Ask HN: How to escape the momentum trap?

4 points

fapi1974

15 years ago

Just this last Friday I launched a Kickstarter project (http://bitly.com/kxz0E2) that I thought would be really interesting for the community I live and work in - namely - the startup community. You can see from my prior posts that I was working on getting the project right for awhile in the runup to the launch, and I have to confess that when I flipped the switch I expected something to happen...except that nothing really did! Of course, I don't mean this literally - I spent a great deal of time publicizing the project on Facebook and Twitter and Linkedin and every mailing list to which I belong, but the project didn't seem to immediately catch.

This is probably fine, since building buzz about something like a web series takes some time, and there are so many competing messages out there. But I have already figured out a couple things, which I thought I would share.

Momentum - the trendy word for it is traction - is a funny thing. No one is interested in joining your cause unless you have it, and you can't have it unless you have people joining your cause. To be honest I haven't discovered a way to get out of this after just a few days of running the Kickstarter project. Bloggers respond with "come back when you have some pledge traction." So here's what I plan to do - I'd be curious to get some suggestions on these items:

1) Make personal pledge requests to interesting people: even if they only pledge $1, if they are OK with me sharing their participation then hopefully this helps with momentum.

2) Cameos: this one is tough - I only have 6 slots. Robert Scoble agreed to take one of them, which is a great start, but I need to build on that this week.

3) Personal presentations at meetups: I have contacted a bunch of meetups and asked if I can make announcements at their next session. I'll be doing several of these a day for the next few weeks. I'm hoping that a personal request gets retweets, if not pledges

4) Mailing lists: I've reached out to every list for which I am eligible that has a readership that might be interested: startups, school, Yahoo alumni, Disney alumni. Where else to go?

There's another thing too, which is that I haven't gotten any direct feedback on the project itself - I don't know if I come across in the video as committed and passionate, which I am, or something else. I don't know if the description is long enough or detailed enough...any thoughts?