Re: IGG-Scrap Mechanic V0 1 17
Avery Blaschko
Since we launched our most recent campaign for Traveler on Indiegogo a lot of people have asked me why we chose Indiegogo (IGG) instead of Kickstarter (KS). I thought I would detail the reasons we had for making the choice we did and some of the considerations you should have when making a decision for your own project.
We also use a variety of other hosted services on the software side of our business including Docker, Redis, Zapier, PaperTrail and Sentry, which are all invaluable. For SSL we use SSLMate and Letsencrypt. For DNS we use DNSimple.
All in our monthly recurring costs for services and software runs to about $2k including hosting and bookkeeping. Not bad at all considering how much value they provide. The biggest thing is giving employees the ability to self-administer as much as possible. Providing certainty that all the various administrative functions are working allows me to focus on driving sales and the rest of my team to do their job.
The decision to create a Kickstarter campaign was made (read more in part 4). But when? And how?! We needed a deadline. We also needed to figure out how to do a Kickstarter campaign with some chance of success. Neither of us had done anything like this before! There were a huge number of decisions ahead of us, how much to set our goal at, how much to price the Hemingwrite (scary!), how to get a video made, and the list goes on.
I felt a ton of pressure to launch the Kickstarter as quickly as possible in order to keep what momentum we had at the time. If we waited too long, people would start forgetting about our little project and move on with their lives. We needed to strike while the iron was white hot.
Google this subject and there are endless resources to help creators with their first campaigns. There is a whole cottage industry setup to support crowdfunding. There are countless consultants, marketing agencies, and PR firms catering specifically to crowdfunding campaigns. Some of that existed in 2014 but a lot has changed in the past few years. In general, campaigns have become much larger and there are now serial creators that have become true professionals. One dirty little secret is that all the big (>$500k) campaigns nowadays are heavily reliant on paid traffic.
What are the critical aspects of a campaign? Some people say the video is the most important thing. Some people say press or getting a huge email list. In my opinion, from doing our campaign and paying very close attention to other campaigns before and since then, by far the most important things are what you are selling, how clear you are in telling people what it is, and whether it is a good fit for crowdfunding.
Aside from the gifs and a basic graphic or two, we invested in professional product photography. It just so happens that a neighbor of mine in Detroit is a very high end product photographer and overall very awesome guy. We just walked the prototype over there and worked out a very reasonable deal to get 4-5 critical shots. I think it ended up costing about $4-500ish for the shoot. The overhead shot he took ended up being used in tons of materials from the Kickstarter to press to other marketing materials. Even though I probably could have taken usable photos with my full-frame Canon 5D Mark II, he had the studio setup and knew how to use lighting to showcase a product. He used a 50MP multi-shot Hasselblad too which was probably unnecessary but at least we knew were getting the best possible shots. Even given our budget, it was well worth the money.
Suprise, these little details are monsters! When can backers expect to receive their rewards? How many countries did we want to ship to? How much would it cost at each tier to ship to each country? How much would a backer in each country have to pay in duties and taxes to receive their goods??
I was seriously dreading this part of the campaign. We needed a good video. Not just something that was entertaining but also something that properly explained the product and fit the format for a Kickstarter campaign. We watched a ton of other Kickstarter videos from other campaigns. This is the format we came up with:
So we made the 4 hour drive up there with the plan that we would shoot everything in one day. Even though it was a trek, our thought was that it would give us the necessary focus to get it done. We had a clear mission and we would be completely undistracted.
The funding threshold is the amount at which our campaign becomes successful and we, as creators, receive all the money raised. If the campaign is unable to reach the threshold, the creators get zero and the campaign fails.
Our original plan was to launch the campaign on Black Friday 2014. It was turning out to be a perfect storm because our big feature in the WSJ on the Hemingwrite was scheduled to publish on that Saturday, i.e. 2 days after launch. It all was a little too perfect! Who launches on Black Friday and gets a huge feature in the WSJ that weekend with no PR team and zero budget?!
