We amassed 13,695 data points on reward levels and backers from the most successful projects on Kickstarter (those that raised at least $100,000) and dissected them.
One surprising thing we found was the $10,000 pledge level is one of the highest revenue generators, and so was $99, even though a lot of campaigns ignored it. So among your pledge levels, try to include $99, as well as a pledge level for really wealthy (and excited) backers.
Secondly, the top campaigns limited their pledge levels to about 10. So remember to simplify what you offer, and avoid confusing your backers.
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If you’re a startup founder, crowdfunding serves several purposes.
Some people are looking for money to make stuff. Others want media attention before they sell. Almost everyone is searching for proof that they have a market. All three things — money, market and media — will help you build your business and win over later investors, if you need them.
They all have one thing in common, which is derisking the uncertain process of making and selling something for the first time. Put simply, derisking is anything you do to reduce the risk that something bad will happen and protect yourself from loss. So how, exactly, does crowdfunding derisk your startup?
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Chargebacks are basically refunds. But they happen before you ship. A customer asks for the funds that were transferred by credit card, the ones and zeros that moved from their account to yours, to be returned.
They’re mostly caused by fraud, bank processing errors, insufficient funds and problems with delivery. This post is about the last group: the people who ask for chargebacks because the product they ordered never arrives.
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Taylor Conroy, the guy who founded Change Heroes, has something to say about crowdfunding. A successful realtor cum social entrepreneur, Conroy brought the acumen of a salesman to a higher cause: building schools in Africa.
Change Heroes raises money for new schools through friendfunding, and friendfunding involves sending a very specific message to a very specific group: People who like you already.
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In August, I made a major mistake, and some people on the Internet got angry. Very angry. I apologized, kept my head down and tried to forget about it — until The New York Times called. You can read their article here. It’s a great article about the city, and a fair piece about me.
After my mistake — a blog post — was published three months ago, I learned a lot about being hated. In the post that follows, I don’t plan to ask for pity, or defend what I wrote back then. But I do want to describe the aftermath, so that others can learn something.
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Best Buy ranked 61st on the Fortune 500 in 2013. While the electronics retailer has seen sales decline in recent years, it remains one of the largest chain stores in the United States, with $9.3 billion in revenue last quarter. That’s about $100 million per day, which makes it an important sales channel for early-stage companies, especially hardware makers.
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John Shi didn’t plan to become a garment maker. He studied philosophy and economics in college, interned in finance, and got a job at Amazon after graduation. But something he saw in an old Japanese picture book on east coast schools intrigued him.
The book, Take Ivy, documented the (chiefly male) students of Ivy League schools in the 1960s, and it’s a cult classic among the prep set. There was one image in particular of a Dartmouth student in a dining room that caught his eye. In it, an undergrad named Ed Heald stood holding a tray, looking intense and wearing a sweater emblazoned with his class year: 1968.
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B2D is a new series about winning developers as customers and keeping them happy. Well, maybe not happy … temporarily appeased.
Programmers will tell you the reason they’re replacing chief information officers in choosing third-party software is because CIOs don’t understand what’s going on.
CIOs, of course, aren’t less intelligent than before — it’s just that software development is happening a lot faster. You iterate and deploy within hours. The market is more fragmented. And in fragmented, fast-moving markets, specialists are scarcer, because it’s harder to keep up.
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Kickstarter: it’s the world’s dominant crowdfunding platform. But what, exactly, is it good for? Let’s start with their own statistics. (Go ahead, click on “Show Categories” under Projects and Dollars, and you’ll see Kickstarter’s most successful sectors.)
What Kickstarter does best is help finance video and tabletop games, which have raised $189 million of the total $861 spent on the platform. That is, more than $2 out of every $10 that Kickstarter backers spend is on interactive entertainment. Backers are people who play.
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