With over 5.7 million donors funding more than 135 000 projects, Kickstarter is responsible for a boom in the startup scene, raising over 1 billion dollars. Be it a personal project, a technological innovation, or a big screen movie, Kickstarter has helped ideas grow and reach people of all walks of life. While it has helped many people bring their ideas to fruition, it also creates unrealistic expectations from donors.
People donate to projects they are passionate about, for little in return, on the premise that a final product will be delivered. However, the majority of projects did not meet their set delivery deadlines in 2012 begging the question does Kickstarter create vapourware. The reason that these Startups did not meet their delivery deadlines was because of overfunding by donors. By being overfunded, these companies had a demand for their product that they could not keep up with. This, in turn, leads to vapourware in the most successful startups because these products are announced to the general public, but never actually manufactured or officially canceled. One way this effect can be minimized is by having set funding caps replace a fixed fundraising goal, with the implementation of a range of funding goals (raise a minimum of x and a maximum of y).