Update backers more often than we did

[Britta]

We have not updated our backers enough.

I have never been good at actually doing blog posts and getting stuff up on the web, even if I am documenting as I go along. I get bogged down in editing and it takes me forever. But it's kind of a lame excuse.

It is really important to my backers that they hear from me. They went out of their way to help get our windowfarms out there.

There were plenty of projects where people were really late and their backers seemed not to care because they told them in detail what was going on all along the way. The backers are in it for the story.

We did not do many updates until we had bad news-- that we were going to be late. For the most part, our backers understood, but some of them were disappointed that we had not communicated, and others were straight up pissed off.

We made a policy to just give refunds to anyone who was really angry or had had some misunderstanding about what they were getting into. We took the hit on the fact that we still had to pay the 7% to Kickstarter/Amazon for their money. But it just seemed the right thing to do. We made mistakes and we owned up to them and got back to a clean slate.

Take away: if you are not a good web publisher, figure out at the beginning what it is going to take to get updates out frequently. Hire a video editor for a few hours a month to publish two updates. That's what I'd do if I had it all to do over again.