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Guest: Johannes Roselius, development engineer and creator of Botanium.
Host: Kevin Mako, founder of Product Startup and the leading expert in hardware startup consulting. A hardware entrepreneur since 1999, Kevin has advised more than 1,500 founders and built and scaled MAKO Invent through its acquisition by TriMech in 2024.
Turning a Simple Product Experience Into a Launch
Johannes Roselius explains how engineering, manufacturing, and product-management experience shaped Botanium, a compact system for growing herbs and chilies. The episode follows the effort to simplify a complex user problem and bring the product to market through Kickstarter.
Episode transcript
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Filip Valica: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Product Startup Podcast, a podcast that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors, product designers, and other industry professionals.
Filip Valica: This podcast is run by Mako Design and Invent, and hosted by Filip Valica. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial idea to putting your product on the shelf. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business. Now onto the show.
Filip Valica: The Product Startup, Episode 45. Johannes Roselius and Rasmus Toftdahl talk about what. A Kickstarter project that creates a hydroponic system for growing herbs and chilies from seeds.
Filip Valica: Hi everyone and welcome to the product startup podcast where we talk about turning ideas into successful products step by step. I'm Filip Valica and thanks for listening today.
Filip Valica: In the last episode, I talked to Elyse Daniels with Exodus Wear. Elise took a niche idea for fully customizable jackets and turned it into a multimillion dollar business. So make sure to check out episode 44 if you want to hear more about that.
Filip Valica: that and cold calling your customers.
Filip Valica: This week, I launched my first annual product startup audience survey and giveaway. Since January 2016, I've shared my and many others knowledge through the site and podcast. I've picked topics that I thought people would want to know more about.
Filip Valica: Can you help me shape the content that I create going forward? The survey should take about five to ten minutes of your time, and your contribution is super valuable to me. You can see it by going to the product startup.com and clicking enter now on the home page.
Filip Valica: So I know no one really wants to take a survey, but if you're creating your own products now, you know how critical it is to get that clear picture of your target audience when you're developing. Otherwise, you risk investing a lot of time and money into something that no one really wants.
Filip Valica: Also, writing and podcasting are really great tools, but they only communicate in one direction. For every thousand downloads I get of the product startup, I might only get one email with feedback.
Filip Valica: Last month, I had 8,000 downloads of the show, and I probably received less than a handful of comments.
Filip Valica: And while I really appreciate the people who ride in, it's hard for me to tell what's working and what's not, especially with downloads really fluctuating from episode to episode. If you're curious about the results, I will share my findings in aggregate with all participants.
Filip Valica: One grand prize winner, chosen at random, will receive $250 in prizes.
Filip Valica: And that includes an hour call with me to dive into your project and help. you take more action the create your eCommerce MasterPlan course from Chloë Thomas and you'll probably remember her from TPS episode 22 and also I'm going to
Filip Valica: reach into my own wallet and pull out a $50 Amazon.com gift card so if you enjoy the content on the show please let me know what you'd like to see in the future just go to the
Filip Valica: product startup dot com and click enter now before we get started with our main interview today, I wanted to share an update from Megan Cox of Amalie Beauty. You might remember
Filip Valica: her from episode 21, where she shared how she experimented on herself to solve her problem of diminishing eyelashes and created a formulation and started mass manufacturing it. So if you
Filip Valica: haven't checked out that episode, make sure to check out episode 21. Now here's Megan with an update. Megan, I'm really happy to talk to you. We last spoke in August and your show aired in
Filip Valica: October. You've made a lot of progress. So why don't we get started talking about some of the
Guests: things that you've done to really help the business grow? I think when we left off, I was preparing for the breast cancer awareness campaign. And I had spent a lot of time this summer working on influencer marketing. And I was just starting to ramp up my company blog.
Guests: So since then, I've actually not done any more influencer marketing. And I've turned to creating all of my own
Filip Valica: content on the blog. And that seems to be driving sales, albeit a little bit more slowly than I expected. Yeah. So whenever people talk about creating content to market their products, there's
Filip Valica: always this like hazy cloud about what engaging content means and what do people actually pick up and share on that type of thing, especially if you're just creating a product where it's tough to
Guests: create content around maybe one niche thing all the time. So can you talk about the types of things that you write about on your blog? The first three or four months, I focus really heavily just on eyebrows and eyelashes and just trying to answer questions that were really
Guests: close to the bottom of the funnel where people were about to purchase anyway.
