All or Nothing: What Crowdfunding Taught Us About Building in Public

When we launched the Attitude — our first microbrand watch — the strategy was about as sophisticated as it sounds: build a website, put the product up for sale, and wait for the world to find us. We were new, we were optimistic, and we had no shortage of confidence that the product would speak for itself. What we lacked was a realistic understanding of how much noise is out there and how hard it is for a brand-new voice to cut through it.

By the time we were deep in development on the Lark True GMT field watch, I knew the rollout had to be different. The question was how.

The Case Against Kickstarter (Mine, at First)

My initial instinct was to keep pre-orders on our own website. We'd built a following by that point — not massive, but real — and my thinking was straightforward: if people want the watch, we know where to find them, and we don't need to hand a percentage of revenue to a platform to facilitate that transaction.

The math felt simple: Kickstarter takes a fee. Our audience is already engaged. Direct is better.

What I hadn't fully worked through was the accountability problem.

If I put the Lark up for pre-order on our site and five people buy in, those five people are now counting on me. That's not a complaint — it's just reality. I don't take someone's money lightly, and if those transactions exist, we move forward, full stop. But with manufacturing timelines being what they are, and any number of variables that can shift a schedule, I wasn't comfortable being locked into a commitment before I knew we had the scale to make the numbers work.

Kickstarter's all-or-nothing model changed the calculus. The way it works: if a campaign doesn't reach its funding goal, no one is charged — no transactions occur, no refunds are required, and no one is waiting on a product in limbo. If we don't hit our goal, nothing happens. That's a clean outcome, and for a brand that takes its obligations seriously, that mattered.

What I Expected vs. What I Found

I'll be honest: when I decided to use Kickstarter, I had a certain picture in my head of what the platform was. A funding mechanism. A place where people with real capital needs meet people who believe in those ideas — and together, they make something happen. I thought I understood the rules of engagement.

What I found was more complicated.

I'm not going to characterize how other brands choose to use the platform — they're running their businesses, they know their numbers, and what works for them is their call. But I will say that what I observed across the microbrand watch space gave me pause. Funding goals set at levels that a single enthusiastic backer could cover over a weekend. "100% funded" banners on campaigns that raised less in total than the cost of a small production run. Not because those creators are doing anything wrong, necessarily — but because the platform's incentive structures have drifted in a direction that rewards optics over substance.

We talked about it ourselves. Right up until the night before we launched, we debated whether to set a symbolic goal — something we could cross easily, claim the milestone, and use it as a marketing moment. Every time, we came back to the same place: no. If we're going to set a number, it's going to be the real number. The number that actually means something to production. A symbolic goal gets you a milestone. An honest goal gives you a mandate — and the responsibility that comes with it.

The Other Side of the Screen

There's another layer to this that I didn't fully appreciate until I was inside a live campaign.

The creator sees the full picture. The backer sees a product, a funding bar, and a percentage.

What fills that gap matters more than I expected. Within hours of launching, I was getting emails from services offering to deliver backers for a fee. Not a few — we're talking ten to twelve a day. Many of them were dressed up to look like Kickstarter outreach, official-sounding subject lines suggesting they were affiliated with the platform. They weren't. They were third-party services selling manufactured momentum, and I'd be surprised if any creator who's run a campaign hasn't seen the same flood.

I want to flag this specifically for any brand considering a launch on the platform: expect it. It caught me off guard, and it probably shouldn't have. The theory behind these services isn't hard to follow — explosive early growth creates social proof, social proof drives real buyers, real buyers cross the threshold. It's not a fringe trick, either: research into Kickstarter campaigns shows that projects which hit 30% of their goal in the first 48 hours are far more likely to fund — so the incentive to manufacture that early spike is enormous. The platform's reward-tier structure, with its limited slots and visible scarcity, amplifies every part of that dynamic and makes early momentum look more significant than it might actually be.

I'm not naive about how demand gets built. I understand why it works, and I'm not standing on a soapbox about it. But there's a version of this where the thing people are actually buying is a story about demand, not the product itself. And as a small brand that's asked real people to trust us with their money, that sits uncomfortably with me.

The Outcome (And Why I'm Okay With It)

We didn't hit our threshold. We're not alone in that — across Kickstarter, fewer than half of all projects ever reach their goal. The difference is in how you read it.

I've made peace with that in a way that surprised me a little. We didn't change who we are to hit a number, and I'd make the same calls again. The Lark was always going to be built — that was never in question. For us, the campaign was a way to bring people along on the front end of the journey and give early believers a meaningful deal for doing so. When it didn't close, it didn't sink anything. It just meant we built it the other way.

What I can say is that the experience recalibrated how I think about what a campaign is actually for. Not rescue. Reach. There's a meaningful difference, and understanding that distinction — going in, not after the fact — changes everything about how you set goals, how you communicate, and what a clean outcome looks like if the numbers don't fall your way.

What the Platform Is, and What It Can Be

Kickstarter has real value. The reach it provides — the ability to put a product in front of people who would never find you through a search — is genuine, and for brands without an established audience, it can be transformative. I've backed campaigns that raised eight figures and loved every second of the ride. That kind of momentum is remarkable to watch.

What I'd push back on, gently, is the drift from what crowdfunding was originally built to do. The premise — at its core — is that you have an idea, you need the crowd to fund it, and in exchange they get early access and a stake in something new. That's a compelling contract. When it gets blurry, I think everyone loses a little something: the creator, the backer, and the platform itself.

I'd use Kickstarter again. I've learned enough to approach it differently — clearer-eyed about the ecosystem, more realistic about what a campaign can and can't do. I'd still set an honest goal, because that's the only kind of goal I know how to set.

A Note on What We're Building

We didn't hit our target. What we did find was a lot of you — people who came across the Lark and took the time to reach out and tell us it resonated. That response doesn't get dismissed. It's the reason we're moving forward with production out of pocket. The goal was never a condition for the watch to exist — but it was a genuine attempt to offset a significant chunk of the upfront production cost with the support of the people who believed in it earliest.

To everyone who backed us on Kickstarter: we haven't forgotten you, and we don't take lightly what it means to put your money behind something before it exists. As a thank-you for that early belief, we'll be extending the same campaign pricing to you once production is complete. You were willing to back us from the start. It's the least we can do.

We're not in this to hit a percentage. We're in this to build something worth wearing.

More to follow.

— Mat

Waypoints is a founder-written series on the business of building Richard-Harvey Watch Co. Published when there's something worth saying.