

My Kickstarter is going to end in failure today. What went wrong? - 54mf

https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;samuelfine&#x2F;newbee-central-command-for-new-parents<p>My Kickstarter for Newbee, an app I&#x27;m building for new parents, ends this afternoon, and it will fail. I&#x27;ve received nothing but positive feedback on both the concept itself, and on the Kickstarter project, from individuals ranging from 20-something techie dudes to 60-something mothers of 5. Everyone loves it, in theory.<p>I got a great write-up on Brit + Co, a weird one on Boston.com, tweeted about by people with 100k+ followers, and I even had the chance to pitch my app to Mark Cuban on Good Morning America this morning.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gma.yahoo.com&#x2F;video&#x2F;39-shark-tank-life-39-125534906.html<p>And yet. Finding backers has been like squeezing blood from a stone, even after nationwide exposure on the #1 morning show.<p>Positive feedback across the board, millions of eyes, near-zero response. What am I missing here?
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smt88
Seems like it just means it's not solving an urgent-enough pain point.

Marketing consumer apps is REALLY hard. I can't possibly overstate that. It's
expensive as hell and requires a lot of hustle on your part.

The reason it's so hard is that consumers don't want to download apps and
rarely do. So asking consumers to just download and try your app is hard
enough, but you're actually asking them to pay for it ahead a time. That's a
tall order.

I'll also give you some more honest feedback than others seem to have been.
It's a great design and idea, but it's almost impossible to get people to
create a new habit.

If people weren't already tracking their baby's every move, they're not going
to start doing it now unless the benefit is really, really clear.

A good example is fitness/calorie tracking. That's something that a pretty
large percentage of people bounce off of, and the reward is feeling better,
living longer, and looking better. That's a pretty big reward, and it's still
not an easy thing to get people to do. (Though I should note that people have
actually been doing that activity for a long time.)

So this is a really steep hill for you to climb, and it may not be monetizable
in the end. That's ok, though, because you're done a fantastic job so far and
will always be able to point to this product to show that you can execute.
That's really valuable for the rest of your career.

My suggestion, which a VC gave me years ago, is to choose metrics for success
(number active users, dollars made, etc.) and choose a target date. If you
don't hit a goal for those metrics by that date, walk away from the project.
If you don't have a concrete way to cut yourself off, you'll allow hope to
string you along forever. Trust me, I've been there more than once!

~~~
54mf
Thanks for taking the time to write this, lots to think about here. I actually
had the chance to talk to Mark Cuban after the GMA thing, and he had similar
comments about changing habits/behavior. Even if Newbee is as useful as I
think it could be, I'm starting to think I'll need a trojan horse to make it
appropriately appealing to the people who could get the most out of it. "This
will help you" isn't enough, it seems.

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ebrewste
Some critical feedback -- I have a baby coming in March and I collect data and
do analytics professionally, so I should be your target market.

In your video, I didn't see one concrete thing I get from collecting the data.
The most depressing thing about committing to collecting data is finding out
you can't make meaning from it. There are tons of reasons why that can be, but
you didn't put my mind at ease. Collecting data is too much work to do with no
assurance of payoff.

In addition, I have experienced Kickstarters that are over a year late (others
have been on time). If I'm trying to track a newborn, I'm not gambling on a
Kickstarter. It's fine for a trinket, not a time sensitive thing.

I really hope you find your success recipe, but these two problems are deadly
to me.

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DanBC
I don't understand what it does. Or I do undersrand what it does, I just don't
understand _why_.

Being hyper-aware of everything happening with your infant adds stress but
provides very little benefit. There are a few things people do need to track
or at least be aware of: meconium; billirubin, vaccinations. Tracking
temperatures when the child is ill.

If the app was linked to evidence based advice ("when should I call the
doctor?"; "can my age X infant eat food Y?"; "what are the recommended
sleeping temperatures") then I could understand it. But that would be a scary
app to write because you're giving medical advice.

Why do I want to how many nappy changes my three-month old infant has had
today?

Some people have weird ideas about forcing the infant into a routine -
especially around sleeping. Tracking sleep patterns is probably going to raise
anxiety around sleep, when what parents really need to know is to put the
child down to sleep withput rocking it or cuddling it to sleep, and to respond
to the infant when it cries. "Cry it out" techniques are abusive if they start
before the child is six months old, and need to be done carefully if tried
after then.

The only use I can think of for the app is specifically advised against in
your faq:

> While Newbee is great for tracking daily events and statistics, it's not
> really meant to be used as a digital journal or scrapbook.

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echolima
As the father of a 6 week old, I am curious about the app, but I'm not sure I
would use it. Maybe the wife would. I'll put a link to your KS on my blog post
today; which means nothing because I have 4 readers. Sorry. But maybe I'll get
slashdotted :) (is that still a thing?)