After a couple more delays, we got approval and finally went live on December 10, 2014. We were told that launching on a Tuesday around noon eastern time was the best time to launch which is what we aimed for. We missed Tuesday but Wednesday the 10th at 1pm should be fine, right?!
I reached out to about 5 friendly reporters (people with which that I already had a running email chain) and simply asked if they would be interested to get early access to our launch press kit in exchange for them going on embargo.1 I think all said yes at which time I told them about the specific timing of the embargo and forwarded them the materials.
We managed to get coverage from TechCrunch, CNET, The Verge, and Huffington Post for the launch of our Kickstarter. Once those hit, much more followed including international press from around the world.
It was as great of a launch as we could have ever dreamed of! Just months prior I had thought of a feature on TechCrunch as the holy grail and here I was setting it up at a time I dictated as a general matter of business.
The social voting round would last from October 8th, 2014 to October 15th, 2014. We needed to put everything into getting the word out and encouraging people to vote. At this point, Patrick and I were just messaging people we knew and one by one asking them to support us. After a lot of hustling, we heard on October 17th that we made it. WE WERE GOING TO NEW YORK!!!
Each team that made the top 10 was given a $1000 stipend to come to NYC on November 7th and demo at Engadget Expand. The contest final was one part of their Expand conference alongside other tech showcases, panels, and discussion.
We were effectively soft launching with the opening of the social voting round so there were a few things that we needed to do. This is what I consider the absolute minimum for a highly effective launch.
Part of the reason from the very beginning that I chose to pursue this project was that I thought it could be a good Kickstarter project. It was visually interesting, demonstrably unique, designer-y and useful for a niche audience. I also thought the mix of features would play well to the Kickstarter crowd. Raising money from friends and family felt silly for this project because of how many people were messaging us about trying to buy one. Raising money from angels or VCs sounded painful.
(1) We were so incredibly uncomfortable about revealing the insides of the Hemingwrite prototype that we would try to change batteries and do any other internal work far from the public. We would go sit in an empty corner before opening it up. It is quite funny in hindsight!
In Part 2 I discussed why and how we got to the point of moving forward with the Freewrite concept. The idea for the project was clear and both Patrick and I were committed to seeing it through to the next step, a working prototype. We wanted to create a distraction-free writing tool with a mechanical keyboard, E Ink screen, and a connection to the cloud.
At the same time that all this is going on, there are parallel processes to develop the electronic prototype and the software prototype. Everything needs to come together at the end to form the final prototype(s).
If you squinted really hard, my process looked like the above steps except with a few things missing and the rest jammed into just a couple of steps. Looking back on my archives, I did one pitiful set of drawings back in May, 2014. Then there was some googling that took the form of research. I collected images of typewriters, word processors, computers, handhelds, design objects, keyboards, and anything else I could find that looked interesting. But there were no more substantive drawings until jumping straight into CAD where I ended up doing most of my visual exploration. My first CAD models are dated august 8th, 2014.
I worked on the CAD models from mid August until mid September. In between, I sourced and modeled other components including switches, buttons, knobs, handles, screen, etc. Everything had to be modeled because I knew that I only had one, maybe two tries to get things made and to get them to fit together. Mistakes would take time and would waste materials (i.e. money).
Once I had the component placement and overall design of the housing completed, I started over. It is a lot easier to make a robust, clean (without artifacts) model when the final design is known. I also needed to put the housing through a DFM process based on the way I was intending to manufacture it.
After some convincing, the manager of the CNC zone at i3 allowed me to use the machine. He reacquainted me with the esoteric controls of the HAAS machine and I started to commit the process to memory. I find the HAAS control system extremely unintuitive yet it is generally considered one of the most user-friendly CNC controls on the market. There is a lot of room for error in setting up the machine and configuring the tools/work. Error, in this case, could mean a broken tool, the spindle hitting a clamp or the vise, an imperfect part, etc. Almost always the error is catastrophic with the exception of breaking a tool.
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