A Matter of Scale: What Changes Between $64k and $25m?

I received this request from a recent Facebook livestream: “Would love to read an updated blog that includes the complexities of family time, subcontractor and employee relationships, manufacturing and fulfillment challenges, and demands of success: more followers, more emails, more product releases; basically so many more demands on you as a decision maker are responsible to others.”

I’ve thought about this for a few days, and I’ve concluded that the overarching topic is a matter of scale. While I’ve mentioned financial growth in the title of the post, that’s more a symptom than a cause of growth that has happened over the last 10+ years at Stonemaier Games.

More products

2013: We had exactly 2 games, Viticulture and Euphoria, each in a few different Kickstarter iterations.

2023: We now have 14 games, along with a multitude of expansions, accessories, and promos.

An increase of +12 games over 10 years is a pace that I’m very pleased with. The goal was never to flood the market with games and hope a few of them worked out; it was to intentionally and deliberately put a lot of time and resources into 1-2 new games a year and continue to support older games that people were still playing. The internal result of this strategy is that I’m still the only lead designer and developer at Stonemaier Games, though it’s important to note that 6 of our games were designed by external designers (along with several expansions). With the increase in products, developing a robust step-by-step checklist has been really helpful to ensure I don’t miss any crucial steps for product management or marketing.

More units

2013: I made around 2500 units of Viticulture in the first print run and around 7500 units of Euphoria.

2023: We have over 3 million units in print of our games, not including expansions and accessories.

For the most part, other than paying more money, it isn’t all that different to manufacture 10,000 units of a product than 2,000 units. It’s actually a little easier to ship more units, as more units produced makes it easier to fill larger shipping containers. However, more units also requires more warehouse space, and more units is probably the result of more distributors/retailers asking for your product. All of this requires someone who is really focused and really good at logistics (which, in our case, is the very talented Alex Schmidt).

More employees, contractors, and volunteers

2013: It was at the very end of this year that I started working full time at Stonemaier Games. I remained our only full-time employee until 2020, though during that time I had lots of help from independent contractors focused on specific tasks and a helpful array of paid volunteers doing things like proofreading and playtesting.

2023: We now have a total of 4 full-time employees and 2 part-time employees, along with over 120 independent contractors and 500+ Stonemaier Ambassadors.

A big part of my job has always been project management, and it’s still a big part of my job. That said, I’ve tried to hire and contract people who are strongly autonomous–they’re awesome without my oversight.

More orders

2013: With Viticulture and Euphoria combined, we had less than 10,000 total orders from consumers, retailers, and distributors.

2023: On just our US webstore in 2022, we had over 40,000 orders. That doesn’t count our other 3 consumer webstores, our direct retailer orders, our distributor orders, or our localization partner orders.

It’s a lot to juggle in terms of retailer/distributor/partner relationships (Alex and Susannah), customer service (Joe and Dave), the webstores themselves (Dave Hewer), the capacity of our fulfillment centers, and replacement parts (Dave). More orders is an area that I think directly translates to a need for more personnel.

More emails

2013: It’s hard to remember exactly, but in 2013 I handled all emails, which typically amounted to around 100 emails per day (this number was definitely inflated by Kickstarter messages).

2023: I don’t know the total number of emails that everyone at Stonemaier Games receives, writes, and responds to every day, but I’d estimate it’s close to 1000. I try to achieve inbox zero every day.

This is another area where scaling the number of people available to reply to emails is crucial, as it would be physically impossible for me to reply to 1000 emails every day.

More content

2013: I wrote 2 crowdfunding-related blog posts each week, 1-2 Kickstarter project updates each month (more while the Euphoria project was live), and 1 monthly newsletter. I was invited to join content from other creators (e.g., podcasts) a few times a month.

2023: I still write the 2 blog posts each week (and record audio for the podcast version), and now I typically record 4 YouTube videos and 1 Facebook livestream each week, along with 3 Rolling Realms liveplays every other week, 1 Instagram post per day, and 1 design diary post per day during product reveals. We send 5+ newsletters to various groups each month.

Content creation isn’t an area I thought would be so much a part of my job (and Joe’s, as he edits the Sunday videos and composes parts of the Champion newsletter), but I’ve really enjoyed sharing my love of clever design elements on YouTube and Instagram and engaging different groups of people through the livestream, liveplays, and newsletters. Because all of this takes more time than before, I’ve tried to find efficient ways of recording (i.e., single-take recordings with no frills and no script).

More comments and followers

2013: On any average day, I would maybe have a handful of comments to reply to on blog posts, social media, and Kickstarter pages.

2023: With 14 different Facebook groups and 14 games on BoardGameGeek, along with regular content posted on Instagram, YouTube, and this blog, I would say that there are at least 100 comments and threads that need moderating every day. YouTube doesn’t even alert me of comments anymore–I have to refresh the comments page on YouTube Studio a few times a day to see the new comments.

The three biggest ways we’re able to keep up with comments is (a) by encouraging ambassadors and other participants to answer questions with our support, (b) having Joe (and now Dave) proactively looking to help on social media, and (c) by fostering a welcoming, kind, respectful community that doesn’t require much moderation.

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I’m sure there are other areas I could cover (I’m happy to address them if you mention them in the comments), but these are the ones that come to mind.

Despite the increase in scale in so many ways, time remains the same: A day is still only 24 hours, and I still spend half of them working on Stonemaier Games. I love what I do at Stonemaier Games and am so lucky to now have such a talented group of coworkers–each hired when our current situation dictated a need for incremental expansion–who, like me, focus every day on serving you, no matter the scale.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about scaling up in the comments below!

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Also read: Growth or Endurance: What Does Your Organization Value More?

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

Also, my friends at Crowdfunding Nerds are launching a course about Kickstarter marketing; check it out here!

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