84% Of Kickstarter Projects Miss Their Ship Dates

If you've ever backed a Kickstarter campaign before, you might have been notified of a delay of some sort. Based on the top 50 most-funded projects on Kickstarter, 84% of them ended up missing their initial ship date, including the Pebble smartwatch, which garnered over $10 million in funding from almost 69,000 backers.CNNMoney examined these 50 Kickstarter projects, and collectively, they raised $40.3 million from nearly 420,000 backers. Out of the 50 projects, which all had November 2012 ship dates or earlier, only eight of them hit their initial target deadline, and 16 out of the 50 still have yet to ship their product.

Among the 26 projects that eventually shipped but were still delayed, the average delay was around two months, although some of the projects took much longer. The most delayed project out of the bunch was a home espresso machine developed by ZPM Espresso. It's now nine months overdue and the company doesn't expect to ship it until mid-2013.

However, these findings are only based on the top 50 Kickstarter projects based on the number of backers and the amount raised. CNNMoney notes that a lot of these projects were technology-based, and were more prone to delays than other projects that weren't in the top 50, like art and design projects, most of which are able to meet their ship dates more easily.

[via CNNMoney]