Only 25 percent of Kickstarter’s tech and design projects deliver on time

Kickstarter success doesn’t depend on whether or not the project gets funded. It depends on whether or not the product gets delivered.

That’s the hypothesis surrounding the newest infographic from Appsblogger’s Jeanne Pi and Ethan Mollick, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Together, the two offer an in-depth look at delivery success rates and what it takes to run a successful campaign from start to finish.

The infographic’s chief finding: only 25 percent of technological and design projects deliver on time.

“The more a project is overfunded, the more likely there will be delivery delays,” Pi noted in the infographic. “And the more overfunded a project is above goal, the later it delivers.”

The topic’s been a major talking point this summer, as information regarding ZionEyez’s $344,000 scam surfaced and Oakland’s Wonderment Consortium explained just how easy it can actually be to pull off a scam project for profit.

Pi’s advice for backers: stick to the small projects, the ones that ask for less than $10,000. And find project creators with a whole gaggle of Facebook friends. Those with 1,000 people in their network have a 40 percent chance of successfully funding and delivering rewards by the campaign’s expected completion date.

That’s 20 percent better than project creators with only 100 friends, Pi and Mollick’s study suggests.

Correction: A previous headline insinuated the the 25 percent delivery success rate applies to all Kickstarter projects. In actuality, it only applies to projects in the technology and design categories, which comprise less than 5 percent of all Kickstarter projects. We have corrected the headline to correspond with this information.

Photo via Appsblogger