Apple is known for taking its time on products. One of the most anticipated of them is a dock for lightning devices. I had a feeling we might never see this thing. As you can see by the product page on Apple, the device is indeed a reality.
The benefit of backing smaller projects appears to be how much faster they can turn a pledge into a real product. This was the case with BelayCords; A USB cable replacement for the stock Apple cable (with support for others too). With a pledge date of September 9th, 2014, the BelayCords I ordered took 210 days to arrive.