Stay On Target!

We’re now on day 12 of our 30 day Kickstarter campaign for FlickFleet. After a strong start we’re now in the doldrums. The daily pledge total is usually around £250-£400 (we need £246 on average every day to fund) and once it was as low as £45, so we’re limping towards the line, but it’ll probably go to the wire. Most people I’ve spoken to are convinced we’ll fund (or at least that’s what they are telling us!) and Kicktraq and Backerkit’s trend analysis both have us funding too. The only concern is that Kicktraq’s lower limit from its projection cone is now under our goal £10,787 vs £12,000, and it’s heading lower each day (even if their trend is to £18k!).

Things have slowed down a bit

I’ve spoken before about my concerns about Kickstarter (Exhibit A & Exhibit B) but it turns out the biggest problem I’m (and Paul said he is) experiencing is actually the worry about will we fund. Frequently checking the total has become compulsive behaviour, which can’t be healthy. We’ve had quite a few cancellations and no information from almost all of the cancelling pledgers to help us understand why they backed (often at a high level) only to cancel hours or days later.

The one exception to that was a guy who backed and then in response to my thank you message told me how cool the game looked and how much he was looking forward to playing it with his kids. A few days later I got another message from him to say that he was cancelling that pledge because budgets were tight at this time of year. He still loved the game and the campaign, but just couldn’t afford it at the moment. I really appreciated the explanation and tweeted as much.

The story has a happy ending! One of my twitter followers (who henceforth shall be known as Legendary Steve) paid his pledge as a random act of kindness - he was blown away (as was I!) by the generosity :-)

Fingers crossed we can keep the momentum through the slow middle period that everyone experiences and enter the exciting final couple of days at least close enough to the target to make it over the line...