Success Factors in Reward based and Equity based Crowdfunding in Finland

Master’s Thesis 
46 
These indications are further supported by data in Figure 4. Categories such as 
Games, Design and Technology have a significantly larger share of successful projects 
that have raised over 10 thousand US dollars than categories like Dance, Theater and 
Music. Approximately 64% of Technology projects raise 10 thousand UD dollars or 
more, whereas that figure is only 11% for Dance projects. Thus, it is likely that pro-
jects from categories like Games, Design and Technology have higher funding goals, 
than those from categories such as Dance, Theater and Music.
Figure 4: Amount of capital raised by successful projects over the history of Kick-
starter
18
However, it should be noted that it is also possible for funding targets to not be set 
high, but for some categories to raise amounts substantially higher than their goals. 
This would create a bias in the data towards larger raised amounts in categories such 
as Technology. Yet, since research shows that crowdfunding initiatives rarely surpass 
their funding targets by large amounts (Mollick, 2014), this seems an unlikely occur-
rence. 
18
https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats?ref=about_subnav
0% 
10% 
20% 
30% 
40% 
50% 
60% 
70% 
80% 
90% 
100% 
Share out of all 
successful projects 
Amounts Raised by Successful Projects 
$1 million US raised 
$100 K to $999,999 US raised 
$20,000 to $99,999 US raised 
$10,000 to $19,999 US raised 
$1,000 to $9,999 US raised 
Less than $1,000 US raised 

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Master’s Thesis 
47 
9.1.2. Success and Failure Rate of Projects 
Success rates of reward-based crowdfunding initiatives also vary considerably. The 
average Kickstarter project has a success rate of approximately 37%. As shown by 
Figure 5, Technology projects have a success rate of 20%, whereas Dance projects 
succeed 63% of the time. This data is to an extent negatively correlated with the 
amounts of capital raised by the projects. This would imply that categories that typi-
cally have higher funding targets have lower success rates and vice a versa. However, 
causation between the two cannot be determined from the data. 
Figure 5: Success rate of initiated crowdfunding projects over the history of Kick-
starter
19
Through a closer examination of the amounts of successful and unsuccessful projects 
on Kickstarter, the success rate can be further assessed. From Figure 6 it can be seen 
that the total amount of initiated projects does not clearly correlate with the success 
rate. Categories such as Music have large amounts of launched projects and high suc-
cess rates, yet categories like Publishing and Technology with relatively large 
amounts of launched projects have significantly lower success rates. Additionally, 
categories such as Dance have small amounts of launched projects and high success 
rates, whereas Journalism and Crafts have small amounts of launched projects and 
19
https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats?ref=about_subnav
0.00% 
10.00% 
20.00% 
30.00% 
40.00% 
50.00% 
60.00% 
70.00%