Trends in the crowdfunding of educational technology startups

This article presents an analysis of active crowdfunding campaigns posted on ten crowdfunding platforms in May 2013 to provide a glimpse of the recent trends in the crowdfunding of educational technology startups. We describe the characteristics of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in educational technology and identify the most popular crowdfunding platforms. This research provides important implications for educational technology entrepreneurs. Top performing educational technology fund raisers tend to a) request a modest but reasonable amount for each phase of the project, b) focus on the informal, out-of-school, rather than formal contexts of learning, c) attract supporters with a tiered system of rewards, and d) communicate with supporters and inform the public of the status of the project through periodic updates and progress reports. Directions for future research include conducting an in-depth content analysis of archived data and exploring the perspectives of successful educational technology entrepreneurs using qualitative interviews.