
I don’t have accurate figures on the demographics of Kickstarter, other than that around 70% of backers are male. But using Stuff White People Like as a guide, Kickstarter is a relatively white community.
Why do I say this? Because the Kickstarter community seems to like products that: are minimalist, have a cool factor (even a gimmicky one), and are eco-friendly. Made of wood and Asian influences are major bonuses. These are all right out of the book “Stuff White People Like.”
The Asian influence + wood thing is surprisingly prevalent:
A box for holding everyday objects called “Kyotomoji”:
Wooden forms for holding tea cups:
Swing bin, an (awesome) trash can from a Japanese designer named Shigeichiro Takeuchi:
Anyway, you get the message.
Everyday Stuff
Kickstarter likes objects that are almost universally useful and that people use daily (like wallets or pens.) This makes a lot of sense, of course. If you do a good job on something that lots of people use everyday, you can reach a much bigger audience than if you make a product to solve an obscure problem.
If you go to the design category on KS and sort by most funded, you can see what I mean. Pebble (a watch) takes 3 of the top 4 spots:
A backpack, with Everyday in the title:
A shower head. I think most people use this every day :)
Wild, Wooly and Weird
Kickstarter likes it some oddball projects. I can’t explain this better than to just give you some examples. Crystal bacon:
Combat kitchenware:
Steampunk arm:
There are many others. Griz coat, Potato Salad, Chipotle Burrito, and the list goes on.
My Recipe for Good Odds on Kickstarter
Do a design project. Make it out of wood. Choose a good sub-category. See if you can get a Japanese craftsman to make if for you. Explain the product as an experience, rather than an object (e.g, “best drinking experience” for a cup, “best writing experience” for a pen, “best time keeping experience” for a watch.) Focus on universal, everyday products. Make them eco-friendly. Have an interesting user interface cool-factor.
Then, do all the other stuff everyone talks about: good video, good pictures, good marketing, good engagement of backers.
Happy creating!
