Build your boat.
#13 • Stories & Lessons of Founding Baron Fig
Imagine a giant tidal wave, one so high that it blocks out the sun. Imagine that it’s coming right at you, but — here’s the kicker — you aren’t afraid. Somehow you know it’s not going to hurt you, despite its monolithic capability to utterly annihilate. Instead, it’s going to lift you to new heights.
For me, that tidal wave was Kickstarter.
“We just hit forty-five thousand dollars.” I was on the phone with Adam, my co-founder, trying to ground myself as the wave of backers (and an increasing dollar count) continued to wash over me.
I received a long bout of silence from the other end. Adam was partly in shock, partly psyched out of his mind, and partly planning out the next ten steps in the blink of an eye. “This is big,” he finally said.
It was day four of our 30-day kickstarter. Our goal was 15k, and we’d just tripled it with 26 days to go. The past few days had been a blur of emails, tweets, and exhausted faceplants on my bed starfish-style. By the end we raised $168k, which was 11x our $15k goal. The boat we were building — our little company — was going to be bigger than we thought.
The one Kickstarter question I get asked more than anything is, “Did you know you were going to do so well?”
My answer is always the same: I had no idea.
The follow up question is usually: “But you had to have a feeling?”
This is true, I did. But a “feeling” is as far as I let it go. Fantasizing about the future is a trap. It’s one thing to plan a strategy going forward, it’s another thing entirely to start getting attached to a hypothetical what-if.
Don’t let the possibility of a tidal wave distract you from building the boat.
Joey Cofone is Co-Founder & CEO at Baron Fig. The Founding of Baron Fig shares the stories and lessons learned on the journey of creating our startup.
Follow us @baronfig to stay updated. / Visit our site to shop our creations.
