A month before launching my Kickstarter campaign, I had the opportunity to pitch my game company to investors and entrepreneurs at a shark tank-like event in my town called Road Pitch. I didn’t get any investment, but I did learn some lessons that I thought might help anyone else looking to try and walk that path after me, so I wrote up my experiences into a guest post for Stonemaier Games. Jamey at Stonemaier has a long and exhaustive series of Kickstarter Lessons that I studied extensively before launching the campaign for No Honor Among Thieves, and I couldn’t be happier to contribute to that collection.
From the post:
“I honestly wasn’t interested at first. I was getting money from Kickstarter, so why would I need or even want to pitch my company to investors? It seemed like it was the sort of event not meant for indie companies the size of mine, so I was planning on passing on the opportunity until two little things came up that convinced me otherwise.
The first was that Greg (the guy in charge of the event in my town) assured me that part of the pitch session was about getting advice and feedback from the Riders, not just investment opportunities. I’d be able to run my plans past actual business people and see if they thought there was a chance I could turn this hobby of mine into something more. In retrospect, this was the most valuable thing I got out of the whole process.
The second was that I realized I’d make a pretty major mistake in my budget estimates, and I actually needed about seven thousand more dollars than I’d been expecting to publish the game. This was really not good news for a first-time crowdfunder already worried that I was asking backers for too much. Suddenly, the thought of looking for traditional investment before the Kickstarter didn’t seem like such a bad idea.”
In other news, No Honor Among Thieves is currently 10 days in, and is 45% funded. If you haven’t taken a look at the campaign before, now’s a good time. I’m going to be at the Boston Festival of Indie Games on Saturday, and I’m hoping that interest there might push us over the halfway mark a week before the halfway point of the campaign.
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