~~~
smt88
I think it would be awesome/helpful if you and your wife explained exactly why
you wouldn't use it (with brutal honesty) and what would have to change for
you to want to use it.

~~~
echolima
OK...my wife and I discussed your app over the weekend and turns out she's a
fan. She had never supported a KS campaign before, but said she would yours.

I am not a KS marketer, nor do I pretend to be one. What has been your
marketing outside of KS? Did you try to promote within Kellymom or any of the
"new mother" facebook groups? Is it bad form to purchase ad space for a KS
campaign?

I did a blog post last spring where I asked several people I know about the
campaigns they ran. Feel free to take a look:
[http://michalsen.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/kickstarter-how-
it...](http://michalsen.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/kickstarter-how-it-is-being-
used-by-writers/)

I think it would be pretty cool to do a follow up blog article on re-imaging a
campaign. Let me know if you are interested.

------
massung
FWIW, as a father of a 5-y.o. still remembering the early days, I believe your
target audience (for a KS) is _really_ small.

Think of it like this:

My child is born and I come across your KS page. I'm not going to invest
because by the time the KS ends and development completes I won't have a
perceived need for your product. So, what I really needed was to come across
your KS page when my wife was 3-4 months pregnant. Yet, as a would-be first
time parent I really had no idea what I would or wouldn't want/need. And after
the first child, I'm not feeling the pressure to get and use such an app
without a specific concern (e.g. a genetic condition or predisposition to
watch out for). There's definitely more fear with the first child.

So, for a KS, your paying audience is a couple (or person) that is 3-4 months
pregnant with their first child. That's a _very_ limited audience.

Now, the audience for the app itself is potentially very large. I remember
that _after_ my daughter was born going online to find all sorts of
information and apps for all sorts of things related to her early days.

My gut says this is just an app that would be much better off ignoring
crowdfunding all together. Just make it, list it, and market it. It has a lot
of potential. Also, I'd pay attention to what vitovito stated about updates
and keeping up momentum as it holds true after release as well.

------
CmonDev
"I've received nothing but positive feedback..."

People are generally nice because it is considered polite.

