Does Crowd Funding Really Work, Or Is It Becoming Over-Saturated?

The stats quoted in this piece illustrate the success of Kickstarter, not its failings. If 53% of project that need greater than $100,000 don't reach their funding goals, that means 47% of projects reach their funding goals. A 47% chance of raising $100,000 or more for developing something irrespective of its quality is incredible.

And the App Store analogy isn't a good one. For the App Store, you need a fully developed product. You've already spent thousands of hours and dollars creating something by the time it gets to the store. At Kickstarter, you've only spent time explaining your idea. It's a great product dev tool for testing the market viability of business-to-consumer ideas.

The two possibilities considered by the headline are not exclusive. Properly understood, they can even be seen as synonyms. Crowd funding really works, so it will soon become over-saturated. It it the nature of an effective novel approach that it is used until reaching the point where it stops offering extra-normal returns.

See also: 'Malthusianisms' http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=418 and 'Umeshisms' http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=40