Guests: And from there, I ran out of things to talk about, you know, just talking about eyelashes and eyebrows. So I made an e-book about eyebrows. I still need to finish the one about eyelashes. And I started diving
Guests: into more makeup and skincare and just trying to find my niche in the market more I really fit in. So not all of that is meant to directly drive sales, but it's more of a long-term game. to gain the consumer's trust and to offer some engaging content.
Guests: I will say that it's really hard to compete right now because the political news has just
Filip Valica: been crazy for the past like six months. So anything about makeup is just not selling this well right now. Yeah, that's interesting. And I've noticed my product sales on Amazon down after Christmas also at least 20 or 30%. And so I have some of the people that I work with.
Filip Valica: And I'm sure that part of that is just because of the Christmas rush. People went out and bought a bunch of stuff with their gift cards and things like that. And after that now there's a lull.
Filip Valica: Yeah. As your site has grown and you've picked up traffic, you mentioned that you haven't seen as much growth as you expected it. But on the flip side, you have seen a lot
Guests: of traffic to your site. Can you talk about maybe some general numbers to give people an idea of what they can expect? I actually started blogging, I think, in early March last year,
Guests: but I started blogging regularly in June. And the numbers were really slow in the beginning. I think when we talked, I probably was receiving about 3,000 blog views per month. And now, Now I'm just over 30,000 blog views per month. That's amazing.
Guests: Six months, maybe eight months span, I'm not sure.
Guests: I have 10 times the traffic. And it's been growing pretty steadily, you know, 20 or 30% every single month. That's great. No, that's amazing.
Filip Valica: I think the best part is that I've ranked, you know, first, second, or third for almost every eyelaster, eyebrow word now that I wanted. So everything I was trying to get, I at least am getting now.
Guests: So did you use any special techniques to find some of those keywords, or did you just use, like, Google search terms to go and explore what people were looking for? I didn't really use Google Analytics because I don't think
Guests: it's robust, not Google Analytics, but the Google keyword. Inspector. Yeah, yeah. I didn't really think it was robust enough. So I ended up using something called Term Explorer and you can put in a few
Guests: like main keywords and it will spit out 10,000 bulk keywords. And it also has an analysis tool so you can see how difficult it might be to rank for those words, how trusted the sites are that are already ranked in the top 10 spots.
Filip Valica: So what are your chances of taking over those keywords? Right. That's how I did my beginning analysis, especially for the eyebrow and eyelash keywords. And then from there, I've just talked about products that I like as I've grown. That sounds like it's a really good strategy and it's working out well for you.
Filip Valica: What were some of the other things that you've done to grow your brand?
Guests: I know that you've been featured on some other sites and other publications I've picked you up and kind of spread the word for you. How was that worked out for you and how did you make contact with them? Let's see. I think my biggest push since we last talk was.
Guests: to get into my state newspaper called the Indianapolis Star. They made the first really big push for me whenever I launched Wink. And I didn't have a contact there. They just picked up the story through
Guests: the Associated Press. But one of my customers put me in touch with the health writer. So I spent all summer courting her just like, can I come to your office and sending her products? And then finally
Guests: I was like, okay, this is it. I'm going back to China in two weeks. Do you want to come down here and
Filip Valica: and see my farm where I was growing the products or not. And she said, yes, and she came down. And that was it. And that story really got me through, like, all of Q3 or Q4 of last year. And probably one of the reasons they picked it up was because it was one of those local interest stories, right?
Filip Valica: Because it's somebody that's nearby that has done something that's interesting. And I didn't read the story, but I imagine the angle was Mark Young, recently graduated
Guests: student, create something local. You started a new line, basically, right, farm to face.
Guests: so that was kind of a new angle there too and so they had basically a lot of content to write about
Filip Valica: right i'm not the only one doing that either it's just that i was probably the only one that contacted the newspaper and said this is what i'm working on right now and i'm going to launch
Filip Valica: these products in a month so i suppose when the reporter came out and everything and they just asked you some general questions did you have to do any type of prep or was there any type of
Guests: angle that you pitched them or did you just say hey i'm happy to talk to you about all of these things you pick from the selection of topics to interview or was there any strategy involved? Not really.
