The Kickstarter experience

Well we have 9 days to go with our kickstarter campaign! I thought I'd write a little bit about what it's been like to run a project on kickstarter and why we chose to do it this way. The why seems like a good place to start. Obviously reason number one is it takes money to open up a cafe-quite a bit, and more than we have. But we really think that this is a place Durham needs, and hope that enough people agree that they would be willing to buy in early. We have had so many people get excited about it and have had such a great time meeting other parents of young kids that that alone has made it a really valuable experience. But boy would it be great if we could hit our goal. And if we can, it will have been such a great thing that we met so many of you ahead of time and have got some excitement going in the community even before we open our doors for the first time.

What is it like to put ourselves out there and try to sell our concept? Exciting and not as scary as I expected, probably just because the idea seems to sell itself quite a bit. I love it, and people I talk to almost always love it too. So that makes it really pretty fun. And I've discovered I really enjoy meeting random folks with kids, because just by virtue of being parents we have a ton in common right off the bat. The part of running the campaign that does knot my tummy up a bit is checking for our actual pledges. When we started the campaign, I thought well we'll throw this out there and see what happens. If we can't do it, no big deal, at least we tried. But the funny thing that has happened is that as I've been convincing others how great Stay & Play will be, I, myself have become even MORE convinced of how great it would be and how much we need it. I am still ok with the fact that we may not get there, but I'm even more excited about the idea than I used to be based on all the positive feedback I've received. So the will we or won't we do it question has become one I'm very concerned with. Refreshing my email for the latest stats on the project has become a nervous tic. : )

So there's a little peek inside our experience. What do you all think about kickstarter?