Null Hypothesis #9: Serial creators
Giancarlo Vercellino
Market Research | Competitive Intelligence | Business Strategy | Innovation Scouting | Data Science
Hypothesis
"Achieving serial success in Kickstarter campaign funding cannot be explained with simple performance indicators."
What if the key to success on Kickstarter lies in certain qualities that set some creators apart from others? In this analysis, we delve into the world of creative projects on Kickstarter, exploring the factors that differentiate common creators from those who achieve remarkable success. Join us as we crunch some numbers and uncover what's behind the most successful Kickstarter campaigns.
Dataset
The Kickstarter dataset we analyzed consists of 282,859 distinct projects that were proposed by 198,248 creators between April 22, 2009 and December 13, 2022 (source: webrobots.io). On average, each creator had a success rate of 54.48%, which we calculated based on the success rates of their individual projects. To determine each creator's overall performance, we used the cumulative binomial distribution with the average success rate (filtering for the right tail p-value below 5%). Our analysis revealed that approximately 5,484 creators, labelled as "serial creators", significantly outperformed the rest with an average success rate of around 85%. In contrast, other creators had an average success rate of 54.38%. On average, a serial creator successfully closed 8.77 campaigns, while the others only 1.37.
Among the original features, we have different information, like project description ("blurb"), project state, creator, backer count, pledged amount, goal, category and so on:
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Analysis
Using the original features as a starting point, we generated a series of additional indicators to enable us to compare "serial creators" with other creators in terms of backers count, pledged amount, pledge per backer, days from launch to deadline, pledge per day, goal, goal multiplier (pledged amount/goal), and total pledged across different projects. We conducted a bootstrapped non-parametric test to analyze the data, and the following are the main results of our analysis. This time we will spare you the code (if you want to know more, just ask in DM).
Upon observing significant differences in mean or standard deviation, we found that the majority of the time, these differences were not in favor of the "serial creators." Specifically, our analysis revealed that common creators, on average, had around one hundred more backers than serial creators, while the pledge per backer for serial creators was roughly 50 USD compared to over 90 USD for other creators. Additionally, serial creators underperformed in terms of pledge per day, despite closing projects four days earlier than their counterparts. Furthermore, the goal setting for serial creators was significantly less than for other creators, with a difference of about half. However, the goal multiplier was essentially the same for both groups. Finally, it is important to note that despite the aforementioned shortcomings, the total pledge collected by serial creators across projects was significantly higher than that of other creators (240K vs 140K euros).
Conclusion
In conclusion, what can we glean from this series of unusual statistical observations? It appears that the factors driving the long-term monetary success of a serial creator likely have little to do with traditional marketing strategies. Pledge amount, fundraising goals, and the number of backers may not be the key determinants of success. Instead, other variables such as the creator's personal identity, as well as their persistence in swiftly proposing and executing new initiatives and projects, may have a greater impact. Additionally, the specific nature of the project is also a crucial factor that requires further analysis, which we plan to conduct using NLP techniques. In essence, our findings point out to other factors, underscoring the importance of seizing opportunities and acting quickly to realize success. Therefore, we would conclude with two words: carpe diem.
Post Scriptum
Why did the serial creator decides to close his campaign on Kickstarter? Because he realized it was time to stop kick-starting and start kick-finishing! (yeah, it's a joke)