Coming soon · Book Profile
A Crowdfunder’s Strategy Guide Build a Better Business by Building Community
A veteran crowdfunder argues that the surest path to funding success is to stop making campaigns about you and instead build a community by putting your backers first.
A profile of this book is on the way.
What it’s about
Drawing on seven successful Kickstarter campaigns that raised over a million dollars for his board-game company Stonemaier Games, Jamey Stegmaier turns crowdfunding conventional wisdom on its head: it's not about money, it's about people. Through candid stories of his own mistakes, megaproject postmortems, and dozens of real-world examples across product categories, the book shows how community building, radical empathy, and trust-based relationships—not clever tricks or luck—drive both immediate funding and long-term business success. Whether you're an entrepreneur, artist, or inventor, you'll learn concrete steps to prepare, launch, and deliver a campaign that treats every backer as an individual, keeps promises, and lays the foundation for a lasting company. The core mantra—'Make it about them' and always ask 'What's the right thing for my backers?'—runs through every chapter.
The through-line
- Who it’s for
- An aspiring creator or entrepreneur who wants to bring a product, game, or passion project to life through crowdfunding and build a lasting business or fan base.
- The problem
- They need to raise money to create something new without a bank loan, investors, or a traditional gatekeeper. They feel anxious about asking for money, fear failure or launching wrong, and worry they're the only ones who care about their idea.
- The plan
- Spend months preparing: back other projects, blog, build community, secure art, reviews, budget, and shipping before launching.
- Launch only when 100% ready, sending personal appeals and thanking each backer as an individual.
- Put backers first—offer guarantees, fair pricing, stretch goals, and involve them in the creative process.
- Keep the campaign small, focused, and short, avoiding early-birds and exclusives.
- Deliver on schedule with transparent communication, then diversify to build a lasting business.
- The payoff
- A successfully funded project with a passionate, loyal community of backers. · A sustainable, community-driven business you can potentially run full-time. · Trust and lasting relationships with customers who become fans and advocates.
See our guide
Additional reading
- Homo Ludens · Johan Huizinga
Referenced for its foundational concept of the 'magic circle,' which defines play as a separate, protected space outside of ordinary life. This contextualizes the author's own theory.
- Man, Play and Games · Roger Caillois
Cited for its academic definition and categorization of games, providing a counterpoint to the more practical definitions offered by game designers.
- Rules of Play · Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
Mentioned as a key contemporary text offering a precise, systemic definition of a game, which the author uses as part of his survey of existing definitions.
- Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience · Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The concept of 'flow' is discussed as a state of deep immersion that is often associated with fun, but the author distinguishes his theory by focusing on learning rather than mastery.
- The Essential Difference · Simon Baron-Cohen
The theory of 'systematizing' versus 'empathizing' brains is used to explain why different types of games may appeal to different people, particularly along gender lines.
- A Pattern Language · Christopher Alexander et al.
Cited as the classic text on how architecture can be designed with intent to shape human emotion and behavior, serving as an analogy for how game systems could be designed to achieve more than just 'fun'.
- I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games · Greg Costikyan
This work is cited as an introduction to critical thought about games and an influence on the authors' thinking about a critical vocabulary for game design.
- Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software · Erich Gamma, John Vlissides, Ralph Johnson, and Richard Helm
This book showed one of the authors how design concepts could be deconstructed into smaller components and reassembled, a core idea behind this book's 'building blocks' approach.
- Writings by Jesse Schell, Bruno Faidutti, and Mark Rosewater · Jesse Schell, Bruno Faidutti, Mark Rosewater
The authors recognize the books, lectures, and blog posts by these individuals as continuing contributions to the body of thinking about games and game design.
- The Compleat Gamester · Charles Cotton
Mentioned as a historical source from 1674 that describes the game of All Fours as being popular in Kent, providing historical context for one of the games in the book.