How many people really pledged for a phone? And was offering an $820 phone for $600 at the start a good or bad idea?

Just before the Ubuntu Edge project - the attempt to raise $32m by crowdfunding pledges on IndieGoGo for 40,000+ top-end smartphones - vanishes in the rear-view mirror, here's some data for future reference, in case you need to refer to what happened (and didn't happen) at some time in the future.

In a statement on the page, Canonical's founder Mark Shuttleworth says:

"So ends a crazy month. We've broken records, we've been written and talked about across the world, we've worn out our F5 keys, and we've learned a lot of invaluable lessons about crowdfunding. Our bold campaign to build a visionary new device ultimately fell short, but we can take away so many positives. We raised $12,809,906, making the Edge the world's biggest ever fixed crowdfunding campaign. Let's not lose sight of what an achievement that is. Close to 20,000 people believed in our vision enough to contribute hundreds of dollars for a phone months in advance, just to help make it happen."

Only a couple of things wrong with that. The project didn't actually *raise* any money; a total of $12.2m was pledged, but none would be charged against anyone's credit card (not even the usual few percent from a failed project) under a special arrangement with IndieGoGo.

And second, it's not correct to say that "Close to 20,000 people believed in our vision enough to contribute hundreds of dollars for a phone months in advance". The number who pledged for a phone is less than 75% of that figure.

Ubuntu Edge: the price segments that the phone pledges came from

In total, pledges for 14,738 phones were received, from - at most - a total of 14,186 people, and four organisations. (It's impossible to say whether some people pledged twice; the system doesn't disambiguate that.) The total number of pledges made was a lot higher - 19,912 in all -

because others were for $20 "yay, we like this idea", $30 "D'oh! Forgot the shipping cost of my phone!" and $50 "Yay, make me a t-shirt". (In fact, there were respectively 4,344 pledges of $20, 1,801 of $30, and 5,671 of $50. I haven't counted those $30 pledges towards the total individual figure because they must have come from people who had already ordered a phone. Unfortunately, even those who hoped to get a t-shirt are going to be disappointed.)

Out of those 14,738 phone requests, 14,577 came from individuals rather than organisations.

Go ahead and order an Ubuntu Edge - but you'll wish you'd bought a tablet

Arguably, one of the failures of the Ubuntu Edge project was that it didn't involve enough businesses in the pledging process: out of 50 it apparently aimed to get buying its $80,000 scheme for 100 (later raised to 115) phones, only one organisation signed up - and that only when the project was well into its third week and already looked likely to fail. Another three (unnamed) organisations pledged for the $7,000 scheme for 10 phones and some Ubuntu servicing. But the first of those came when the project had only three days to run - and failure looked even more inevitable.

And of those 14,738 individual phone orders, 5,044 - that's over a third - were made on the very first day, when the phone was being offered at a special earlybird price of $600. In the next 36 hours, another 2,498 phones (that's 17% of the final total) were added as people jumped on the next earlybird run of $625.

That's pretty much the tale of the tape: more than 50% of the individual phone orders came in the first 56 hours of the project. After that, interest collapsed and the project lapsed into the "dead zone" - falling under the per-day total that it needed if it were ever to hit its target. As the per-day total mounted, the target fell further out of reach.

Ubuntu Edge: how the funding grew - and missed its $32m target by nearly $20m

Only during its first three days did the number of phone pledges exceed a thousand per day - but it needed to do at least that many every day.

Lessons to learn

So where did Canonical go wrong with Ubuntu Edge? Was the early bird pricing been a mistake? Should it have had more enterprise involvement?

Ben Redford and Matt Collier, the managers of a successful Kickstarter project (to make an Instagram projector), had these thoughts: "We asked for a much smaller amount, and luckily got something far greater. Additionally, crowd-funding favours the independent maker.

"We also used the same earlybird initiative as it seems to be the best way to draw interest and immediacy to your campaign." They point out that that gets you onto the "popular" section of the site, and so gets more people looking at your project. But they suggested a lower target price is more important: "The quicker the funding target is reached, the more marketable excitement and media coverage. More additional pledgers [means you're] guaranteed of a successful campaign and therefore more likely to back the project."

They point out that price may have been a major problem for Ubuntu Edge. "Crowdfunding is a big risk for the pledger - very few people ever purchase the top their pledges. $695 (original: $830) is a lot for a minimum unit pledge. In this case, huge risk means uncertain reward."

There's also the question of why you would crowdfund something that you're saying is essential, as Canonical was implying about the Edge.

"Most Kickstarter projects are not necessary to peoples' lives - you're mobile is and it is usually something you try before you buy, let alone before it is manufactured," Redford and Collier suggest.

Collier adds: "Another point that put me off was that the technical specifications were not guaranteed and could be changed by the time the product was shipped. We don't know when the phone will finally be shipped and the other manufacturers may have leapfrogged these specifications in the same time.

Enterprise matters

And yes, enterprise pledges matter. "For a project this size, it would be very important to get at least a few bulk order to get near the target. After all, one enterprise pledge is equal to around 115 individual backers. [Which is] not only financially valuable but in terms of creating a community to reenforce and support the individual backers.

"All in all, I think the campaign is too ambiguous and had too many variable times/specifications for the public to get behind the project and have it reach its ambitious funding goal. In reality the crowd funding scene is still in its infancy and isn't trustful enough to back a project of this size and complexity and believe it will deliver.

Collier's final thoughts: "For a successful crowdfunding campaign you need transparency, community trust and details; Ubuntu Edge could have done with a bit more guaranteed promises and transparent information."

So that's it: the Ubuntu Edge failed because it didn't pull in enough people, was priced too high, and didn't get enough enterprise backing. That might seem obvious in retrospect - but for anyone planning a high-profile project, it's worth thinking about. The most valuable thing about it may be as a lesson to future entrepreneurs.