how and why to crowdfund
TRANSCRIPT
HOW AND WHY TO
CROWDFUND
Justis Earle CEO - HANSNAP, Inc.
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
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
Cameras have always had straps – Smartphones have replaced cameras
HANSNAP
FEATURED
KICKSTARTER136% Funded Selected for “Projects We Love” + Staff Pick
INTERNATIONAL‘Most Innovative Crowdfunding campaign’(UK)
Trends Show Crowdfunding To Surpass VC In 2016 - Forbes
WHAT?
WHO?22 Main Crowdfunding Sites -Inc.
Main Players:
KickstarterBrooklyn, NY
(est.2009)
Indiegogo San Francisco, CA
(est.2008)
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
HOW?
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
• 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
(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
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
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!
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
Viral Dissemination PathGO 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
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
Crucial to Hit 20% Goal in First 48 Hours
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
Customer Traffic:
#1 - Email#2 – Facebook#3 – Kickstarter
Focus outreach attention accordingly
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”
7 THINGS
Forget Everything I Said and Do What Tim Ferriss Says