Guests: I just wrote her an email and said, you know, these are organically grown, locally grown,
Guests: the products made from start to finish here in my hometown of Bedford.
Guests: And I think this is something that Indiana residents would be interested in is that I'm making these products here and they're good for you and they work. And she didn't tell me what she was going to talk about when she came and she brought down
Filip Valica: a photographer with her and then they took video and they put the video on their website. They like made a whole video. It made me show, show them how to make the products from start to finish. So it was way more than I was expecting, but I was ready, so it worked
Filip Valica: out fine. That's interesting. So when they did the file video, they just take like different snippets of your interview and then kind of slice them with some of the video of what you were
Guests: doing and make it kind of like a montage of how your product is put together. That sounds great. That sounds like good coverage. Congratulations on getting all of that stuff. Talk about some of the new lines that you've created and the new products that you've launched? Last fall, I made the farm-to-face products.
Guests: That was three products. One was Rewind. It's an anti-aging face oil. One was calm. It's like an anti-inflammation face oil. And then the other one was called Clarity. And that's an OCRM. That's oil cleansing method, wash, face wash.
Guests: And Rewind sold out within 24 hours. So that was obviously the really popular product of the whole collection. So I will be bringing that one back this year. That's mostly honeysuckle. So there aren't a lot of products in the market that are made of honeysuckle at all.
Guests: And I think people really love that because it smells exactly like honeysuckle. Like it encapsulate that smell perfectly. And then I am launching a new product probably in June from some persimmon fruit and leaves that I gathered last fall.
Guests: So the persimmon is like really popular fruit in my hometown area. And there's also been a lot of research to show that the leaves have very potent anti-wrinkle capability.
Filip Valica: So I thought, okay, put one in one together. It's like an homage or something to my hometown. Like, I really feel like it encapsulates my hometown feeling. So I don't know if that will be very popular. I'm not going to do a lot of press with the product, but I imagine it will be as popular as Rewind was.
Filip Valica: Yeah, that's interesting that you say that. How did you do your research for all your lines that you've launched to say, hey, this is how I should expand? You know, I think a lot of people that have existing products have a few options on how to expand.
Filip Valica: for example they could hit other international markets if they're selling locally they can you know go outward somewhere they could create additional product lines that complement their existing products or maybe they could even go deeper in the existing product set and do something
Guests: that's complementary that's uh you know before you use the product that you're selling or after use the product you're selling here's a second product how did you decide to go i guess laterally and and do something that's a little bit different than uh what you were doing with wink
Guests: and some of your other products before? It just honestly came from talking to my customers. I asked them what their biggest problems were. They told me, and I decided, okay, that's what I have to work on next.
Guests: I do think that after this year, I'm only launching those two farm-to-face products, and I might make a third one that's also honeysuckle-based, but that's all I'm doing for farm-to-face.
Guests: And next year, I'm finally going to launch some makeup products that go along with Wink, because Wink is still my biggest seller. It drives 90% of the same.
Filip Valica: sales in my company. So I think making accompanying products makes a lot of sense. So I talked to them. Those customers are very loyal. They buy everything I put out. They told me what they wanted. I solve the problem. They buy it. But I think in the future, I probably will make something that
Filip Valica: works with my hero product. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe some products that introduce to other product
Guests: lines that you've created, things like that. Have you thought about making a kit of some sort? Do those sell really well for Christmas or Valentine's Day or certain holidays where people can sample? a range of your products at the same time instead of just buying individual samples?
Guests: Well, I do have an idea to make a, like, a subscription box. I already have the boxes made, so it's happening.
Filip Valica: But make a subscription box and you can just add in the different items that you want and get a discount that way. So it wouldn't be a sampling box, but whatever you want, I'm going to make the makeup products. It's going to be mascara and brow products.
Filip Valica: I'm going to make them last two months like the wink so that just two months, Every two months, you get it delivered to your door and you're done. That sounds awesome. And this way you'll get people just the right amount of products so they can kind of go through it,
Filip Valica: confirm that it works because in two months they should be able to see results with Wink and with your other products, I imagine. So I'll just kind of get them hooked and they don't have to think about it. I know, speaking for my wife, I got her a subscription product.
