Aim Higher (Dammit)

I’m a big fan of what Daniel Solis is doing over on the Happy Birthday Robot kickstarter (and for that matter what David Hill is doing at Maschine Zeit even if the game pitch isn’t necessarily for me).

But as Chris and I covered somewhat on the latest That’s How We Roll, they are also a little disappointing because they didn’t aim high enough with those funding goals. (I pick on these guys here because I like them and I like what they’re doing.)

There’s this funny thing about goals, especially goals that you enlist friends (and followers and family) to help you hit. Funny things, actually.

People love to feel like they’re part of the team, and goals are a good way to motivate that sense of teamwork.  Tell people that you need to hit a goal and, assuming you know enough of them, and that enough of them know enough people that they can motivate in turn, and that goal’s going to get hit, eventually.  We like to belong.

But there’s a flipside to that. Your goal is also the point at which people know they can relax. Once that goal’s hit … well, there might be a team, but how much teamwork is really needed?  The goal was met!

So, that takes me to Happy Birthday Robot.  Daniel was originally building his goal-target around 50 copies.  (Daniel, it should be said, has no idea how good he is; and if you know who he is, you know how right I am in saying this. And definitely check out HBR’s funding site and video — I think you’ll see, as I and others have, that this little story game has the chance to be dynamite in a bottle.)

At any rate, the twitterverse did its level best to convince him to at least shoot for 100 copies, and so he did. Then his project went live and he and his team of friends (and followers and so on) went and hit that target in the first day of his planned-for-70-days fundraising window.

And then the donations slacked off.  Even though continuing to contribute would help out, the goal was met, and so everyone relaxed.  Some people even emailed him saying “aw, man, sorry I couldn’t get in”… despite it still being possible post-goal to get in.

Personally, I would rather he’d shot for a target based on funding 200, even 300 copies.  To someone uncertain their idea has any merit, it sounds like too much — but in having such a higher target, I think more people would have risen to the occasion.  The team would’ve been bigger.

I’ve been counseling Daniel on how to set new goals to continue to motivate contributions to the project. And it’s been working, if more slowly (because, hey, original goal met, right?).  Now that he’s past the goal, every $150 more donated sends free books to kids who are learning how to become gamers.  That’s a good motivation.  I just wish it had been there up front — coulda, woulda, shoulda.

(And to bring it back around to Maschine Zeit, that project too hit its very modest funding goal in the first 24 hours. I’m betting it would’ve hit twice that goal in not much more time, had that goal been there to hit.)

My point, then, is that aiming higher than you think you should pays off.  Don’t undervalue what you create because you don’t think interest will be there.  If you are a participant in today’s social media, it’s pretty likely that the interest is there.  There’s nothing wrong with getting your friends excited about what you do, and nothing wrong with selling what you do to them.

After all, they’re on your team.