How a proposed community brewpub missed its Kickstarter fundraising goal by just $243

Posted on July 3, 2013 at 10:45 am by Adam Nason   

homebrew exchange logo(North Portland, OR) – On Monday, Homebrew Exchange’s Crooked Bottle brewpub Kickstarter campaign ended with the shop painfully missing its fundraising goal by just $243.

The company had aimed to raise for $25,600 for the community brewpub concept but because it failed to meet the goal by the deadline, it will lose out on getting all of the money pledged.

The first thought that comes to mind is why didn’t they just come up with $243 on a credit card? Regardless of whatever Kickstarter’s terms of services say with respect to pledging on your own project, it is not that difficult to get around. Phone a friend.

Contrary to how one mainstream media report lazily characterized it, however, it was not that simple.

Homebrew Exchange’s tweet stream indicates that it was caught off guard (see update below) by the 11th hour surge in pledges and the money that the shop would need to pay to get the project over the hump appeared to be a fast-moving target.

And just three days earlier, the project looked, perhaps, dead in the water.

 

If you want to fault Homebrew Exchange for something, the shop didn’t send out any tweets from its @HomebrewXchange account regarding the Kickstarter campaign for nearly 48 hours after that tweet.

That and the @CrookedBottle Twitter account wasn’t created until June 30th and only has six followers as of Wednesday.

Despite those two things, the company somehow employed a “ground game” (offline) and raised another $5k over a three-day span getting to nearly $19k with just two hours left.


 

Then with just twenty-five minutes left, the company was still almost $5k away from its goal.


 

That is still a lot to consider putting on a credit card and is higher than some credit limits.

Even with just seven minutes left, the company was still $3k away.


 

Three backers later, the company somehow raised another $2.5k but came just short.


 

UPDATE: Per a tweet from Homebrew Exchange, “Not caught off guard by pledges. Made them happen.” It would now appear that they knew the last-minute pledges were coming but, with seven minutes left, still failed to deposit the $3,000 needed to make sure the campaign would meet its goal (they would have effectively got most of that deposit back).

This is a textbook case in just how unpredictable and unforgiving that Kickstarter can be. It would be a nice feature if there was a one-hour extension that kicked in for campaigns on the verge of being funded. After all, Kickstarter makes money from funded campaigns, not unfunded ones.

Don’t be surprised to see Crooked Bottle turn up again on Kickstarter in the future.

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8 thoughts on “How a proposed community brewpub missed its Kickstarter fundraising goal by just $243”

  1. What a strange amount… 25,600. I wonder how they came up with that? (I would think normally it would be a flat 25K.)

  2. Appreciate the commentary but this article is pretty inaccurate. We tweeted frequently, every day. Second, assuming we didn’t contribute (family, friends, spouses) is just silly. You’re just making wild speculation.

    Regardless, we share your idea about an extension for very close Kickstarter campaigns. We were thinking it should have the option of extending 6 hours if you are within 1%.

  4. @HBX:

    “Appreciate the commentary but this article is pretty inaccurate. We tweeted frequently, every day.”

    Between this tweet on 6/28 6pm and this tweet on 6/30 3pm, you retweeted one person w/ no link to the Kickstarter campaign. Anyone who saw that tweet would have had to click in three places to get to the Kickstarter campaign. I respect that you guys didn’t spam the crap out of people but I wouldn’t say you “tweeted frequently, every day” either.

    “Second, assuming we didn’t contribute (family, friends, spouses) is just silly. You’re just making wild speculation.”

    Straw man. Never asserted this.

    Just an FYI, you may want to address the Business Insider article, too. “Perhaps the Crooked Bottle team thought it was a shoe-in. After all, most Kickstarters pick up steam toward the end, right? But there was no last push of momentum, and their campaign ended up just short of the $25,600 goal.” http://businessinsider.com/failed-kickstarter-243-short-of-goal-2013-7

    Rooting for you to win next time.
    Cheers.

  5. You both sound really petty. The article does seem fairly accurate and asks reasonable questions of what happened, but doesn’t make a judgement. The comments point out that everything isn’t always as it seems and maybe you were working hard in the background and came up just short. The comment about your daughter just makes you sounds like a prick. I’m sorry for your daughter’s health issues and I truly hope she gets better, but this is business and your home life has no place in it at all. What is going to happen if (when, really – all good businesses fail repeatedly) you fail to meet another business goal? Are you going to use some outside issue as an excuse?

    I wish you good luck in brewing some delicious beer but in the future you should read a manual on how to respond to media. Sarcastically (or “scathing” as you call it) is never going to make you look good. Furthermore, the author even updates it and says he wishes Kickstarter was run in a more friendly way to your cause.

    Honestly, you guys owe Adam an apology. And Adam, you are a journalist. You should never be responding to this type of criticism on your articles, even if you are right. A private exchange of messages would have been more appropriate.

  6. Thanks, innomin. To be fair, journalism is a tiny fraction of what I spend my day on and yes, sometimes it shows. Time is my biggest enemy. I’m always looking to improve.

    On that note, I am closing the comments because I don’t want to babysit this thread on the holiday or over the holiday weekend. Wish everyone a safe and happy holiday.

  7. You guys are right. My comment was rude and unprofessional. I apologized to Adam and I’ve asked Adam to remove it. I regretted it soon after posting and found I couldn’t edit it. I should have known better than write a hasty comment when I was upset.

    In the future I’ll be polite when suggesting corrections. Really I owe Adam a thank you for digging deeper and correcting some of the falsehoods posted by Business Insider. He took the time to point out that some obvious things they missed and called them on being lazy about it. Thanks Adam.

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