~~~
54mf
A valid point! I like to think that my bullshit detector is tuned well enough
to tell the difference between "hey that's cool good for you" and "I am
legitimately on board with this idea", and the positive feedback I've been
hearing seems sincere. FWIW, I've also gone out of my way to request any—
_any_ —negative feedback. I would love to have the nits picked out of the
project and product, but no one seems to have any substantial complaints thus
far.

~~~
a3camero
There are a lot of ideas that are great and people will say they love them.
There are very few ideas that are great and people will pay for.

The real test of these people you talked to is whether they will pay and not
whether they like it. Is a Tesla a great car? Yes, but I won't pay that much
for a car. Would it be great if someone made a documentary about me? Yes, but
I won't pay for it. It's not a matter of bullshit, it's just the difference
between whether someone likes something vs. willing to pay for it.

------
vitovito
Hi, designer here, and also someone whose friends have done a bunch of
Kickstarters, and have written about their experiences.

I see two core issues, and neither are readily fixable.

First, "I've received nothing but positive feedback on both the concept
itself, and on the Kickstarter project, from individuals ranging from
20-something techie dudes to 60-something mothers of 5. Everyone loves it, in
theory."

Second, "Finding backers has been like squeezing blood from a stone, even
after nationwide exposure on the #1 morning show."

I'll take them in reverse order.

"Kickstarter is not a store," and Kickstarter means this two ways. As a
consumer, there's a chance you won't get your product, or it won't be high-
quality, or won't be what you expected, etc. But as a project starter, it also
means there aren't roving bands of consumers looking for something to buy.

Common metrics for Kickstarter projects say that if you don't have a large
enough social network to get you 25-33% of the way to your goal in the first
24-48 hours, you won't succeed. That's not a factor of money; you don't want
one wealthy aunt to contribute $3,000. It's a factor of social reach. This is
because most of your funders are people who know you, and their friends, and
their friends, and their friends. You get bumps from strangers with media
coverage and social networking, but that's not a primary means of finding
backers. Expectant parents are not stopping by Kickstarter to shop for baby-
tracking apps between Target and Baby R Us.

That means you needed $3k in expectant parent friends on day one, and you had
$1200. Kickstarters aren't slow grinds to success, they're two big bumps:
beginning and end. You have three reward tiers which don't require someone to
actually be invested in your application, you didn't regularly post backer
updates to keep engagement up, and you had no user comments for a month. You
didn't have enough traction, because you didn't try to get enough traction
_before you started._ Everything is marketing.

Sure, some of the lack of viral spread might be bad timing -- more babies are
born in September than any other month, and once the baby's here, you're too
busy to discover and use a new app. Maybe you need to be pitching this nine
months ago, or again after the new year, to newly-pregnant parents.

Or, maybe everyone loves it in theory, but experienced parents know they would
never, ever use it. And that's the first issue.

There's _one sentence_ in the entire video + text description that describes a
benefit for a parent in using your app. "You can use the data you collect to
identify patterns in your infant’s life, useful for narrowing down the causes
of sleep problems or watching for allergies or illness, and to track growth
and development over time."

That's it. The rest of the video+text talks about the app itself, which
doesn't tell me why I'd want to use it.

That tells me there isn't a use case for your app. You are one parent with one
data point about how you raise your (first!) child. You emphasize
personalization in the app because you don't know how other families work.
Your experience is not universal, and neither is your desire to collect data.

There are baby tracking notebooks (the paper kind), and there are sites like
Trixie Tracker, and they have very niche audiences, because people have been
raising babies without apps for thousands of years. A parent has enough to do
without figuring out correlations in data on their own from the data they
laboriously log in your application.

If you don't basically live on sites like Trixie Tracker, talking with their
users, discussing the shortfalls of it and related apps, how can your app be
any better? How can it provide real value?

If you're not literally living with other new parents and collecting data for
them, so you can figure out the correlations and provide advice to them, and
see if the advice works, how can you be sure your app will provide enough
actionable information once people start logging data in it?

This is an app you're building for yourself, not for other parents with
newborns, and you don't know enough people who want to support you financially
in doing that.

If I was hired tomorrow to fix this app, the first thing I'd do is a
literature review of common problems new parents face, and common questions
and concerns, and common patterns of sleep and sickness, etc., etc. The thing
new parents want the most is reassurance everything is normal and okay. You
could probably draft a new version of the app to start testing just from
existing literature, instead of your own experience.

Then I'd make you decide if your market is obsessive-compulsive data nerd
parents, the kind who already use trackers, or if you're trying to make
something for a general audience.

For data nerd parents, I would then camp out on every baby-tracking stats site
and app, and start spending days and weeks living with new parents, to figure
out not just how to log data most effectively, but also, what are the things
they're not getting out of their current trackers and why? And how do those
things change as their experience as parents changes (second kid tracks
different things than first kid) and as the kids age (older kids track
different things than younger kids).

A general audience includes Android phones, and doesn't pay for apps, for
starters. But a general audience also wants more immediately actionable data,
"I have a specific problem, I want to put a bunch of data in, and I want the
app to tell me what to do about it." That's a different app from what you've
got going on right now.

The net effect of doing all that real-world legwork means when you're ready to
restart your Kickstarter (in 18 months), you'll hit your 25-33% goal in 24-48
hours, because you have enough of a network of invested users now.

------
ismail
@smt88 "Seems like it just means it's not solving an urgent-enough pain
point."

I think this is your issue, and you are targeting the wrong market.

As i parent i have personally tried a few baby tracking apps. Good in theory,
but not really solving a problem (IMHO)

While your app may have a better UI and be simpler than others out there, i
think these class of apps all suffer from:

* You have to remember to enter in the information, open the app and capture it. With a newborn, who is quite demanding , having to nurse every 2-3 hours, sleep deprived etc. Just seems to be a bit more work than needed * What use or benefit do i get from the data? So i can monitor trends? Why? * Monitoring trends is easy for parents, especially when they are doing are caring for the kid themselves. My wife is at home.,She knows when my son is not nursing enough, or she knows when he has not pooed or has not had enough wet nappies.

You are currently marketing this at "Parents" in general, maybe if you target
it Parents who have their kids in Daycare (i.e Remotely keep track of whats
going on with your kids) it would be an easier sell.

I know i would want this data if my kids were in daycare.

------
Psylocyber
Mobile app kickstarters don't do well, because they aren't necessary.

Create the app on weekends and weeknights if you have a full-time job. Then
release it and start making revenue.

Then, if you have ideas that need funding to improve the app, go for it.

Most people I talk to won't fund weekend project apps, no matter how good the
concept seems. Get it out there and see how the market responds.