Filip Valica: That's probably one of the top products in the beauty space that you probably know for Christmas. And she loved it. And she's not a girly girl in that sense where she likes getting those types.
Guests: products, but it was really good for her because she was able to tailor the box a little bit to her interests and was getting something new every month. And so that spark of interest from the consumer was really great. Like she was happy to get a new package every month. And it kind
Filip Valica: of, you know, kept the interest going, like a gift that kept on giving for the year, so to speak. It's exciting. I think we're talking about the same thing. I bought my mom the same thing last Christmas. It's so exciting to get a new box and you can look at it. And without even opening it,
Filip Valica: you already know what it is. And you're like, oh, new things inside. That company does a really great job with the boxes as well.
Guests: Each box is kind of different, and it's artsy, and it's unique. Like, she's kept all the boxes now in stores different things in all the boxes.
Filip Valica: So there's certainly ways of doing that. You know, that business model is something else we could talk about probably for an hour. They're effectively getting free samples and reselling them, right? They did start compensating small brands, though, because they've approached me a few times.
Filip Valica: So they do pay a little bit now, but it's not really. Yeah, it's not really worth it. Megan, thanks so much for sharing your growth with us. Is there a tip that you'd like to share with people that you've used maybe in the last year
Filip Valica: that's really helped your company expand a bit? You mentioned talking to audiences actually before I asked you that. Some of the recent people that we've had on the show said that they didn't really talk to the audience that they just went with their gut because they knew that the product was going to sell.
Filip Valica: And that kind of bucks the traditional trend where I come from where you have to really talk to audiences because you could have a big miss. And I think the difference there is if you're investing a lot of time or money up front, I think you have to talk to people.
Filip Valica: If a mistake isn't going to cost you a whole bunch of money and you're just going out there and shooting in the dark and you're okay with losing whatever that investment is, then go for it.
Guests: And I think some of the brands that have done it and been successful were the ones that where the startup costs were really low. And so they didn't have to talk to the audience and confirm that there was a market. Do you have a tip or do you feel like there's some advice in there about the last year of growth that other people,
Guests: people can take away from what you've done? Well, I do try to keep in touch with my audience as much as possible just to make sure they're happy because beauty is so competitive and you can't afford to lose your best customers. But I do still follow that practice at the same time.
Guests: When I launch a product, I try to make all the money back within the launch week. And if I'm not confident I can do that, I don't launch it. So I try to, you know, hedge my risk.
Guests: And really when I'm putting out new products like shine, that was to keep my most loyal customers happy because that's what they wanted. So then I offer that to them. And, you know,
Filip Valica: that's only positive for me. If I had to offer one tip, just what I've seen in the past year with myself is just focus on what's important and forget the rest. Like, I'm so laser
Filip Valica: focused right now that I don't even pay attention to all the other stuff that's going on. And sometimes I feel like, my God, I'm only doing five things a day. Like it's so small, but I really don't need to do more. You can just focus on what's important and forget the rest.
Filip Valica: That's great advice. And I imagine that you've had to assign some tasks to other people now to
Guests: upload some things from you. I have talked now. Last time we talked, I know you said that you were doing everything yourself, but there's only a matter of time where you have to start outsourcing some things if you want your company to grow. So, congrats on making that transition. I know it's very difficult.
Guests: Thank you.
Filip Valica: I think about two-thirds of the people that listen now are male. Where could those people go to find something for their wives, girlfriends, sisters? Where could they find your product?
Guests: Our website is Amelaybeautcom.
Filip Valica: You can also find our products on Amazon. Amazon sells them. AHA life, joyous, the grommet. I mean, we have several vendors online. If you just Google Amelie, you Google wink eyelash, you'll find me.
Filip Valica: Well, Megan, thanks so much for your help and for your support for the product startup and sharing your advice with listeners. And I wish you all the best in the next year. And hopefully we'll talk again in a year and you'll have even more success to share with us. Sounds great. Thank you so much for having me.
Filip Valica: Thanks again to Megan Cox of Amelie Beauty. for coming on and sharing an update with us. You can check out her original interview at Episode 21. And now let's hear from Johannes and Razmas from Botanium. Hi, Johannes and Rasmus. Thanks for joining us on the show today. Hello.
