Kickstarter Crowdfunding Trends: Excel Analysis

Background

Over two billion dollars have been raised using the massively successful crowdfunding service, Kickstarter, but not every project has found success. Out of over 300,000 projects launched on Kickstarter, only a third have made it through the funding process with a positive outcome.

Since getting funded on Kickstarter requires meeting or exceeding the project's initial goal, many organizations spend months looking through past projects in an attempt to discover some trick to finding success.

For this project, I was tasked with organizing and analyzing a database of four thousand past projects in order to uncover any hidden trends.

Excel Tools Used:

Pivot Charts
Pivot Tables
Cell Formulas
Conditional Formatting

Conclusions about Kickstarter campaigns

If somebody wants to fund a project on Kickstarter, they may want to launch it during May. Over 60% of projects launched during this time are successful.
Based on category breakdown, music projects have been the most likely to be successful. Over 77% of music projects were successfully funded on Kickstarter.
Based on sub-category breakdown, plays are the most uncertain. Plays hold the honor of having the most successfully funded projects, and the honor of having the most failed funding endeavors.
Based on funding goals, projects with a budget of $5000 or less are the most likely to be successful.

Limitations of this dataset

While the data shows how many projects were canceled, there are no listed reasons for their cancellation. One project in particular was 95% of the way to meeting its goal before it was cancelled – might be worth looking into why the fundraising efforts were called to a halt. Furthermore, while the data shows how many projects were successfully funded, it does not list how often those efforts led to successfully created projects. There have been horror stories of Kickstarter campaigns leaving their backers with nothing but a loss of funds.

Other Possible Tables/Graphs