Fulfill the Promise Before Anything Else
You were backed to ship one thing; every party favour you add is a way to go out of business.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 95%
Lee's harshest lesson is delivered as an observation rather than advice: reviewing the top ten Kickstarter campaigns of all time a few years before the interview, his was the only company still in business. The input is a campaign that has massively overshot; the mechanism is refusing every temptation to broaden and treating the original promise as the sole obligation; the output is a company that survives its own success.
Origin
Exploding Kittens expected to ship a few thousand games and instead had a first purchase order of seven hundred thousand units in thirty days, against an industry norm of maybe fifty thousand units a year for an average game. Lee had genuinely planned to fulfil it from his garage with friends, pizza and beer, and instead had to build logistics, warehousing, customer service and tracking from scratch.
Core principles
- 01Money arriving before delivery creates an overwhelming temptation to broaden, and broadening is how post-campaign companies die.
- 02You were backed to focus on fulfilling one item; the promise you already made is the entire obligation.
- 03Adding a t-shirt means entering the apparel business — manufacturing, fulfilment, SKUs, multiple sizes — on top of a business you have not learned yet.
- 04The distraction cost of a secondary product line is usually larger than its direct cost.
- 05Trying to be more popular is not how you make the friends; delivering what you said you would deliver is.
- 06Survival is a differentiator: of the top ten Kickstarter campaigns of all time Lee once reviewed, only his company was still in business.
- 07The same focus discipline applies after the campaign closes — the first priority of the company remains fulfilling every single order.
How to run it
- 1
Refuse every capability you do not already have
Say no to t-shirts, posters and hand-autographing. Tim's framing is that the tabletop business is hard enough to learn without also starting an apparel business with sizes and SKUs.
Pro tip Ask what new supplier relationship each reward implies. If the answer is any, decline.
Watch out The temptation peaks precisely when the money looks infinite.
- 2
Make fulfilment the entire company for a while
Lee's post-campaign rule was identical to his in-campaign rule: for the first little while, all it was was we must fulfil every single order.
Watch out This phase is where the operational learning happens; skipping it means the gaps surface at a worse moment.
- 3
Build the unglamorous infrastructure
Logistics, warehousing, customer service and order tracking all had to exist before anything shipped. None of it is creative work and all of it is load-bearing.
Watch out A seven-hundred-thousand-unit order against a garage plan is not a scaling problem, it is a different company.
- 4
Plan for shipping, customs and duties explicitly
Lee calls shipping and insurance a huge underestimated problem, noting cases where a twenty dollar game costs a hundred and fifty dollars to deliver and buyers expect free shipping. Tim adds the customs trap — a buyer charged extra at the door refuses the shipment and becomes an enemy.
Pro tip Constrain your geographic range on the campaign rather than discovering the economics after you have taken the money.
Watch out Lee's Russian orders were destroyed at customs and marked as delivered, because importing games was illegal there.
- 5
Only then consider expansion
Exploding Kittens deployed the same principle after Kickstarter as during it, and delivered every item on time except the Russian orders before entertaining any franchise conversation.
Pro tip Fulfilment completion is a credible internal gate for when expansion discussions may begin.
In the wild
A couple of years before the interview Lee looked at the top ten Kickstarter campaigns of all time. His company was in there — people constantly beat their money record, though not their backer count — and of those ten campaigns, Exploding Kittens was the only company still in business. His explanation is the incredible temptation that arrives with the money: to branch out, become a t-shirt company, send out posters, promise to hand-autograph every instance of the product.
→ A survival rate of one in ten among the largest campaigns ever run, with focus as the differentiator.
Lee's mental model of fulfilment was inviting a few friends over, ordering pizza and beers, and shipping a few thousand games out of his garage. The actual first purchase order was seven hundred thousand units in thirty days, against an industry norm where an average game sells around fifty thousand units a year. The team had to build logistics, warehousing, customer service and tracking from nothing while the clock ran.
→ Every single item delivered on time, with the sole exception of the Russian orders, which Russian customs destroyed and marked as delivered.
Common mistakes
Turning stretch goals into new businesses
A t-shirt reward looks like a small addition and is actually a new manufacturing, sizing and fulfilment operation. Tim's point is that a first-time creator is already learning one industry from scratch; two is not survivable.
Chasing popularity instead of delivery
Lee's line is to stop trying to give people more party favours and stop trying to be more popular, because the way you actually make those friends is by fulfilling the promise you made. Popularity chased before delivery costs you the delivery.
Underestimating international shipping and customs
Both Lee and Tim describe creators sinking into accounts receivable and payable problems when overseas shipments are inspected, damaged, or hit with duties at the door. The buyer who has to pay again at delivery does not just refuse the parcel, they become an enemy.
Is it for you?
Best for
First-time hardware, game and physical-product creators who have just raised far more than they planned for.
Not ideal for
Established operators with existing manufacturing and fulfilment infrastructure across multiple categories, for whom a second SKU is genuinely marginal.
From the transcript
“i looked at the top 10 and of those 10 we were the only company still in business”
“you are being backed to focus on fulfilling one item just do that just stop stop trying to like give people more party favors”
“the way you make those friends is by fulfilling the promise you made to those people and it's very rare that people to that”
From the episode
#653: Elan Lee, Co-Creator of Exploding Kittens — How to Raise Millions on Kickstarter, Deconstructing Mega-Successes, Secrets of Game Design, The Power of Positive Constraints, The Delights of Craftsmanship, and The Art of Turning Fans into Superfans