Filip Valica: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Guests: So I'm really excited to have you guys on the show because I'm a mechanical engineer and I definitely appreciate all the steps that go into product development. And you guys have deep backgrounds in creating products. Rasmus, your industrial designer.
Guests: and Johannes, a development engineer with a lot of experience taking other products to market. Can you talk briefly about your individual experiences before you started this Kickstarter campaign?
Guests: As you said, I'm an industrial designer, so I have been working with some medical products at design consultancy, and I've also been involved in interaction design at another company.
Guests: Also, I've been active in my own company for a little while before I met Johannes and started doing this. Yes, and me, Johannes. I'm a mechanical engineer, so I've been working both as
Filip Valica: big companies and small companies and working as a consultant for a couple of years. And in many cases, like from the beginning of conceptual development and to taking their product to the
Filip Valica: market. And it's been like within different fields, it's been consumer products and it's been medical technology and life science and stuff like that. So most of the steps regarding in product development I've been involved in for about 10 years now.
Filip Valica: Yeah, great.
Guests: So it's awesome to have you guys on the show because we'll probably definitely get into some of the details that we normally don't with some of the more non-technical founders. Why don't we start with Botanium?
Guests: You had the idea back in early January 2014 and started working on it, creating the concept and prototype towards the end of that year. Talk a little bit about the need for having a device that will help.
Guests: help you grow herbs and chilies and other hydroponic plants. A big problem as we see it is that a lot of people want to have green things in their hopes.
Filip Valica: Most people are attracted to the idea of having like basil growing in their windowsill or having their fresh grown chili in their food, but very few are gifted with green thumbs.
Filip Valica: So we wanted to create something that makes it really easy to create your own food, but still not making a do-it-yourself solution that looks crap. So we wanted to combine design and fast-growing into a product.
Filip Valica: And that's basically the idea behind botanium. And listeners, once they go to the show,
Guests: they're going to be able to pull up the show notes and see how your final product looks and it's really elegant. It's basically shaped like a vase. And everything is kind of self-contained in that.
Guests: It's not the typical hydroponic plant solution where you have, lights hanging from things. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how the concept evolved as you started, creating the prototype at the end of 2014.
Guests: How did that evolve as you started working with different materials and testing different concepts? Well, the first few prototypes were 3D printed by ourselves.
Guests: We have an ultimaker, 3D printer that we use to make prototypes. Actually, the concept hasn't changed that much since the beginning. It was a lot of sketching involved in the first phase, but then as we mirror prototypes, we have made, like, small changes,
Guests: mostly in the way that the water drains in the bottom. So before we had, like, this filter that made sure that the roots couldn't get through, but the water could. But now we've changed to a simpler solution that's more easy to manufacture.
Filip Valica: It was okay to 3D print it, but to manufacture it would require a lot more time and effort and money. Yeah, the concept was pretty much the same, and we have changed, like, size and, like, fine-tune it,
Guests: but the concept haven't changed much during the development. Like, since I come in in the project, we have changed a lot of how to manufacture it, because that we didn't have an solution on before.
Guests: But, like, regarding the concept, it actually looks quite similar as it did, like, from the first type of prototypes. Yeah, and so it might be helpful for you guys to describe a little bit of how the unit works,
Filip Valica: because it's got some electronic components as well, some mechanical components. It's a more complicated piece of product than just a static item that can get produced.
Guests: We have an inbuilt timer connected to a pump and also a set of pipes so we get the water up and we have a like a sprinkler system in the top that rains water over the plant.
Guests: Yeah, it's like a water tank in the bottom and then we have another piece that is on top of that in which the plant is growing in and then the water moves up to the top part and then it brings back into
Guests: the bottom again so it reuses the water yeah and it's on a timer i imagine what the customer can set
Filip Valica: how often to water the plant uh the timer is actually preset okay uh so the users don't need to worry about that we want to keep it as simple as possible that's also one of the things with this
Filip Valica: because we don't have to adjust it for different plants because all the excess water uh goes back into the tank so we just have a time for the plants that need most
Guests: water and for all other plants the water just go back into the tank so we don't have to have any adjustments we don't need to have any apps or anything to be able to control this this is like a self-controlled system yeah that's very smart
Guests: I think early on one of the bigger challenges on a lot of products is simplifying the design down to just the core essentials can you talk a little about maybe some of the
Guests: ideas that you validated in your process for going out to the market and seeing what types of
Filip Valica: features people really wanted it and if they would get into something like this yeah well we have been talking to other people everybody that we talk to want some features like everybody is like
Guests: having suggestions on more features and but we we really wanted to keep this simple we want to have a product which everybody can use everybody would like it and it's not like a lot of maintenance And we wanted to solve all the problems with this growing.
