Comment by tedivm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tedivm | Hacker News Reader

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To me this is an excellent example of why it's important to budget out, in advance, any venture. It seems like shipping was way over budget because he didn't take into account materials and postage, and I'm not sure why anyways would set a funding goal of $10k for a project they already spent $15k on if they actually expected profit.

It's important to define your goal to yourself beforehand. Are you looking to fund a cool project you just want to see exist, or is it profit? I imagine most people are somewhere in the middle of those two, but it's important to know where you are before you sit prices and goals.

One thing that I got out of this article that I really appreciate is the early backer concept. One of the benefits of kickstarter is that it is a bit more community, and people are forgiving of mistakes- the early backers even more so. Something that people may want to do in the future is offer to ship to the early backers first so that way if there are problems it's discovered sooner and it effects a smaller group of people.

I have to agree with tedivm. It seems somewhat disingenuous for him to act like he barely broke even if he was able to pay off $15k of debt that he was prepared to eat regardless of whether he sold a single poster or not.

Frankly, it sounds to me like he should consider himself lucky that, despite grossly mis-estimating the actual cost of printing and delivering his posters, he actually received enough funding to meet his obligations to his backers. If he had only raised the amount set as his goal, we'd be reading about yet another guy who's project was never delivered.

Maybe I'm being too uncharitable here, but I think his article is really a case study for why people should be wary of funding low-cost kickstarter projects that require delivery of physical goods.

He precisely estimated the cost of printing: "Printing was precisely what I estimated it would be: $9,500 "

The cost of re-printing, and re-shipping the posters came out to $7,073, or 9% of the total amount raised. I think we all make these large screw-ups occasionally, but rarely enough that they're not in budgets. I think I cost my last job 20k in an afternoon once.

I don't think this at all indicates people should be wary about funding projects: everything was delivered.

He would have been able to print the posters, but had he only raised 10,000, he would still be in the hole for:

Less shipping supplies ($5,811)

Less storage lease for 5 months ($690)

Less postage ($4,701)

Less temporary help ($741)

Less charity: water contribution ($2,000)

$13,943 in addition to his $15,000 loan, as well as Kickstarter taking 5% and the 5% merchant fee, which would have come out to ~$1000. I don't think people would have received the poster.

He also probably would have done a smaller print run, and spent less on shipping and postage. Might not have needed help shipping either.

Most likely, yes. This is what I've done with my two previous posters (smaller run).

All those numbers would of been much smaller if he had only raised $10k though. Still about $2k, which ruins his original budget as well.

    I'm not sure why anyways would set a funding goal of $10k for a project 
    they already spent $15k on if they actually expected profit.

Kickstarter campaign contributors have an auction mentality. eBay listings that start with a low starting bid counterintuitively tend to sell for higher amounts; similarly Kickstarter campaigns that are overfunded are more attractive to donors because they are feel they are backing a winner.

The $15K was a sunk cost, it was spent and gone whether or not the kickstarter was successful or not.

Either its an expense counted against his profit, and he never expected to make a profit (since he was already in the hole if it was exactly funded) - or it doesn't count as an expense and he made $20k. That's over 30% profit, as opposed to the 9% he's claiming.

You can't have it both ways.

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