Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Kate Drane: MakerCon New York 2014”.
Hi i’m kate drain and i head up our outreach for design technology and hardware over at indiegogo just from a show of hands how many people have started a crowdfunding campaign, nice nice? How many people have contributed to one nice? How many people are thinking about running a campaign? I love it nice, okay, well, what i’ve loved about today is that, and especially like leading up it’s just there’s a lot of great information out there and setting yourself up for success is is the key to to having not only a successful campaign, but a successful Company a successful product, so what i’m going to tell you about today? Okay, uh, so we’re going to talk first about an introduction, talk about the benefits of a campaign, the three types of hardware campaigners, and also i’ll, give you some resources at the end. So a little bit about me, my name is kate drain and i’m an entrepreneur myself. So i have a small business. It’S called the can van it’s a mobile beer, canning service for craft breweries. We roll around breweries in the bay area and canned beer for them. We had an indiegogo campaign in the fall of 2011 because, like many entrepreneurs, we just needed a small amount of money to get started. 200 000 dollars.
We’Re like. Where are we going to get this money from? So we turned to indiegogo raised only 4 at a ten thousand dollar campaign learned a lot through it, but also got a ton of exposure uh. We were featured in fast company performance before operational.
We also our largest non-indiegogo investor, found us through the platform invested. Hundreds of thousands of dollars and now is – and it was all a result of the exposure we got through this platform, so i’m a true evangelist. I i’m very, i believe, very much in the power of crowdfunding.
So for us, what we are here to do is to democratize fundraising and make access to capital available for everyone. So, looking at the benefits of a campaign for many people, like i just mentioned – there’s more benefits to just money and so realizing when you’re going into a campaign and taking this into account is very important to setting yourself up again for success. Because you have this limited window between 30 and 60 days of just wanting to to take them like get the most out of this exposure that you’re getting getting the most out of this this sprint.
What you’ve been preparing for preparing for for months, if uh for some people for months from people weeks, it’s up to you, i would recommend at least six weeks to prepare for a campaign. So thinking about the three types of hardware campaigns, i’m actually going to use this watch as a proxy. So thinking about it from either. Are you setting out to launch or to to to make a product? Are you sending out to launch a product or are you setting out to launch a business, and so all of these three, when your objective is one of these three different, your end results? One of these three different means they will impact the way that you actually run your campaign. So one thing that i would recommend for any of these three is to really come up with what is the best case scenario from a financial if you’re looking at financial planning, what is the best case scenario? What’S the worst case scenario, and then what is the in between and so as you’re as you’re as you’re setting yourself up for success, making sure from a financial viability standpoint that you’re putting putting yourself in a great position as well so starting out if you’re, making A product so typically when you’re making a product you’re, not thinking about scale you’re, not thinking about making the the world’s next most amazing device.
You’Re, like i want to make this watch because i think it’s awesome and i think other people will think it’s awesome as well, and so you’re essentially looking to cover your costs and also to share the product with others. So what i would recommend for this is to set your goal amount to cover the cost of what you need, and also to limit the number of units to what you’re going to produce, because typically you’re not going to be going to china. You’Re not going to be using a manufacturer you’re going to be making this in in your garage in your basement. Maybe with your friends paying people like, like someone said earlier with pizza and beer, was it aaron talking about yeah, paying people with pizza and beer? And that’s how you’re going to get manufactured and so keeping that in mind as you’re setting up your campaign.
So you don’t have to necessarily think about press. You don’t have to think about going out for and just making as much money as possible. You’Re like really what i want to do is make this happen. So what do i need to in order to make that happen? So thinking about launching a product is a bit of a it’s a it’s a different objective, and so what you’re looking to do is to raise funds to manufacture the product but you’re, also looking to gauge market demand. Is this something that people want? Is this something that they’re voting with their dollars? Like scott said and they’re saying? Yes, i want to see this in the world and so a lot of times they there may be some small seed investment before you’re at this stage, but really what you’re looking to do is to to ramp up and to get exposure to get money and what I would recommend in this is to stay scrappy as long as possible. A lot of people ask me hey.