Filip Valica: So this could control itself, but we didn't want it complicated for the user.
Guests: We wanted to be super simple to use. And we embraced the simplicity of it and want to have it as minimalistic as minimalistic as possible. Congratulations on you guys for sticking to that. Like I said, it's really hard because I feel if you talk to 10 different people,
Filip Valica: they might give you 10 different answers on what they prefer in a product. Sure. And people always talk about apps and glowing LED. and you know extra features it's good to have a vision beforehand so you have something to stick at
Filip Valica: because if you listen to all the suggestions then in the end it's going to be really a real mess yeah frankenstein yeah exactly that's our vision from the beginning to not have like
Filip Valica: frankestine or we didn't want this to be like super gadget like we wanted to be more of a design feature and it's going to be possible to grow everything but shouldn't be worried about so much set up and stuff like that your final product looks like something that
Guests: It could be in a home, and it's almost not seen or heard. It just kind of blends into the background and with the existing furnishings in the space. It's certainly not a product that you would see on Star Trek or anything like that that's controlled by your voice.
Guests: Like you said, like the Amazon Echo or any of these other devices. That's the gold. Talk a little bit about reaching out to some of these people to have conversations. I think conversations are probably the most valuable things that we could do as designers early on in the design process.
Guests: just to get that qualitative feedback, where did you find some of these people to have conversations with and how did you do that?
Guests: Well, I am a shilly growing enthusiast, so I reached out to some people in a Facebook group that's called.
Guests: Well, it's in Swedish, so you won't understand anyways, but it's for people who like to grow chili as a hobby, basically. I've been active at that group in some years and actually just reached out to them and asked them what they thought.
Guests: and if they had any other thoughts in mind.
Filip Valica: So it's actually mainly directed at Chile users, but it works with all kinds of plants, but we have mostly been talking to people who like to grow Chile, actually. But then also we have talked to our friends, and our main customer, we don't see it as people
Filip Valica: that is really interested in growing. Like, we want to have people that doesn't have the interest, but they just like the idea of have something to grow. So, like, we have been talking to friends, and also, like, this Kickstarter campaign is a way of getting feedback
Filip Valica: from people. Before we did this kickstep, the Erasmus had done some 3D printed prototypes that they have sold to some people. So they were like maybe 30 people that have tried it out and
Filip Valica: we have got feedback from. That's a great idea to sell some of your early prototypes, especially
Guests: considering the cost of prototyping can get a little bit expensive if you don't have your own 3D printer. So actually one of the things that I picked up from you early on was having a 3D printer yourself is great if you're going to be iterating the design a lot because it gives you that instant
Guests: feedback and you don't have to wait for parts to come in so I imagine that you're able to make pretty quick tweaks to the design really easily in 2016 when you started going through and working
Guests: with different prototypes and doing the mechanical and electrical engineering can you talk about the process for that about selecting components and deciding on what things to include from what
Guests: manufacturers many of the like suppliers we have been talking to our supplies that we have been working for another project before so we have it was like we have to have a low cost
Guests: because this is a consumer product so we have to keep all the cost down for to be a successful product so we talked to suppliers that we have been working with before and for example for
Guests: the pumps and like stuff like that we we just ordered a lot of them and tested them out
Filip Valica: because it's a lot of things with noise and the cost and quality so we started before we like further developing it to order a lot of samples of those parts as well. Testing them out in different products before we choose some certain parts.
Filip Valica: And also for the electronic design, we work with some, we do all the design ourselves. We have all the part component design in-house, like except for pumps and standard components
Guests: like that, but all the circuit boards and all the mechanical parts. So we used supplies that we have worked with before that we know that communication was easy and that we know could deliver the quality we want. wanted basically.
