There was some interesting commentary back during the event from people that follow Kickstarters more closely than I have (this is about the only one I've paid much attention to). The current stats on the Backerkit page caught my eye:
Kickstarter: $314,572.11 / 3,379 backers
Backerkit: $125,893.83 / 3,047 backers
I wouldn't be too surprised if there were people saying they'd back a Kickstarter that back out. And there will be some not willing to risk money on a KS, but more than happy to jump in once it's a sure thing. So the promised/actual numbers would be expected to vary.
But the ratio jumped out at me. 90% of the pledges made it to Backerkit, but only 40% of the money? That difference makes me wonder about stats nerd stuff like:
- Are the high flyers just not actually committing in Backerkit, but the cheaper pledges are?
- What's the distribution of the various pledge levels, anyway?
- Are there just some bogus pledges, in the extreme case like one jerk saying he was in for $200K, who never intended to follow through?
- What's the typical KS ratio of pledges to actual collected revenue?
- Are there a lot on non-KS-pledgers in BK, making the numbers less correlated in the first place?
(Where's Nate Silver when I need him? Well, there's
this, which while interesting, isn't really the sort of thing I was wondering about.)
Or am I just reading the numbers wrong, and it's more of an accounting thing, having to do with when you actually book revenue relative to taking orders, shipping products, sending transactions to Visa, actually getting a check back from Visa?