~~~
54mf
Very interesting. Perhaps I could have framed this campaign better, less about
the app itself and more about the underlying service?

------
firebones
Your target market is the intersection of quantified self adherents and new
parents. So you're starting in a hole because I'm guessing that is small. From
experience, the whirlwind of new parenthood is antithetical to feeding that
quantified self need. (Recording--for sharing with relatives and others--is a
notable exception.)

I get it--there are a lot of "first year diaries" that get sold as shower
gifts but far more often than not remain untouched. My guess is that a lot of
your positive feedback might come from these buyers--people who are buying
this for someone else.

The premise might be to find some angle where the quantification can be done
very passively (since it is really "quantified other") and put into a form
suitable for years later when moms finally get around to scrapbooking the
early years--when they finally have breathing room and are longing for the
original new experience.

------
patmcc
Two things jumped out at me when I initially saw your kickstarter (prior to
this HN post):

1) $16 for a year of app access is a lot. We could argue about whether that
should be a lot or not, but in the current market it really is.

2) Timing is a bit difficult on this - with most Kickstarters, people are ok
with getting it "whenever" \- sometime in the medium-term future is fine for a
widget or a computer game. For your app, I'd want it ready the day by kid is
born - no sooner (if it's subscription) and no later (I'd miss some events).
So it's a tough thing to back in advance. You say it would launch "later this
year" \- not helpful if I either have a newborn right now or aren't already
expecting.

Edit: that said, it looks like a cool project, please continue with it. I
fully expect to have a need for this app within 2 years, and would probably
pay $10-$15 for a subscription.

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grantcox
I guess I just don't see why Newbee is so much better than existing baby
trackers, that I want to invest in seeing it made. Yes the UI looks nice, but
the actual features don't seem any better than the dozens of trackers that are
already on app stores.

If this was an existing product on the app store, and was also just a few
dollars, I may have bought Newbee because it looks prettier. But $16 for a
chance to use a 1 year subscription (if it's ever made, and I have another
child around the same time), of a product that doesn't seem to have any
advantage other than "prettier"... I'll pass.

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digitalcreate
Tracking information is only useful if it allows you to DO something with that
information. A simple list of play and poop times doesn't do you much good. A
more useful thing would be to give parents information about what's happening
that will help them. Is that a normal amount of activity? How does it compare
to other babies that are being tracked? Can you discuss this information
through a social network to get feedback? What do experts recommend at this
stage? Etc.

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mobiuscog
Not exactly a new parent here, but your app wouldn't have gained any traction
in our houshold:

Looking after a newborn (and beyond) is often more than enough work on its own
- the last thing you want to do is also record everything that's happening.

------
TenJack
Just some general video feedback, the music used in your video is too
scattered for me. It seems like something more soothing and upbeat would be
better.

------
skorecky
Why not try generating revenue from the app?

~~~
54mf
Great question! Because the app isn't done yet, which is why I'm running the
Kickstarter in the first place. ;) The funding I'm looking to raise ($10k) is
to finish and ship it, and I have a few plans for revenue generation if/when
that happens.

~~~
skorecky
I mean if you have gotten this far without funding, I personally would add
those revenue generating ideas now and use the funds to further develop and
build features. People if they really like the app and really enjoy using it
will put their money where their mouth is an pay for it.

My 2 cents of course.

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yuashizuki
man, not a lot of dood care about a babby, maybe thats y.

~~~
54mf
Please go back to Reddit.

