How and Why To Crowdfund
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This document provides an overview and advice on crowdfunding from Justis Earle, CEO of HANSNAP, Inc. It discusses: - The background and purpose of crowdfunding campaigns. - Key components of a successful crowdfunding campaign, including high-quality videos, well-designed reward tiers, and disseminating the campaign through social networks and media outreach. - Tips for the launch of a crowdfunding campaign, such as having a finished product design and manufacturing sources ready, copying the strategies of successful campaigns, and aiming to reach 20% of the funding goal within the first 48 hours.
How and Why To Crowdfund
- 1. HOW AND WHY TO CROWDFUND Justis Earle CEO - HANSNAP, Inc.
- 2. How and Why to Crowdfund •Intro – Who is Justis Earle •Background – What is Crowdfunding and Why do you Care (a bunch of stuff pilfered from internet) •Video as a Critical Component of Crowdfunding •How to Build and Run a Crowdfunding Campaign •Question and Answer Session
- 3. Tigo Energy • Engineering support in Europe and US • Manufacturing Support in China • Marketing at Trade shows in San Francisco and Los Vegas • Project Management for of HW and SW departments for CTO
- 7. Cameras have always had straps – Smartphones have replaced cameras HANSNAP
- 8. FEATURED KICKSTARTER 136% Funded Selected for “Projects We Love” + Staff Pick INTERNATIONAL ‘Most Innovative Crowdfunding campaign’(UK)
- 9. Trends Show Crowdfunding To Surpass VC In 2016 - Forbes WHAT?
- 11. Main Players: Kickstarter Brooklyn, NY (est.2009) Indiegogo San Francisco, CA (est.2008)
- 12. WHY? / Who? Inventers, Entrepreneurs, Creatives, Existing Business • Be first to market • Learn all the critical components of running a business • Free Press Coverage • Market test your products before investing major capital • Funding
- 13. HOW?
- 14. FIRST KICKSTARTER FAILED!!! • Product was not far enough along: Only drawings, not a finished product • Wrong Time of Year: Black Friday • Asking for too much money, creating a ‘psychological barrier’ $90k
- 16. 10 Generic But Moderately Helpful Steps
- 17. • Actual CAD designs • Manufacturing sources ready to go with actual quotes (at least 3 sources) • Shipping and Handling calculated - USPS is often best (International?!) Know Exactly What it is going to Take to Deliver Your Product
- 18. (PEAK DESIGN) • How Many Pictures (gifs??) – Start with 10 pics and add slowly throughout campaign • What was pictured: THE PRODUCT WAS PICTURED • How was video structured • How many rewards – 7 is golden • Cost Structure of Rewards: $25, $75, higher Don’t Reinvent the Wheel – Copy An Expert
- 19. Hero Image! • Captures the essence of the product instantly – this will be the most viewed and shared image of your campaign – make sure it’s fabulous • Devilishly handsome
- 21. Make a Sick Video(Hint: hire someone) • Main Video: under 3 minutes – Think radio friendly time • Start with attention grabbing 6 second intro – fast past shots of product in use • State problem – “Always Dropping Your Phone?” • Introduce solution – “Never Drop Your Phone” • Demonstrate how it is used in three separate use cases – Feed the user imagination – many people lack product imagination until they see it used • Go more detailed into product spec – nerd out on the details of the product to make it as real and believable as possible • Introduce your badass team and how/why you are uniquely able to bring this product to life • End with montage of cool footage and call to action – snappy montage that shows life is better with your product, create an urgency to support NOW!
