Feb 7, 2023 · 59m · founders-journal
How One Author Raised $41M on Kickstarter
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Alex Lieberman and Jesse Pujji break down the mechanics, economics, and case studies of reward-based crowdfunding while debating founder psychology, paid acquisition strategies, and launch tactics for consumer products.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Alex holds 57.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Alex as informed peer 5.5 Guest teaching 3.9 Guest disagreement 2.0 Alex pushing back 1.8
speaking balance: gold is Alex, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 25:45 Jesse calls out Alex's startup hesitations
Jesse forcefully dismisses Alex's cautious launch plans, telling him he sounds like an inexperienced 22-year-old founder seeking a silver bullet instead of committing to building a business.
Hardest push from Alex ▶ 22:05 Alex defends Kickstarter launch strategyAlex rejects Jesse's criticism of him being risk-averse, arguing that leveraging Kickstarter's built-in gaming audience and organic algorithm carries zero downside.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 45:40 Jesse schools Alex on algorithmic ad targetingJesse educates Alex on modern paid social marketing, explaining why manual audience targeting restricts ad delivery auctions and why algorithmic broad targeting paired with creative copy is far superior.
Alex holds their own ▶ 16:45 Alex demonstrates unit economics masteryAlex showcases thorough financial analysis by deconstructing Brandon Sanderson's tier pricing, production costs, and employee overhead to calculate exact campaign profitability.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Alex as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Alex pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jesse's Punctuality, Executive Coaching, and Calendar Addiction | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Alex lightly ribs Jesse for his repeated excuses for being late to recordings. Jesse responds candidly with deep self-reflection about his executive coaching, Enneagram Type 7 traits, and calendar over-scheduling. | |
| The History of Kickstarter and Brandon Sanderson's $41M Campaign | 8 | 1 | 2 | 3 | Alex takes the lead, breaking down the detailed history of Kickstarter, conversion benchmarks, and Brandon Sanderson's $41M campaign. Jesse questions the profit math, prompting Alex to defend his unit economics and tier breakdowns. | |
| Strategy for The Plunge: Kickstarter vs. Direct Launch | 6 | 4 | 5 | 4 | Jesse pushes back hard against Alex's launch strategy for The Plunge, calling him overly conservative and comparing him to a hesitant 22-year-old founder. Alex defends his approach by outlining the strategic value of Kickstarter's $1 reservation funnel. | |
| The Rise, Fall, and Lessons of Pebble Smartwatch | 7 | 1 | 1 | 0 | Alex delivers an in-depth case study of Pebble Smartwatch, walking through its crowdfunding history, inventory forecasting errors, and product-market fit failures. Jesse listens and agrees with the analysis. | |
| Founder Psychology: Scarcity Mindset vs. Entrepreneurial Conviction | 5 | 6 | 4 | 3 | Jesse challenges Alex's fear of risking capital on inventory, framing investment as tuition for entrepreneurial growth. Alex openly acknowledges his psychological blocks around money, admitting to a scarcity mindset and feeling like a one-trick pony. | |
| Crowdfunding Jesse's 40th Birthday Concert | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | A collaborative, lighthearted segment where Jesse jokes about crowdfunding a concert for his 40th birthday, and Alex pitches a concept for pre-idea software crowdfunding. | |
| Modern Facebook Advertising: Algorithmic Targeting vs. Creative Strategy | 4 | 8 | 2 | 2 | Alex brings up audience targeting tactics, prompting Jesse to deliver an expert breakdown on why creative is the new targeting on modern Facebook algorithms and how auction economics work. | |
| The Ad Creative Agency Model and Platform Ecosystems | 6 | 7 | 1 | 0 | Alex pitches an ad agency model leveraging underemployed comedians and actors. Jesse expands on the idea by revealing how top creative agencies charge a rake on ad spend and explaining the broader platform ecosystem math. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Lieberman: Kickstarter has raised $7B and engaged 22M project backers
“Kickstarter's raised seven billion dollars. Twenty-two million people have backed a project”
Lieberman: Kickstarter receives 30 million site visits monthly
“It gets thirty million hits to the site a month.”
Lieberman: Brandon Sanderson's $41M campaign is Kickstarter's largest ever
“March of 20, 22 was the biggest, most successful Kickstarter campaign of all time... It was an author. So there's this guy, Brandon Sanderson... He raised forty-one million dollars. 20, twenty million of it came in the first 72 hours”
Lieberman: Kickstarter has a 40% project funding success rate
“There have been 581,000 projects that have been launched on Kickstarter, and 230 of them, 230,000 have been successfully funded, so it's a 40% hit rate.”
Lieberman: Games, design, and tech are Kickstarter's three biggest categories
“Kickstarter's three biggest, biggest categories are games, design, and technology.”
Lieberman: Paying a crowdfunding agency $8,800 for a four-month campaign
“I decided to work with an agency that is like a Kickstarter agency. It's they're 8800 bucks that I'm paying them. For the next four months.”
Lieberman: $1 pre-launch reservations convert 30 times better than email signups
“They have found that, that people who do the one dollar reservation are 30 times more likely than just an email address you put in.”
Lieberman: Average Kickstarter campaign gets 30% of traffic from Kickstarter
“The average Kickstarter campaign gets 30% of their traffic from Kickstarter.”
Lieberman: Pebble raised $10M on Kickstarter and hit $230M in sales
“In 2012, they launched Pebble on Kickstarter for the first time. They raised ten million dollars from 68,000 people around the world, and they went on over the next few years to sell two million watches And did over two hundred thirty million dollars in sales.”
Lieberman: Pebble missed 2015 sales forecast, stranding $18M in inventory
“They forecasted a hundred million dollars in sales in 2015 after doing their, you know, 2012, and I think they did a 2014 Kickstarter. They projected a hundred million in sales, and they only sold eighty two million dollars worth of product. So they had eighte…”
Pujji: Unbloat Took a Year of Iteration to Find Core Demographic
“When we launched Unbloat a year ago, we thought, you know, we'd heard lots of versions of it. We started selling it and we didn't, we know we, by the way, we interviewed 50 different women, all these things. Like it wasn't, and then we launched it. We thought …”
Pujji: Committed $250,000 to Launch Supplement Brand Unbloat
“We realistically committed about a quarter million dollars to, all in.”
Pujji: First Venture Puforia Generates $10k–$15k Monthly on Autopilot
“The first company we started, Puforia, true story, we still sell a hundred SKUs every, every month. Like the thing is just making like 10, 15,000 dollars a month. I don't know how people are getting to it. Like, does someone run that business? No, it's just, i…”
Pujji: Creative is the new targeting in modern Facebook ads
“The new Facebook, you know, at paradigm is targeting like creative is the new targeting. So for anyone listening, running Facebook campaigns, you don't need to target anymore. It's broad. You let Facebook's algorithm figure it out.”
Pujji: Manual audience targeting increases Facebook advertising costs
“When you target, because you're limiting their freedom, they actually charge you more because they have less auctions you can be in at one time. Whereas when you say, go after anybody, I don't care. It lets them explore freely, which ultimately means you can b…”
Pujji: Advertisers spending under $500k monthly shouldn't hack Facebook targeting
“There's certain advanced strategies you can still hack, but I wouldn't worry about them if you're listening and you're spending less than 500,000 dollars a month on Facebook.”