Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kickstarter passes $1B in pledges

kickstarter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 70 posts

Re: Kickstarter passes $1B in pledges

#51

Post by Dewie »

oblio wrote: post #41
dzhiurgis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was looking how to skim the data and I couldn't find a way. Yes, it would be interesting to see the spending per capita & how it correlates to GDP.

Now find a way to correlate that to language and project country stats. As far as I can tell all Kickstarter projects have to be in the US/UK/Australia/NZ and of course, the entire site is in English. UK contribution - 54 million $, German contribution - only 21 million $. Something is obviously off. At this point I'd focus on horizontal growth - get in as many important geographies as possible, focus on key language…

> UK contribution - 54 million $, German contribution - only 21 million $. Something is obviously off.

The obvious solution is for people that want to be backed to offer versions of their videos dubbed to German.

Re: Kickstarter passes $1B in pledges

#52

Post by selectout »

jonknee wrote: post #27

That's pretty impressive. Kickstarter has a 5% fee (and Amazon their own processing fee) which means ~$50m in revenue for Kickstarter and $25M in revenue over the last year. I wonder how long they'll keep with Amazon as payment processor, it seems like they're leaving a lot of money on the table.

Isn't the 1bn just for pledged money though? Is there a breakdown of what percent of pledged dollars actually gets funded (when KickStarter takes their cut).

Not saying they didn't do well, but I'd estimate the cut they make is somewhere closer to 30-40mm and not 50mm.

Re: Kickstarter passes $1B in pledges

#53

Post by jonknee »

selectout wrote: post #52
jonknee wrote: post #27

That's pretty impressive. Kickstarter has a 5% fee (and Amazon their own processing fee) which means ~$50m in revenue for Kickstarter and $25M in revenue over the last year. I wonder how long they'll keep with Amazon as payment processor, it seems like they're leaving a lot of money on the table.

Isn't the 1bn just for pledged money though? Is there a breakdown of what percent of pledged dollars actually gets funded (when KickStarter takes their cut). Not saying they didn't do well, but I'd estimate the cut they make is somewhere closer to 30-40mm and not 50mm.

Correct, but the total is higher than your estimate:

https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats

$859M in successful dollars which comes to $43M, though that doesn't count current pledges for projects that will go on and succeed (there are currently $24M "live" dollars).

Re: Kickstarter passes $1B in pledges

#54

Post by adam_baratz »

jonknee wrote: post #27

That's pretty impressive. Kickstarter has a 5% fee (and Amazon their own processing fee) which means ~$50m in revenue for Kickstarter and $25M in revenue over the last year. I wonder how long they'll keep with Amazon as payment processor, it seems like they're leaving a lot of money on the table.

here's a podcast on this very subject: Its actually really interesting.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episode-...

Re: Kickstarter passes $1B in pledges

#56

Post by rkuykendall-com »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #11
samwillis wrote: post #6

I would love to know what the successful payout total is.

That would be a much more useful figure. The only stats I can find are here[1] but it just lists the number of successful projects not how much was pledged to them. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats

I feel like there are lots of people making sure no project stops at 99%. I know I barely use KS, but even I've sorted by "ending soonest" before and watched a few projects make it safely over to 100%.

That said, I'm glad to head the 20% number :)

Re: Kickstarter passes $1B in pledges

#57

Post by BillyMaize »

I just found out that my uncle, whom I thought very successful, failed to fulfill his responsibilities to his backers. He was working on a 3d printer that I was hoping to get to buy some day, but he never delivered more than a few of them (most of which didn't even work) and now his backers are trying to get together to sue him. A few days ago he filed for bankruptcy so they probably won't get anything.

As much as I love the idea of kickstarter, I have now seen first hand how you can be cheated and just can't trust the system to work (although many have and it has worked for them). After the disappointment of Minecraft when Notch started making a ton of money I have simply stayed away from all crowd sourcing/buy-and-play-during-alpha projects for good. There is nothing wrong with simply waiting until something is finished to buy it.

Re: Kickstarter passes $1B in pledges

#58

Post by mazumdar »

basicallydan wrote: post #19

Congratulations, Kickstarter. In my opinion, Kickstarter is one of the most important tech startups of the last few years for democratising the process of project funding so significantly. It's started to change the way people do business and create things in such a fundamental way. One of my favourite examples to give is the way in which games can now be funded. The truth of the matter is that games can cost a lot m…

As a backer and project creator who's running a Kickstarter funded startup, I couldn't agree more.

I love your example but I want to point out that the same obstacle you mention with games is applicable to most of the other industries that are funded on Kickstarter. The root problem in all cases lay in a startup's:

1) need for an audience

2) need for capital

What kickstarter has successfully done is build a loyal audience that's massive in size. I came to really appreciate this after seeing more than 80% of my funding come from people visiting kickstarter.com who didn't know about my project beforehand. This was huge. And not only does it give you the visibility and the capital required to execute, it validates your idea to a large extent.

Re: Kickstarter passes $1B in pledges

#60

Post by basicallydan »

mazumdar wrote: post #58
basicallydan wrote: post #19

Congratulations, Kickstarter. In my opinion, Kickstarter is one of the most important tech startups of the last few years for democratising the process of project funding so significantly. It's started to change the way people do business and create things in such a fundamental way. One of my favourite examples to give is the way in which games can now be funded. The truth of the matter is that games can cost a lot m…

As a backer and project creator who's running a Kickstarter funded startup, I couldn't agree more. I love your example but I want to point out that the same obstacle you mention with games is applicable to most of the other industries that are funded on Kickstarter. The root problem in all cases lay in a startup's: 1) need for an audience 2) need for capital What kickstarter has successfully done is build a loyal aud…

Good luck with your campaign! If you don't mind I have a few questions if you happen to know the answers:

1. Did those 80% of people see it through a "featured campaigns" thing or was it totally organic? 2. How did the remaining 20% find your campaign? 3. Can we see the campaign page? :)

Post reply on HN