- 22. Additional Videos • Warm up video – come up with promotions BEFORE campaign to get people to signup on your website email capture • If you have a video that performs better than others, spend AD money on FB to boost • Make personal follow up videos are simple way to share new content in a fun way – new promotional items on the campaign, when you hit new goals and mile markers on the campaign • Share DIRECTLY to FB – upload raw video to FB, this allows it to play instantly in the FB feed, and the FB algorithm prefers these videos
- 23. Viral Dissemination Path GO Make Disciples, Apostles, Evangelists • Jesus never wrote anything down, never traveled further than 200 miles from home, not recorded to carry any money. Yet today, 2000 years later its estimated 4.5B know who Jesus is, and the bible holds the Guinness record for best selling book of all time selling 5B copies. HOW? • The Three, The Twelve disciples (who became apostles), the 70, the ‘multitude’, and finally the world • Think of crowd funding like a dance club – the early adopters (apostles) go there to start a movement – they like to dance, get deals (free cover, cheap booze) and be the first to know about a dope scene and get social credit for bringing friends • The rest of the crowd doesn’t want to show up until it’s popping off – it has to be crowd proofed to make sure it’s not lame or worse: dangerous
- 24. Your Personal Dissemination Path • 3 – closest partners or team actively working on campaign • 12 – friends family who will do anything you ask throughout • 70 – Believers will at least share and eventually buy (FB Event) • Crowd – FB, Email, LinkedIn contacts who may eventually support • World – PR, Blogs, Media
- 25. Crucial to Hit 20% Goal in First 48 Hours
- 26. Social Media / Dissemination Path • Make Bit.ly link BEFORE you go live this makes sharing the link easier and trackable (your KS preview link will turn live) • Scrape all emails from all of your personal email accounts and LinkedIn – Gmail and LinkedIn BOTH have ways to export CSV lists of emails. Plug these into your Streak mass email sender to get ready for launch day (download SW program ‘Streak’ for mass email sending). • Be in the same room with your team when you launch the campaign to send email blast, share on FB, and activate FB event • Create FB event for your identified ‘70’ people who are guaranteed to buy as soon as you launch • Post on all other social accounts: Instagram, Twitter, etc. (remember to put KS link in all bios) • Design ‘early bird’ specials to capture 20% of your goal amount within the first 48 hours
- 27. Customer Traffic: #1 - Email #2 – Facebook #3 – Kickstarter Focus outreach attention accordingly
- 29. Press / Media Outreach Use Twitter to connect with anyone you want – find appropriate media for your product Have pre-written articles in various styles ready to go along with photo assets Setup meetings with media for social content – interviews and videos Play with article and email headlines to see what catches. “The Selfie Stick Ender”
- 30. 7 THINGS
- 31. Forget Everything I Said and Do What Tim Ferriss Says
Editor's Notes
- #6: Keep at least one hobby around or else you will go nuts – it’s a marathon not a sprint Yelling is very cathartic
- #15: Catch 22: You need money to build a product, but you need to build a product to get money. Beg, Borrow, etc. to get as close to a believable product as you can. This is why I believe that getting money should not be a primary motive – it takes time to build an audience people want to support you, but they want a product. The first 48 hours is critical – you absolutely want to launch on a Monday or Tuesday (high internet traffic times) and times where money and attention span is tight We needed 90k to build our product, but because we had a campaign that was not designed correctly, nobody is going to go through the trouble to put in their CC information if they think the campaign is not going to make it, or worse – the campaign is successful and they never get a product Story of crowd funding guru telling me that my campaign was over I ended up raising 65k private capital through extended network to get the product and Kickstarter up to speed – hired photography, videography, engineer, package design, logo and graphic design for product marketing I raised the last 10k+ on Kickstarter – but now I have all the assets from the KS and proven market traction for investors to go and raise more money
- #18: 13 Million dollar KS wasn’t ready to fulfill orders – cost of product and manufacturing too high People threatening them // Doxxing them – posting their personal information online so others can harass them Showing up to their factory Packaging materials? Who is actually shipping the product?
- #19: Kickstarter Gurus and amazing humans. Currently on 7th campaign and raised multi-millions on KS Dubstep and ping pong Last campaign was 4.5million – this one filled 500k in two days