On failing: Crowdfunding an iPhone app

<i>Talking to people, the single most frequent first response is “I don’t get it”. Then we take the time to explain it and then they are like “Oh, I see. That’s cool”.</i><p>You said you failed to connect with people on an emotional level, but I would contend that you failed to solve a problem perceived by the customer.<p>Only when you solve a customer's problem will you get that emotional connection. It's not something you need to work at, it's something you either succeed at doing, or fail. I would say that your application just didn't solve anything someone was looking for.<p>Your questions led you down the wrong path. Your very first questions should have been:<p>1) What is the pain point that X have? 2) How can I solve that with an iPhone app?<p>Where X is anybody you thought you were solving a problem for.

I like assumption 3: How efficient is spamming, mailing, tweeting, posting and otherwise contacting friends, fools, families, bloggers and journos?<p>Result: Abysmal.<p>If you stay in stealth mode for long periods of time prior to launch, the "amount of righteousness" in your vision/future-product and the conviction with which you believe this, will not help you overcome the impedance barrier of becoming part of the Internet zeitgeist.<p>Sometimes, you do not appreciate how deep the water is (nor how fast it flows) until you step into it.

Thanks for publishing this, it's very instructive to see why people think things went wrong.<p>My only question is why you feel that the answer to the most important question - "Is there any interest in this product in the market?" - is "Yes"? You've identified that they way you went about promoting and raising money could be improved, but assessing the biggest problem as one of promotion is not obvious.

I think half your problemwastgat you were selling something with a predictable market price of $0, and asking people to pay early. They woukd only pay if there's some huge, non- app based benefit for them, otherwise you'd wind up with tragedy of the commons (especially because normal people dont realize that apps take more than 2 weeks to make, and they see them as disposable).

Is it at all possible to crowd fund iPhone apps (that are not games)? I'd love to know more about your crowd funding experiences and your take on what we did wrong.