If you’re interested in raising money through Kickstarter to get a project funded, you might be interested in the findings of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Tanushee Mitra and Eric Gilbert. The pair analyzed the language on 45,000 Kickstarter pages to find out if specific words and phrases made a campaign more or less likely to meet its funding target. Using a form of statistical analysis known as penalized logistic regression, they concluded, “The language used by creators to pitch their project plays a major role in driving the project’s success, accounting for 58.56% of the variance around success.”
Strangely, the researchers also found that Kickstarter projects also increased their chance of funding if they talked about either Brooklyn or cats. Concerning the cat reference, the authors said, “We had no clear explanation for the occurrence of cats — except for the commonly accepted wisdom that the internet loves them.”
The next time you need to get a bank loan, walk into the bank with your cat. Chances are the banker will turn you down for a loan but will give your cat the money.
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