Most Kickstarter Campaigns Fail: Here's Why

A Statistical Analysis

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About this dataset

Would you like to live in a world where over half of all Kickstarter campaigns are successful? We can make that happen.

By analyzing the data for different categories of projects, Kickstarter could see which categories are the most popular and adjust their website and/or marketing strategy to target those categories. Additionally, by using the data on successful campaigns, Kickstarter could attempt to replicate those campaigns that are most successful. Furthermore, Kickstarter could use this data to better understand why some campaigns are unsuccessful and provide advice or resources for future campaign creators to increase their chances of success. In other words - it's a win-win situation! So let's get started.

How to use the dataset

Kickstarter is an online crowdfunding platform that helps people bring their ideas to life. Although Kickstarter publishes many advice and best-practices articles on their blog, over half of all Kickstarter campaigns still fail.

This dataset contains data on 20,632 Kickstarter campaigns as of February 1st, 2017. Important attributes are described below:

• Project: a finite work with a clear goal that you’d like to bring to life (aka campaign)
• Funding goal: amount of money that a creator needs to complete their project
• Name: name of project on Kickstarter
• Blurb: the short description displayed under the name of your project and on the browse page
• Pledged and backers: amount of money that a project has raised and people that have supported it at the point of the API pull
• State: successful, failed, cancelled, live or suspended

Research Ideas

1. Kickstarter could analyze failed projects in order to better understand why they failed and improve their chances of success in the future.
2. By analyzing the data for different categories of projects, Kickstarter could see which categories are the most popular and adjust their website and/or marketing strategy to target those categories.
3. Kickstarter could use this data to better understand why some campaigns are unsuccessful and provide advice or resources for future campaign creators to increase their chances of success

Acknowledgements

This dataset was gathered by Rachel Downs and Muhammad Ghuari as part of an MIS elective at UT Austin. webrobots.io was used to collect the data on February 1st, 2017.

Kickstarter is an online crowdfunding platform aimed at helping people get their ideas funded while building a community of fans to support their ideas. While Kickstarter publishes many advice and best-practices articles on their blog, over half of campaigns still fail.

This project's objectives are the following:

1. Understand the marketplace of Kickstarter including timing of campaigns posted, types of projects, location of campaigns, description of campaigns and more
2. Provide insight into attributes that set campaigns up for a higher rate

File: kickstarter_data_full.csv

Column name	Description
photo	A link to a photo for the project. (String)
name	The name of the project. (String)
blurb	A short description of the project. (String)
goal	The funding goal of the project. (Float)
pledged	The amount of money that has been pledged to the project. (Float)
state	The state of the project. (String)
slug	The unique identifier for the project. (String)
disable_communication	Whether or not communication is disabled for the project. (Boolean)
country	The country in which the project is located. (String)
currency	The currency in which the project is funded. (String)
currency_symbol	The symbol for the currency in which the project is funded. (String)
currency_trailing_code	Whether or not the currency has a trailing code. (Boolean)
deadline	The deadline for the project. (DateTime)
state_changed_at	The date and time at which the state of the project changed. (DateTime)
created_at	The date and time at which the project was created. (DateTime)
launched_at	The date and time at which the project was launched. (DateTime)
staff_pick	Whether or not the project was a staff pick. (Boolean)
backers_count	The number of backers for the project. (Integer)
static_usd_rate	The static USD rate for the project. (Float)
usd_pledged	The amount of money pledged in USD. (Float)
creator	The creator of the project. (Dictionary)
location	The location of the project. (Dictionary)
category	The category of the project. (Dictionary)
profile	The profile of the project. (Dictionary)
spotlight	Whether or not the project is in the spotlight. (Boolean)
urls	The urls for the project. (Dictionary)
source_url

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File: kickstarter_data_with_features.csv

