Kickstarter Lesson #156: 3 Tenets of Crowdfunding Leadership – Stonemaier Games

Kickstarter Lesson #156: 3 Tenets of Crowdfunding Leadership

I’m a big fan of author and speaker Simon Sinek. In his two books and TED talks, Sinek talks about leadership in a way that applies directly to the crowdfunding philosophies I believe in, most of which are centered in trust.

Sinek recently posted a 15-minute talk about leadership. I would highly recommend checking it out, as he tells some great, memorable stories to accompany his main points.

Three of the points he mention apply directly to us crowdfunders, so I wanted to share them with you here. The first two are about earning your backer’s trust, and the third is about the relationship that forms when you trust your backers. The text in italics is a direct quote from the talk.

Take responsibility for your actions at the time you perform your actions, not at the time you get caught. Tell the truth, good or bad.

I got an e-mail yesterday (July 12) from one of the fulfillment companies I use. I had sent them a few orders to fulfill back on July 4. The e-mail was the first communication I heard from them about the orders, and in it they informed me that their warehouse had a busy week and they wouldn’t be shipping the orders until this week.

I immediately went into damage-control mode. I contacted the customers to inform them of the delay, and I offered each of them a $10 discount from their next purchase on our website.

I wish the fulfillment company had done what I recommend to all project creators: When you anticipate a delay, inform your backers/customers before the delay happens, not after you’re already in the middle of it.

Ask for and accept help. The biggest mistake people make is thinking they have to know all the answers. When you admit you don’t know things, people will help.

We see the words “I don’t know” as a weakness. But what if we saw that phrase instead as an opportunity?

  • When a backer asks you how much it would cost to add a new component to your product, instead of making up an answer or dismissing, say, “I don’t know” and check with your manufacturer.
  • When a playtester asks you if you’ve tested X idea, say, “I don’t know” and encourage them to try it.
  • When you think your project page is 100% complete, admit to yourself that you don’t know everything and send it out to bunch of people to get their thoughts. You’ll realize quite quickly how little you know–and that’s okay, because now you do.

Take the risk to trust people. When we trust people, they rise to the occasion.

I believe in letting people try out our products for free. For tabletop gamers, this means that they can print and play any of our games during the Kickstarter campaign. Every bit of evidence I’ve seen shows that doing this converts more potential backers into backers and makes the game better through their feedback.

For us and more and more Kickstarter creators, this also means that they offer a money-back guarantee within the first month of receiving one of our rewards. We even pay for return shipping. Sure, it’s a risk. I’m trusting people to give our products a chance, and any of those people could return their rewards for any reason.

Out of 21,000 pledges fulfilled, we’ve had 7 backers request refunds. I’ve never gotten the sense that someone has tried to “game” the system. I trust backers to do the right thing.

***

There are lots of different ways to be a good leader on Kickstarter and other crowdfunding websites. I’m still learning how to be a better leader myself. What do you think of Sinek’s perspective on leadership and how it applies to crowdfunding?

11 Comments on “Kickstarter Lesson #156: 3 Tenets of Crowdfunding Leadership

Leave a Reply to Andhegames (@AndHeGames)Cancel reply

If you ask a question about a specific card or ability, please type the exact text in your comment to help facilitate a speedy and precise answer.

Your comment may take a few minutes to publish. Antagonistic, rude, or degrading comments will be removed. Thank you.

  1. I see you wrote/published this blog post back in July 2015, Jamey.

    Like you, I’ve been a big fan of Simon, and his work, over the years—having read all his books, and consumed as many of his TED and other talks/keynote presentations that I can find/get my hands on on YouTube.

    Because of the nature of my profession and how intensive it can be from a leadership standpoint (Active army/national guard), I’ve made it a habit to occasionally try to give copies when I can of, at least, ‘Leaders Eat Last’ to those Soldiers either currently in leadership positions or being groomed for a leadership position in the future (although, technically, anyone can really be a leader—not really contingent on rank or position—just so long as, like Simon once said in a talk—that they make the deliberate choice to take care of the ‘man’—or woman—to the left or right of them).

