Mohammad Ali A.
A review of LaunchBoom Academy from a Video Game Developer
As someone that attended the Crowfunded Summit 2023 as a VIP, and reading "Crowdfunded" by Mark Pecota I was very excited to sign-up for the LaunchBoom Academy. I was disappointed to find how little additional knowledge was provided by the Academy - You'll be better off just reading his book and putting the $2000 Academy cost into your ad budget. I spent 2 years developing my video game, constantly checking with gamers if it's actually good and even ran a paid Validation exercise to good results. I had Meta ads that ran successfully for 2 months, including LaunchBoom's "Audience Database" (Meta Lookalike Audiences). So when these ads suddenly stopped performing well after I scaled up I decided to cut my losses and give up. Rather than accepting that Meta ads are unreliable or maybe Meta wasn't the correct the platform for a video game (or give any other advice), LaunchBoom instead told me that "there's a good chance that crowdfunding just isn't right for your product or the positioning of your product/game". This felt especially bad since there's thousands of similar games funded on Kickstarter. LaunchBoom did tell me that they're more experienced with physical products than video games so I should have expected this result. I just wish they had warned me that the LaunchBoom Funnel might not work here. I would also like to review LaunchKit: the website-building tool included with Academy. While it's a good and easy way to build a website it's unfortunately a bit buggy and still in development. LaunchBoom are still adding features to it, and I've had a couple of problems and also noticed on the Community other people reporting bugs - which is not something you want in a website builder that you paid for. (Edit: LaunchBoom have been in touch and will hopefully resolve the issues I've provided them.) The people that work at LaunchBoom are respectful and communicative. Unfortunately, I can’t validate how accurate any of their advice is because it didn’t work for me. My experiences make me think all of LaunchBoom’s success stories are just coasting off the success of other people’s great products.
Response from LaunchBoomOct 17, 2023
Hey Mohammad, First off, thanks for the positive feedback about my book and the Summit. That's always fulfilling to hear. The rest of your review was much more critical and my whole team and I appreciate the honest feedback. I imagine it was a frustrating position to be in once ads took a turn for the worse in September after spending a little over $1,000... especially after spending so long developing the game. I've had similar experiences of pouring my all into something only to see it not work the way I wanted. Now, I think it's important to expand on the context of the quote you added in your review from Victor on my team. Your original message in the LaunchBoom Community was this: "Hi LaunchBoom Community, Unfortunately my ads haven't been performing well since September, and have only been getting worse. Not sure if Meta's algorithm has changed or if the system is just like this. I can't afford to go back to the testing stage so I guess I'll have to give up. Won't get a chance to even try Crowdfunding as there's no point doubling down on my losses. Doesn't seem like Academy was the right move for me. Disappointed that the Launchboom Audiences didn't perform much better than my regular audiences. Sincerely, Mohammad Ansari" Victor responded saying: "Hey @Mohammad Ansari Sorry to hear your ads aren't performing well. A part of our process is understanding demand for your product/game. If ads aren't performing well, there's a good chance that crowdfunding just isn't right for your product or the positioning of your product/game. Because this is part of the process, if you decide to tweak your positioning or come up with a new product/game - you can come back and use Academy again — esp since you haven't launched. It's a big reason why we designed it the way we did...you find out through testing that there isn't a market fit, so you go back to product development to switch it up and come back swinging strong." Victor correctly pointed out that if ads aren't performing, it is likely because the product OR the positioning needs to change. If you've already gone through some type of play testing validation, then it's likely that your positioning needs to change and not the product. I'd recommend testing new positioning in your ads, but of course, that'd require a little more ad budget past the ~$1K you spent on ads. By the way, there may have been a misunderstanding about the type of games we work with. We've worked with many more computer games than mobile games. I'm going to reach out to discuss the bugs you experienced with LaunchKit. In response to this comment "My experiences make me think all of LaunchBoom’s success stories are just coasting off the success of other people’s great products." To a certain extent, I agree. A great product + great marketing = succesful campaign We can really only control for half of that equation: the marketing piece. Let me know if you (or anyone reading this) would like to chat further at [email protected]. Best, Mark Pecota | CEO P.S. for others reading this, LaunchBoom Academy is a DIY program we offer and is different than LaunchBoom Accelerator – a much more involved program that 95%+ of our clients go through.