[rst]

One possible explanation: the initial boost is largely a reflection of the pre-launch marketing efforts, which are in turn a measure of the effectiveness of the marketing effort generally. So, you could read this as saying more that marketing is important, than that there's something that's special in particular about the large "pop".

[Wookai]

Sure, many factors can explain the initial "surge" in pledges: pre-launch marketing, featuring on recently launched, novelty, first spread on social medias, etc. I did not really try to explain the causes of the different phases, but merely to use the raw data to predict the state at the end (successful or failed).