Q: Why don’t you have lower contribution tiers like $1
A: Right now everything is going through PayPal and for very small transactions the proportion of the payment that they take for their cut is higher, so rather than encouraging the members of our community who can afford it least to give a bunch of their money to PayPal we would rather they keep it for themselves.
Q: Your stretch targets are ridiculous. Why are they so high
A: You’re right, they were much higher than they should have been initially, and a big part of the reason for that is we weren’t sure how much momentum this campaign would have and we didn’t want to trap ourselves by putting ourselves in a situation where we had to do every stretch target in a span of a week. Now that we can see how things are tracking we have rearranged the stretch targets to make them much more attainable, but spread them out enough that we won’t be doing everything at once throughout the campaign.
Q: Aren’t you guys a business? Why aren’t you seeking investment or taking out a loan
A: Yes we are a business, but those of you savvy enough to figure out these types of business strategies should also be savvy enough to know that moving into a much larger space is going to cost a LOT more than $50,000 - our goal for the campaign - even in the short term. We are exploring every avenue necessary to grow and keep delivering the best content we can regardless of how much we raise during this campaign
Q: Then why are you asking us for money at all?
A: Because some of you WANT to help us in this way. To those people we send our heartfelt gratitude, and to everyone else, we still send our heartfelt gratitude, because EVERY contribution - even one view on a video - counts. The thing to realize here is we aren’t holding anything hostage if we don’t hit the campaign goal. Everything will go towards doing our best to keep doing what we’re doing. If you like that, great. If you don’t, then don’t contribute.
Q: Why don’t you have any cool physical rewards
A: This actually ties into the last one. We’re asking for money so that we can move into a bigger space, hire more people, and make better content, NOT so we can sell you a bunch of stickers, T-shirts, and hats. If you want to contribute to Linus Media Group by buying a T-shirt, then go buy a T-shirt…. We have a variety of styles on both of our web shops. The usual complaint about the web stores is “omg the shipping is so expensive” to which I’d reply “Then I guess you figured out why physical merchandise would basically kill any possibility of using the funding from this campaign to fund a move. That cost doesn’t go away because it’s a special crowd-funding T-shirt. So out of that $25 reward tier, we’ll STILL be paying $8 per T-shirt and up to $13 or MORE for International shipping.
Q: I don’t want to contribute because investing in a company without any ROI is stupid. I want to be a stakeholder.
A: We don’t want stakeholders, and I suspect neither do the people who ARE contributing to our new office expansion - the closet thing we have to direct backers for our company! If we had stakeholders all of a sudden there might be pressure to start paying dividends and being accountable for the kind of content we’re making to some random that the community has never met. People are contributing because they want ME in charge without some shadow lurking over my shoulder telling me what to do.
Chrispy reacted to nicklmg in New Office 2014 Campaign Video