Should i hire a pr firm? Should i hire x, y or z, and what i would recommend to you is as much as you can do to keep that as scrappy and tight as possible, because for you, it’s really important to to stay as lean as possible. At this point, you want to get smarter, faster and so using a campaign to get smarter faster is really going to help set you up again for longer term success. You don’t want to end up in a situation where you are you’re over you’re overextended from the amount of money that you need or that you you raise just enough money through the campaign to cover the the cost of the campaign you wan na you wan na, Be able to leverage the money that you raised to to go into your product also for this focusing on email marketing, so press is great because it again it it helps you to get exposure and you what what a misnomer that, i would say, is that, and I would love to correct. Is that press drives contributions when, in fact, it’s actually contributions that drive press and so as you’re, getting started? Think about the cardinal rule of raising 30 percent so typically on the? What we’ve seen is that campaigns that raise 50 percent of its goal within the first 48 hours raise, on average 47 more money, and so what i mean by that? It’S not that you would necessarily have to raise 50 percent. But what you should be thinking about is: how are you going to get that really fast momentum? Because what that helps is that for people who don’t necessarily know you who don’t know that you are an amazing entrepreneur? You have an amazing team and you’ve demonstrated through this campaign, but it’s the people who know you the best and who are the most interested and invested in your success that they somewhat serve as the they help to legitimize you to people who don’t necessarily know you Directly and so also being sure to leverage the campaign to get to know your market. So for us we on on the indiegogo platform and through to the back end, there’s a great set of analytics and tools you can put in google analytics.
You can track your the referrals from people so keeping this in mind because you’re going to want to know your your network and know who’s the most interested and invested, because they’ll also help to give you market feedback and so that market feedback is a modern day. Focus group so knowing who’s the most interested and who’s the most vested in your success will help again lead you to saving money later as well, so thinking about when you’re launching a business. This is a completely different beast, so you’re launching a business you’re. Probably then, so the profile of this probably you’ve already received seed funding um, either an angel, router or or even a series, a we’ve seen and you’re, looking primarily for exposure and also to create your evangelist and to validate your market.
And so, while the money is great, what you’re really looking for is to get as wide as possible and to be able to demonstrate demand and engage more demand as well. So thinking about this, you want to really rally internal external resources. This means that probably you’re going to be spending money to put you’re going to be spending money to make sure that you have a very highly stylized video, and you want to make sure – and i would imagine for for this type – that you probably put money into. Perhaps having hiring a pr firm as well, because you really want to have this exposure, be as impactful for your business as possible.
So, to that same then, developing a strong press strategy is really going to help you out as well, because you want to use this 30 to 60 days to to really make the most out of the investment, because taking away from it it’s while it’s adding. And it’s creating a piece of marketing collateral for your company. It’S also taking away from actually building the product. One thing that we’ve seen be really successful with this is to do a demo tour, so give people the opportunity to interact with your product face to face and get that market feedback again and so really don’t be afraid to go out and meet people where they Are by having a prototype, especially a working prototype of this stage, it also helps with press, because press really like to be able again to be able to demo it to be able to look at it to feel it to be able to write about it.
And it helps to to this demo tour where you can leverage that, to put it in your updates to have people demonstrating that they are interacting with their product. It helps to to build a consumer demand. It also helps to validate what you’ve done. So people are like this is legitimate.
It works, get as many testimonials from people as possible as well, because what you’re looking to do is to leverage this opportunity, one for future investment, two to demonstrate demand for retailers and then three to validate your market so again demonstrating market demand. This is really important and something that you can do very easily if you set up your campaign to to make the most of that opportunity so from resources. I know this is kind of small, but one thing that i would recommend to you in any stage of it is that we have a hardware handbook and we’re going to be continuing to update it. So it has as many resources for you as possible to help set you up for success. I mean there’s so many resources. You have scott miller and dragon that, with their dragon certified program, that’s amazing and also eric from lemnos labs, who is a great resource of information.
But if you’re looking for something very quick you can enter, you can download for free off the internet. Hardware handbook’s great, and you can reach me at any time, i’m at i’m drain indiegogo and i’m happy to answer any questions that you have and and to help to set you up for success. So thank you so much. Thank you, kate. You .