Sunday, November 27, 2011

A Very Public Thank You Note to Our Kickstarter Backers

I just wanted to thank all 143 of you guys for your support. The Kickstarter campaign was a lot of work, and I appreciate everything you brought to the party, from your encouraging comments to your feedback on our interface design to the heavy-lifting, emailing, posting and tweeting you did to promote the BlackBxx: HAUNTED fundraising.

We Knaufs are an obstinate tribe, spoiled-sports every one of us. As my brother, Paul, says, "Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."

As the clock wound down on KS, Team BlackBxx was already discussing options. It boiled down to a) making another crowd-funding run with KS with more hoopla, hype and publicity; b) another crowd-funding run with another site with more hoopla, hype and publicity; c) accept a loan in order to direct the proceeds to closing the gap to our fundraising goal in order to collect the $25,000 already pledged and call it a day; or, d) just call it a day and move on.

As options a) and b) meant allocating more time, human resources and creativity to fundraising rather than post-production, I decided against another crowd-funding run. As for option c), though we are strapped and it was tempting, and it wasn't technically a violation of KS rules, it just didn't pass the smell-test for me. Here I am, ragging on the studios and networks over their ham-handed, shady business practices, and I go ahead and scoop up all that dough by exploiting a loophole in KS's ToS.

Nah, don't think so.

So we opted for d) move on. That way, we could direct promotion and PR efforts into drumming up interest in the merits of the project itself (where it belongs) rather than the means by which we were financing it.

So, suffice it to say, the show WILL go on. If you're still interested in supporting us and staying inside the creative loop, as well as getting updates and first-looks, drop us a line at info@blackbxx.com.

Even better, if you want to renew your pledge, you can do that as well here, at the Official BlackBxx Web Site And while you're there, you might want to check out the rest of the site. Oh yeah, and bookmark it. That's where we'll be launching HAUNTED.

And, finally, whether you decide to renew your pledge or not, in return for your early support and encouragement, every single one of the 143 of you will be receiving a free invitation and password to the premiere, as well as lifetime Founding Member status once we launch. But in order for us to do that, we'll need your actual, non-KS email address, so just give us a ping over at info@blackbxx.com

1 comment:

  1. Minecraft used a development process much like the one you seem to be contemplating. Consider how successful they were, and how, and you might see parallels.

    When your start up costs are almost zero and if you can get at least 1000 clients, it pretty much balloons via exponential growth. Even with a low number of demographics, you don't need to sell to many, if your start up costs aren't eaten up by Hollywood taxation.

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