Vivian Tan discusses launching Math Breakers on Kickstarter, crediting pre-campaign allies like Coder Dojo and Hack the Future. Many backers didn't understand Kickstarter's all-or-nothing model. She used Common Core standards to design levels and sees the game eventually supplementing classroom instruction.
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Can you speak about the Kickstarter a little bit?
Like, what were your main goals with it?
And also, any advice for other people wanting to launch a campaign? Yeah, definitely. One of the things that we learned kind of through this whole experience is that you want to line up a lot of allies ahead of time. Fortunately for us, when we were just testing the product, it wasn't just, you know, gathering a random group of kids. We worked with Coder Dojo, Hack the Future, and all of them have very extensive networks to not just, you know, kids into tech, but also parents who are really into tech in Silicon Valley. And they became major advocates for us during the campaign. Another thing we learned that I think that didn't occur to us until about halfway through the Kickstarter was that we didn't expect a lot of backers to— sorry, what was the word I was looking for? A lot of our backers didn't know that Kickstarter was an all-or-nothing model. So we were raising, I think, we were aiming for $42K at the time.
$42K.
Just because we're nerds and 42 is the answer to— Yeah. Never mind. So yeah, so people ask us, how did you pick that number? I'm like, it was a dorky decision. But we came really close within the last week. I think around 38 or 39, we were just short of our goal. And we couldn't figure out why we couldn't rally more people to just help us meet it. And then that was when we learned, with 1 week to go, that a lot of backers didn't realize it's all or nothing. They're like, oh, you're close enough. Now you're just being greedy. So during the very last week, we did a huge push on Twitter and through all of our contacts with the words all or nothing. And then that's when the funds started rolling in. So whenever people ask me about Kickstarter, I'm like, that's one practical note I would pay attention to. Yeah, other than that, it's just keeping the momentum going is also a biggie. We did maybe one big event every week. We had a launch party at the— what's it called? Sorry. The Tech Museum. The Tech Museum in San Jose. So that also got us a lot of exposure. Yeah. Sure. What was your production, your product development process like? So how did it go from concept to prototype? How did you design it? Did you guys get contractors? How much did it cost? So that's a really good question as well. Like I said, 2/3 of the team has never really had any formal training in game design. We built games on our own. Like, I was— I made HTML games back in the '90s when I was a teenager, also a lot of learning games, and then I used things like Second Life for trying to figure out, hey, how do we do something other than just pure entertainment in an immersive space? My co-founder has built a number of apps. Our technical co-founder is also an indie game developer. But we were really accustomed to making things on our own according to our own timeline. So when the 3 of us came together with an actual product to deliver, it was really— initially it was a lot of throwing spaghetti at the wall before things started coming together. But that part was actually a lot of fun too. It's like— like I said previously, all the things that we thought would be cool as a teaching mechanism, kind of like, you know, when you're trying to work through math homework, you kind of figured, hey, what if this thing is a box and it's floating in air? And what if I had 10 boxes and then we group them together? Like, OK. So things like that. And we start translating that to 3D space. And seeing which of them would actually work as a game, and then we would just put all these in front of our testers to see what they reacted well to and what they didn't. Sometimes we would spend— I think this one time we spent maybe a month or 2 developing what we thought was the coolest thing ever. We put it in front of a group of 10-year-olds and they tore it to pieces. We're like, okay, we're not releasing that. So initially it was just a lot of trial and error. And then— so that was probably the first 6 to 12 months of development, and once we had enough individual pieces of the game, we started stringing them together into cohesive levels. Fortunately for us, we had a math curriculum to serve as a guide, and you can follow along that and be like, okay, what standards are we supposed to hit by 1st grade, 2nd grade, so on, and then just use that as the template for level design and putting— stringing those elements together. Sir? Where did you find the curriculum and how did you decide which one to use? Was it all provided by a certain school district or— So we came in at a really good time when Common Core was first introduced. And there was a lot of controversy over Common Core, but that kind of worked in our favor because a big part of the controversy came from the fact that parents and teachers had very limited resources for teaching according to Common Core standards, and we were providing one of the resources that teachers could go to to point out. So, for instance, Splitting up ones and tens to reinforce the concept of creating groups of numbers. So we would have something in the game that mimics that concept. But yeah, like I said, we lucked out in that department just because Common Core was a new thing, and then our concept fit into that. All right. I haven't called that part of the room at all, so I'm going to go with you.
Yeah. So it was really interesting. I was thinking if this one, this game had been there when I was studying math, it would have been really more interesting. So, and I had a question about what you did. Since you raised funds from a crowdsourcing platform, is there a downside to raising funds from that kind of platform? As compared to an investor, does it affect you while raising funds afterwards?
From Kickstarter, you mean?
Yeah.
Yes. So Kickstarter, a lot of— there are pros and cons to it. I think one of the key things to remember, and that also goes back to your question, is that Make sure whatever rewards you offer, just don't get too carried away with it. We see a lot of Kickstarter campaigns that are fantastic, but they offer a lot of rewards that eventually detract from the product itself. So we weren't too bad about it, but it was still easy to get carried away. Like, we're gonna give you this cool thing and that cool thing, because you want to motivate people to fund you. But if it's something that deviates from the core thing you're trying to build, then you spend a lot of time fulfilling the rewards themselves instead of working on the actual product you're trying to deliver. And so I think that's one of the major drawbacks of using crowdfunding, especially if you're trying to to motivate people who might not otherwise be intrinsically interested in your product, but they just want the perks.
Yeah.
OK. I have to— hang on. I'll come back to you, I promise. OK.
There you go. Yeah. So I have a question. The product looks pretty commercial. So do you have a social vision? Like, for example, there are a lot of schools without good faculty, without good teachers. So can this product kind of sort of replace math as such, like the traditional way of doing math, and be a platform for learning math?
I believe that will happen one day. Right now, I don't want to say that it's going to become a class replacement because It's still really important to have teachers in the classroom explaining a lot of these concepts, so— but you do raise one of the main challenges that we are facing with this is that you have kids who catch on to the game very quickly, but the teachers don't really have any idea of what's going on. And then bridging that gap between, hey, I just threw— well, let's pick one of the easier concepts. I just threw 2—
2 dice.
2 numbers together, and when the numbers touched, they added. But what does that mean when you translate that— translating that to a formula or translating that to a real-world scenario? So you need teachers there to be able to explain that. But I say I'm hopeful that's going to happen one day because I think the entire education system and society has to catch up. But I do believe that if you have access to something like this and other educational resources, not just Math Breakers, in an area where teachers aren't very good, that kids will be able to figure it out on their own. It'll take a little longer, but I have faith that'll happen.
