KickstarterForum.org

[ivanzatko]

Hey guys,

it's only been a while since we have run our Kickstarter campaign for Benjamin Button. Our funding goal has been 25K and we raised 52K in 4 weeks. And yet, we decided to cancel the campaign. It really took guts to refuse such a huge amount of money, but this explains why we did it:

https://medium.com/benjamin-button/why- ... 14e5435b62

I am really interested to hear your opinion. Would you do the same thing if you were us?

Thanks, Ivan

[hyperstarter]

I don't like clicking on links and Medium is blocked for me, could you give us all a quick summary on this board

[ivanzatko]

Sure, here's my quick summary:

We've done the calculations before the campaign and since hardware development was almost finished and software development was on the good track, we set the goal to 25,000 USD. We reached that in few hours and doubled it in the course of the campaign. However when we were halfway through, we found out that 25K is no longer enough and we suddenly needed much more. We were limited on budget and could not afford to pay to huge agencies for boosting our campaign. So we only had two options left:

A/ to take the money and make the most of it. Trying to convince new investor to come on board and finish the hardware and software development and manufacturing for his money (Likelihood was maybe 20%)

B/ to refuse the money by cancelling the campaign few hours before it was finished. This meant to burn a lot of money and time we spent for Kickstarter, but was morally right.

You can see the result on our Kickstarter. Cancelling the campaign was not easy, but it was better than fooling our backers and then declaring bankruptcy. To be honest, we were afraid of their reaction and damaging our brand, but the opposite was true - the reactions were 90% positive and it even strenghtened our relationship with community.

Why I posted it here - this was meant to be a case study for all the campaigns that are thinking about similar dilemma. Hopefully there will be less brands like Coolest Cooler or Zano and more creators who are not afraid of the consequences cancelling the campaign might bring...

[Cristina]

This post has been moved to the General Chat + Introduce Yourself section.

[gsng]

So since you found that you need much more for your project, would you start a new campaign with higher funding goal? I think your decision is right on that situation, so what's your next move?

[Stickyguava]

Wow, interesting story. But good for you for doing the right thing. I would have done the same.

[LTOTV]

Cancelling was the right call. There are so many horror stories of creators raising the cash, not being able to make the product, and keeping the money. Good on you for recognizing it couldn't happen.

My only suggestion for the future would be to have an ironclad number as to what your costs will be before you go on KS. I've had clients want to throw out a number bc it sounds good, but they have to realize they need to build a sustainable business and not just produce one offs for backers.

[JoIIygreen]

I agree. You realized a new complication that would have made production very hard and probably not profitable. Canceling was the right call in that situation. At least now you have the understanding of the project and everything else ready to go if new software development arises. You could easily plug in back in and restart it.