Tag Archives: PotteryPrint

Analyzing Funding Goals of 3D Printing Kickstarter Projects [Data]

3D Printing Kickstarter Projects

Why do some Kickstarter projects achieve their funding goals while others are unsuccessful?

The New York Times recently published an analysis of three years of Kickstarter projects.

Almost 50,000 projects have sought financing on Kickstarter since the site began on April 28, 2009. About half successfully reached their fund-raising goals.

We decided to run our own analysis of 3D printing Kickstarter projects. Here is what we found:

  • Of the 13 projects since October 2009, only 6 have successfully reached their funding goals, or 46%
  • The average funding goal of a successful project is $3,842 and the average funds raised is $11,039, or 287%
  • The average funding goal of an unsuccessful project is $16,874 and the average funds raised is $1,105, or 7%
  • The average number of backers for a successful project is 55 with each backer pledging $164
  • The average number of backers for an unsuccessful project is 21 with each backer pledging only $38
  • There was no geographic concentration of successful projects

Based on this analysis, we are seeing that unsuccessful projects are asking for too much money and also not finding enough individual backers to support their idea. Sometimes this is due to the production quality of the pitch, but overall it seems that crowdfunding backers are not ready to embrace 3D printing projects.

For example, PotteryPrint was an iPad app concept to teach kids about 3D printing. They raised $6,000 of their $12,000 funding goal. Another example on IndieGoGo is Anarkik3D, which has only raised $3,050 of its $120,000 funding goal with 55 days to go. Both of these projects have good ideas and great production quality, but have set targets above the average successful funding level of $3,842.

Below are some charts of our analysis and the raw data.

3D Printing Kickstarter Projects Funding Raised vs Goal

3D Printing Kickstarter Projects Funding by Location

3D Printing Kickstarter Projects Funding by Location

 

 

Kickstarter bookshelf photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid used under a Creative Commons license.