    For our unit Christmas part last year, that book was an obvious choice to give as a gift (along with an Amazon gift card, because everyone likes those…lol). Feedback from the recipient was that they thought the book was/is invaluable; I agreed. :)

    …Have you, by any chance, read Simon’s 2019 published book entitled the ‘The Infinite Game’? Leading up to and after releasing that book, like his previous books, Simon did a number of talks/keynotes on YouTube that are well worth watching (you may have seen some of them; if not, I’d highly recommend them to you/your audience!).

    Like his previous books, ‘The Infinite Game’ definitely has a number of leadership lessons/concepts/principles and insights that can be applied to crowdfunding and used by crowdfunders (whether operating solo, as a small team or as a larger team), as well.

    Now 2021, with your Stonemaier Games focus on creation of game products, I’m actually a little surprised to not see any comments/discussion about this book under this particular blog post/article yet—especially with how Simon delves quite a bit into game theory and talks about leadership in context of infinite vs. finite games (could be that this blog post entry installment is #156 and people may just be mentally fatigued from consumption by the time they get to this post…lol).

    In ‘The Infinite Game’, Simon basically posits that (5) x things need to happen in order for a person to really be an effective leader in the infinite game.

    (Simon is all about it being the leaders responsibility to get the ‘environment’ right…and these points reflect that responsibility…)

    Those are:

    1. They must have a just cause,
    2. They must have trusting teams,
    3. They must have a worthy adversary,
    4. They must have existential flexibility, and
    5. They must have the courage to lead.

    To delve into each of these would take a much longer comment; if your audience picks up a copy of this book, I think they can definitely glean some powerful and valuable insights, for leadership and even for crowdfunding, whether they are operating solo/individually or as a member of a team.

    Thanks for another great blog post, Jamey!

    (Still slowly, yet surely, making my way through all your posts…great stuff!)

    1. Thanks so much for sharing and summarizing The Infinite Game. I’ve heard Simon talk about the book quite a bit on his YouTube channel, but I haven’t read it. I like the idea of discussing it, though, particularly since now–compared to 2015–I actually have a few full-time coworkers.

  2. Stone Circle: Thank you for sharing those approaches! I really like the different things they do. I need to try the latter more often. :)

  3. A couple of thoughts come to mind particularly on the concept of “I don’t know”. I think that the reason it is largely viewed as a negative in today’s society is because of the method in which it is most often used, apathy. Often time when it is used it is in an non-caring/non-enthusiastic/non-engaging manner. As you point out, “I don’t know” cannot exist on its own and be an effective and engaging answer to peoples questions. My two favorite ways to approach “I don’t know” boils down to a question and a statement the first of which Ginobrancazio pointed out earlier.

    “I don’t know, but I’ll find out” – I’ll often use this when someone is asking a question that has a definite or fairly solid answer or one that cannot be changed/influenced by me.

    “I don’t know, what do you think?” – Adding this simple question shows that you’re willing to take input and engages the person your talking to provide their own opinion on the matter. You do have to be careful not to ask for these opinions if you do not genuinely want them. Which goes back to the point that people will see right through your lies.

    Thanks for the article and video.

    -Gary

  4. “I don’t know” Is such a powerful thing to say. It’s show a vulnerability which displays you trust the person you’re saying to. I used to teach science (11-18 year olds) and if they asked me something I didn’t know I’d tell them “I don’t know, but I’ll find out”. A lot of my students told me that other teachers would never admit to not knowing something but it made them happy to hear it.
    The people you’re working with are not idiots (many of them are in fact smarter than us) so don’t insult them by lying to them, they’ll know! And then you’ll have lost their trust.

    1. I really enjoy that talk, though I’ve never thought about applying it to a project video! That’s very clever.

  5. Great speech, thanks for sharing Jamey.

    I really liked the part that says about trusting. And the way you use it with the refunds.

    I think I will try this idea in the next project.

    By the way, I loved the review they did to Euphoria on watch it played. The mechanics are awesome, really inspiring.
    Definitely, this is going to be my next game to learn more about game mechanics.

    Have a great day!

  6. I agree, “I don’t know [yet]” ought to be a more widely-accepted answer (especially when you make an effort to figure the answer out). Personally, this post was a good reminder that I don’t know everything.

See All Comments

Discover more from Stonemaier Games

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading