StreetXSW

In February 2012, I launched a Kickstarter campaign for StreetXSW, a street photography book I wanted to create, capturing interesting moments from the SXSW festival that people had missed while staring at their phones. At the time, I had successfully funded two projects using crowdfunding and even written a book about how to run successful Kickstarter campaigns. So, how did my campaign go? I raised $400 toward its $10,000 goal before canceling it after 6 days.

It was a spectacular, embarrassing failure, made worse by the fact that I was "the Kickstarter Guy." But after spending months analyzing what went wrong, I wrote an article called Studying failure: What I learned from a Kickstarter project that failed… badly that broke down every mistake I'd made. The post went semi-viral, was read over 3,000 times in three days, and helped other creators avoid my mistakes. The irony: my write-up about the failure had far more impact than the original project ever did.

The Ambitious Plan

A year earlier at SXSW 2011, I'd snapped a photo of a pedicab driver and later realized I barely remembered the moment. I'd been so busy tweeting and checking Facebook that I'd completely missed this compelling scene happening right in front of me. My desire to be connected online was disconnecting me from the world around me.

I wanted to create a street photography book that explored this phenomenon. Street photography captures candid moments of life as it happens, so it was the perfect medium to highlight what we miss when we're glued to our screens. The concept felt timely, meaningful, and visually compelling.

Since my project wasn't a completely unique idea, I knew I'd need to tell a compelling story. I spent from November through March obsessing over the project video. I rewrote the script over and over. I shot the video three different times. I knew from my work on A Kickstarter’s Guide that execution mattered more than ideas, but I poured everything into the storytelling rather than the groundwork.

The Launch and The Crash

At 6 am on February 1st, 2012, I pressed launch and... nothing happened.

I was expecting some early traction, backers, shares, or momentum, but what I got instead was silence. I sent detailed emails to my network. The Kickstarter staff even featured it as a photography project. Still nothing. After a day or two, I started getting feedback from friends. The responses weren't about the video or the concept; they were about the price, the rewards, and the fact that I didn't yet have any photos to show them.

That's when I realized I'd done everything wrong. Besides making all the mistakes I'd warned people about in my book, I had committed the cardinal sin: I had focused too much on what I wanted to create and not enough on what they would get.

After six days, I canceled the campaign. I wrote apologetic messages to the few people who had backed the project. I felt ridiculous. I'd written the book on Kickstarter. Shouldn't I, of all people, know what I was doing?

What I Learned (The Hard Way)

After weeks of sulking, I forced myself to analyze the failure systematically. Here's what I'd gotten wrong:

I launched without a prototype. I didn't have the photos yet, because I hadn't even gone to SXSW 2012. I thought if I described the book well enough, people would back it like a pre-sale. But as an unknown creator, without anything to show, they saw it as a risky fundraiser for an idea, not a purchase of something that already existed. People wanted proof I could deliver, not the promise of what was to come.

I spent months perfecting the video, but skipped the basics. I obsessed over storytelling and production value while ignoring fundamentals like validating the concept with my target audience or building awareness before launch.

I didn't do a soft launch. I didn't show the project to anyone in my core audience before going live. This meant I missed critical early feedback that might have highlighted the pricing concerns and the lack of a prototype. It also meant fewer people were aware of the project when it launched. Research shows that people only spread ideas they’re already aware of, but I hadn’t given anyone a chance to learn about the project before I launched.

I launched at the wrong stage. I thought I was in the presale phase, but I was actually in a dead zone. I had started working on the idea, but hadn’t taken any pictures. I was trying to raise funds to take the photos and print a book. This confused potential backers. “Why are you raising money to print a book when you haven’t even taken photos?” I should have positioned the campaign as a fundraiser to help fund my trip to SXSW, rather than a pre-sale. This would have allowed me to run it with a much lower goal (under $5,000) rather than my stated $10,000 goal.

The hardest part? I'd written about all of this in A Kickstarter's Guide to Kickstarter. I knew better. I just got so caught up in the details of launching that I stopped seeing the bigger picture.

The Unexpected Win

A few months later, once I'd licked my wounds, I wrote up everything I'd learned in a detailed blog post and shared it on Hacker News. The response surprised me. My post about the project’s failure was read over 3,000 times in three days and generated thoughtful discussion. People thanked me for being honest about failure. Other creators said it helped them avoid similar mistakes.

I had to laugh. My failure post succeeded in ways the actual project never could have. It reached more people, helped more people, and taught me more about what actually resonates with audiences than a successful campaign might have.

The Real Results

StreetXSW taught me that expertise doesn't make you immune to mistakes; sometimes, knowing the rules makes it easier to convince yourself you can break them. It showed me the difference between understanding something intellectually and internalizing it through failure. And it proved that being willing to publicly examine your mistakes can be more valuable than succeeding quietly.

The experience also clarified what successful project launches actually require: validation before you build, building awareness before you launch, having something concrete to show people, and matching your positioning to your actual stage of development. These aren't optional nice-to-haves—they're the foundation for everything else.

Most importantly, it taught me that failure isn't the end of learning, it's often the beginning. The project itself failed, but the insights from that failure informed everything I did afterward, from my subsequent Kickstarter campaigns to how I approach any public creative work.