Kickstarter was caught off-guard this summer by a gag crowdfunding project that took off and attracted a mix of delight and mockery: “Potato Salad” by Zack Brown, which raised $55,492 to make… potato salad. But the company has made the best of the situation, analyzing its success in a smart post, Potato Salad: By the Numbers.
One of the interesting things Kickstarter reveals is a list of its ten most-visited project pages in history:
- Ouya game console
- Pebble watch
- Veronica Mars movie
- Potato Salad
- Double Fine Adventure
- Project Eternity
- Penny Arcade
- Reading Rainbow
- Mighty No. 9
- Oculus Rift
In this context, Potato Salad stands out even more. It is the only gag project of the 10, and one of only two that didn’t raise more than $1 million. (An effort to support Penny Arcade, a comics site, is the other.) Excluding Potato Salad, the other nine raised an average of $4.9 million, including $8.6 million for the Ouya game console and $10.3 million for the Pebble watch.