Column name	Description
photo	A link to a photo for the project. (String)
name	The name of the project. (String)
blurb	A short description of the project. (String)
goal	The funding goal of the project. (Float)
pledged	The amount of money that has been pledged to the project. (Float)
state	The state of the project. (String)
slug	The unique identifier for the project. (String)
disable_communication	Whether or not communication is disabled for the project. (Boolean)
country	The country in which the project is located. (String)
currency	The currency in which the project is funded. (String)
currency_symbol	The symbol for the currency in which the project is funded. (String)
currency_trailing_code	Whether or not the currency has a trailing code. (Boolean)
deadline	The deadline for the project. (DateTime)
state_changed_at	The date and time at which the state of the project changed. (DateTime)
created_at	The date and time at which the project was created. (DateTime)
launched_at	The date and time at which the project was launched. (DateTime)
staff_pick	Whether or not the project was a staff pick. (Boolean)
backers_count	The number of backers for the project. (Integer)
static_usd_rate	The static USD rate for the project. (Float)
usd_pledged	The amount of money pledged in USD. (Float)
creator	The creator of the project. (Dictionary)
location	The location of the project. (Dictionary)
category	The category of the project. (Dictionary)
profile	The profile of the project. (Dictionary)
spotlight	Whether or not the project is in the spotlight. (Boolean)
urls	The urls for the project. (Dictionary)
source_url

Columns

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File: kickstarter_data_full.csv

Column name	Description
photo	A link to a photo for the project. (String)
name	The name of the project. (String)
blurb	A short description of the project. (String)
goal	The funding goal of the project. (Float)
pledged	The amount of money that has been pledged to the project. (Float)
state	The state of the project. (String)
slug	The unique identifier for the project. (String)
disable_communication	Whether or not communication is disabled for the project. (Boolean)
country	The country in which the project is located. (String)
currency	The currency in which the project is funded. (String)
currency_symbol	The symbol for the currency in which the project is funded. (String)
currency_trailing_code	Whether or not the currency has a trailing code. (Boolean)
deadline	The deadline for the project. (DateTime)
state_changed_at	The date and time at which the state of the project changed. (DateTime)
created_at	The date and time at which the project was created. (DateTime)
launched_at	The date and time at which the project was launched. (DateTime)
staff_pick	Whether or not the project was a staff pick. (Boolean)
backers_count	The number of backers for the project. (Integer)
static_usd_rate	The static USD rate for the project. (Float)
usd_pledged	The amount of money pledged in USD. (Float)
creator	The creator of the project. (Dictionary)
location	The location of the project. (Dictionary)
category	The category of the project. (Dictionary)
profile	The profile of the project. (Dictionary)
spotlight	Whether or not the project is in the spotlight. (Boolean)
urls	The urls for the project. (Dictionary)
source_url

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File: kickstarter_data_with_features.csv

Column name	Description
photo	A link to a photo for the project. (String)
name	The name of the project. (String)
blurb	A short description of the project. (String)
goal	The funding goal of the project. (Float)
pledged	The amount of money that has been pledged to the project. (Float)
state	The state of the project. (String)
slug	The unique identifier for the project. (String)
disable_communication	Whether or not communication is disabled for the project. (Boolean)
country	The country in which the project is located. (String)
currency	The currency in which the project is funded. (String)
currency_symbol	The symbol for the currency in which the project is funded. (String)
currency_trailing_code	Whether or not the currency has a trailing code. (Boolean)
deadline	The deadline for the project. (DateTime)
state_changed_at	The date and time at which the state of the project changed. (DateTime)
created_at	The date and time at which the project was created. (DateTime)
launched_at	The date and time at which the project was launched. (DateTime)
staff_pick	Whether or not the project was a staff pick. (Boolean)
backers_count	The number of backers for the project. (Integer)
static_usd_rate	The static USD rate for the project. (Float)
usd_pledged	The amount of money pledged in USD. (Float)
creator	The creator of the project. (Dictionary)
location	The location of the project. (Dictionary)
category	The category of the project. (Dictionary)
profile	The profile of the project. (Dictionary)
spotlight	Whether or not the project is in the spotlight. (Boolean)
urls	The urls for the project. (Dictionary)
source_url

License

> License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) > - You are free to: > - Share - copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes only. > - Adapt - remix, transform, and build upon the material for non-commercial purposes only. > - You must: > - Give appropriate credit - Provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. > - ShareAlike - You must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. > - You may not: > - Use the material for commercial purposes.