At what point does a kickstarter campaign become more likely than not to become a success? Believe it or not, 52% of all projects that get even a single pledge wind up being successful.
But clearly one pledge isn’t the tipping point…the point at which the project has enough momentum that it’ll probably make it to the end.
Here’s what Kickstarter has to say:
What is the tipping point for a project’s funding? With just a single pledge, a project’s chances of success jump to 52%. But at what level of funding is a project overwhelmingly likely to succeed?
Projects that reach 30% of their funding goal succeed more than 90% of the time. You can see that as the line turns green, the percent of projects that succeed approaches 100%.
Of the 20,000 projects that have launched, only one has been unsuccessful after reaching 90% of its funding goal.
That point is 30%. For us that means $15,000. And we’ve passed it. As I write this, our funding amount is $16,101. Over 32%. And we did so in our first 12 days, just 26% of our time.
In the process we’ve been retweeted by famous comedians Stephen Fry and Zach Cregger and featured on CNBC.com, BoingBoing.net and popular Apple podcast The Critical Path.
We’ve got a lot more hard work ahead. We’re a larger, more ambitious project than most. We still need to raise over $1,000 every day from now until the end. Please, if you haven’t pledged, pledge. And if you have (or can’t afford to), share this on facebook, twitter, in an email, or however else. Word of mouth is our only form of promotion.
This arrived in my inbox this morning from one of my email lists of other comedians. I think getting a street named after one of the greatest satirists of all times is a very worthy cause, so I copy and pasted it here:
To be COUNTED as VALID, your email MUST contain:
1. YOUR FIRST AND LAST NAME 2. YOUR MAILING ADDRESS 3. YOUR CONTACT PHONE NUMBER
ALL INFO IS FOR VERIFICATION ONLY YOU WILL NOT BE CONTACTED AT HOME
Thank you for your support, Kevin Bartini, Amy Ambrosino & Joe Trentacosta
Please cut and paste this letter below and email to:GeorgeCarlinWay@gmail.com ———————————————————————————————————————-
TO: The Campaign for GEORGE CARLIN WAY
This letter verifies my support of the Campaign to Rename the 500-Block of West 121st Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, as “GEORGE CARLIN WAY.” Mr. Carlin was a continuing asset to the neighborhood in many ways throughout his lifetime and I feel that it is proper to honor him with a street sign on the block where he was raised.
Thank you,
Name _________________________________________________________________
The story this week that much of Mike Daisey’s monologue, as told at the Public Theater and more importantly on This American Life and in the NY Times Op-Ed page, was fabricated, hit a nerve with me. I’m a satirist. I make up facts as part of fiction to get at a deeper Truth (with a capital T). In fact I’m making a movie right now about a bunch of very true things that we’ve totally fictionalized.
Mike Daisey defends himself, saying that his piece is a lie in the context of journalism, but isn’t a lie in the context of theater. That is, the old adage that fiction can be truer the facts.
Of course, this adage is at the heart of what I do as a satirist. And I think Mike Daisey is kidding himself. His lies aren’t just misleading on This American Life. They’re misleading in the context of the Public Theater, too. They serve not to reveal the truth, but to further obscure it.
First, some narrative theory: There is a difference between the Story and the Events in the story. The Story is how you, the dramatist, choose to shape the events, be they factual or fictional, to convey an interpretation to your audience. You cannot take events and make a Story out of them without having an opinion on what the message to be taken away is. You make editorial choices–emphasizing certain events, omitting others you deem less important.
In a journalistic context, we know that it’s impossible to fully remove bias. However, we hope that the journalist tried to be as fair as possible to uncover the truth.
I have met two US presidents and two vice presidents. I have dined with sitting US Senators. I have worked with academy award winners and some of my comedy idols from childhood are now my friends.
In this humble comedy writer’s opinion, Stephen Fry is one of the greatest comedians of all time. He was one of the principal players in Blackadder Goes Forth, which is, imho, the greatest season of television ever made. He also is co-starred in A Bit of Fry and Laurie, a show so good it’s one of the few pieces of television my grandfather can talk about together. In addition to his skill as a performer, Stephen is an accomplished writer, and is as close as anyone in the comedy world gets to being an intellectual, up there with Lenny Bruce and George Carlin.
All I can say is wow.
Please, Please support us by going to our kickstarter and pre-ordering the movie. If we can make this happen, I’ll have had two dreams come true (the first being that Stephen Fry acknowledged my existence and work). Thank you.
Brian Kerr of Tacoma, Washington pre-ordered a copy of our movie via kickstarter.
So Brian, we here at falseprofitthemovie.com wanted to give you this, the Eugene Cramer Masculinity, Intelligence, and Attractive Odor Award. Past winners have included Steve Jobs, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and Jets great Joe Namath. And now you.
Brian discovered our project from my interview here.
Congratulations Brian! And keep being great!
If you’d like to join Brian in being awesome, just click here.
For those of you who are designers/web gurus, please forgive the amateurishness of our web design…I built this myself and am pretty proud. That said, we do have a graphic designer working to make it look like it was designed by a human being, and not some sort of great ape.
We sent in our application to Kickstarter on Thursday of last week. After five days of nail-biting and excitement, we got the following in our email today:
We’ve spent the afternoon rendering our video and creating our project and plan to submit by the end of the work day today. This explains why it’s been taking so long!
