Takeaways

• In two thousand and twelve, the Pebble smartwatch asked Kickstarter backers for a hundred thousand dollars and got more than ten million, from almost sixty-nine thousand people. The watches shipped about four months late. In two thousand and fifteen, by its founder's own account, Pebble built its shop forecasts on a twenty-million-dollar Kickstarter, was left with more than fifteen million dollars of unsold watches, and at the end of two thousand and sixteen sold parts of the business to Fitbit and stopped making devices.
• In a study of United States Kickstarter projects up to two thousand and twelve, Ethan Mollick found that only about one in four funded design and technology projects delivered on time, and projects funded at ten times their goal were half as likely to have delivered at any given time. A card game, Exploding Kittens, funded at almost eight hundred and eighty times its goal, started shipping on time.
• Something to try: before any pre-sale, work out what it costs to make and deliver one at ten and at a hundred, the most you can deliver well, and the date you could deliver if ten times as many people said yes. Set your limit and your refund rule before anyone pays.