When your average tech journalist wants to talk about the success of a new product or service, he has a lot to draw on. Netflix subscriptions can be compared to cable subscriptions, iPhone sales can be compared to Android sales. Even the number of reported returns or one star Amazon reviews can tell you a lot about the success of a company’s new product.
Unfortunately, in the world of crowd funding, there isn’t a whole lot to go on when trying to gauge success. Many crowd funded products are too unique to compare to products already on the market. Others attempt to butt heads with established brands, but journalists can’t verify their claims without review units. Readers want to hear who won and who lost, but the world of product development makes that distinction cloudy.
Fortunately, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and just about every other crowd funding site offer an arbitrary and random way to gauge the success of a campaign without drawing on information from any of the established and reliable sources mentioned above: the funding goal.