I Am About To Do The Scariest Thing I Have Ever Done, And Somehow It’s Not Having A Freaken Kid
By: Liv Buli
Tags: Kids, Kickstarter, Crowdfunding, Publishing, Data Visualization

(Though I am having a kid. I like to think of that as more of a side project really. 😉)

In a couple of days, my partner Abigail Ricarte and I, will be launching a project on Kickstarter. The campaign, which marks only the beginning (fingers crossed) of our mission, is a result of years of dreaming, months of working, and endless hours of creating. I am absolutely terrified.

I am not exactly sure when I started dreaming about creating Vizkidz.

I know it was sometime after I made the leap from journalist to data journalist and realized that comprehending and communicating about data, statistics, and its value in a creative field was going to be an endless uphill battle. I vaguely remember the first time I said it out loud to my colleagues — ‘hey wouldn’t it be cool to do like a series of children’s books that explains data viz to kids?’—half joking, half checking whether everyone would mock me for my lame duck idea. The level of mockery was bearable.

So I sought out Abby. We’ve worked together for many years, and her work in branding and design literally blows me away. I had also seen some of her illustration work, and knew that this was the person I wanted to build Vizkidz with — we both understood this world, and she was going to take it to the next level. We drank a bottle, or two, or three, of wine (mind you, this was before I was knocked up), and made a pact to create Vizkidz together.

There have been a lot of early morning breakfast meetings (so kind of Abby to keep ordering smoked salmon in front of a pregnant Norwegian chick), and weekend working sessions over Google hangout. A lot of terrible sketches, worse ideas (Barnaby Barchart illustrating the amount of dog poop he picks up along the way each day is one of those), and then better story boards, ideas that made us squeal with excitement, and then eventually, finally, our fully baked concept for Vizkidz.

So why am I terrified?

Well. We’re about to launch this project on Kickstarter, and ask a whole bunch of people to invest in us and what we believe in. I think the worst case scenario for both of us is that people will see our idea, and not get excited about it. What if we raise zero dollars? (Well that’s not likely, between Abby’s mom and my mom, we’ll raise at least $80 or so). But what if we aren’t successful in funding this project?

What if no one wants a copy of Vizkidz, and no one backs us, and what if no one thinks that the last year we have spent on this project is worth it. We are putting our creativity and ideas out there for all to see and judge, and that is (frankly) terrifying.

But every time I wake up in a panic, scared that this could all go so very wrong, I try to remind myself that nobody ever did anything cool or great without taking a big risk first. When I get nervous that it is not good enough, I try to remind myself that we won’t know until we get feedback. When I get anxious that people will laugh at us or think our idea is stupid, I try to tell myself that it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

So here goes nothing.