Guests: Yeah, that's always tough in the beginning to pick the right components because you
Filip Valica: can't just pick 10 parts off of a catalog and expect all 10 parts to work well together. They have to work with maybe the same voltage and accept the right signals. Since you created your own custom control board, that definitely helped with that because
Guests: you were responsible for interfacing with everything like that. Did you find any challenges with working with components from different manufacturers that maybe weren't designed to work directly together? No, basically not. Like we have tried to keep it as simple as possible.
Guests: And as you said, like since we designed the electron cell, we could adapt it to the pumps that we choose, for example. And it's not a lot of components in it. It's some pipes and all the mechanical parts we have designed ourselves so we can adjust
Guests: the dimensions for it to the components that we have chosen. Yeah, so some people might look back and say, you guys spent almost two years from concept to your final prototype. Why did it take so long? Why isn't it something that we can get done in a month?
Guests: Yeah, I think that's because of the iterative process of development.
Filip Valica: I always see, like, from all the projects I've been working with, I see, like, if you do more prototypes, you'll get, like, a more successful product. And our vision is always to make a really nice product. We don't want to make something that people see and they feel flimsy or, like, we want
Filip Valica: it to be top-notch product. And then we have to test everything out because, like, even if we have it in a 3-D CAD environment,
Guests: we're not going to be able to predict what type of feeling you get out of looking. at this product and feeling it and the quality feel and stuff. And also like making sure that the plants like it, that's a process that you can't really
Filip Valica: hurry up. So you have to let the plans grow for a while and then see how it works and compare it with the ordinary growing and so forth. That's a very good point, doing a lot of that testing just to make sure that your customers aren't going to have any of those issues.
Filip Valica: As you started talking to these people in late 2014, early 2015, did you always plan on doing
Guests: a Kickstarter and did you was it at that point where you started to collect people's email addresses and contact information to create your audience from from the point when me and rasmus decided
Guests: that we want to take this to the market this product is perfect for crown funding and it's also a very high cost of doing all that the tooling sort of resources that's a perfect platform for them and i think a lot of people struggle with that sometimes because maybe they don't put in an effort to
Guests: creating those contacts with their audience and taking all their contact information down, so when it comes time to launch, they don't have as large of an audience as possible. Do you have any tips to help people out for whenever
Guests: they're looking to launch their own Kickstarter, but they might still have a few months to go? In hindsight, I say that you should have spent more time collecting email addresses and building up with families beforehand, because it's going to make it much more easier
Filip Valica: once you start. I think we got a bit lucky, too, with the campaign, because got so high up on Kickstarter in the first few days. So it kind of rolled by itself, so to speak. But I think, yeah, you should start at least a year.
Filip Valica: Just have a landing page and collect email addresses and reach out to people and show it to every person you meet. People do wrong. They try to keep the ID for themselves and they want to do a big launch when they are ready with everything.
Filip Valica: And we have been talking quite openly about this
Guests: and like telling everybody about it, showing some pictures on prototypes and like get people interested in development. then that's an important way if you're going to do a crowdfunding campaign, especially.
Guests: Just to give people an idea, you have about 10 days to go in your campaign, a little bit over 1,100 backers.
Filip Valica: Your goal was originally around $56,000 US, and I think you should probably easily double that by the end of the campaign.
Guests: As you launched the Kickstarter and you started getting funds and backers in, what were some of the things that you did that you think helped improve the campaign? Were you tweaking the campaign at all while it was going on?
Guests: I imagine it's a full-time job to conduct the campaign. We didn't really change anything on the page. Most of our work was answering questions and talking to journalists and just reaching out to people. But we didn't change the contents of it.
Guests: The only thing we basically changed was that we added FAQ with some of the questions that we got a lot of the time in the beginning. So you had a pretty good idea of what it takes to make a successful Kickstarter that before you,
Guests: you even started then yeah we tried to make as much research as we could so we looked at successful
Filip Valica: campaigns and tried to figure out what made them work that well also read a lot of articles on internet there's a lot of information out there so i recommend to do your research before you
Filip Valica: try to build your own campaign and study as rasmus said like we started like hundreds of other
Guests: campaigns and you can't like just go copy something else because everything is different we have a different product so we have to take some good parts from a lot of different campaigns and we also talk to some other campaigns, like some Swedish people that have made successful campaigns
Guests: on Kickstarter before. So we met them and we had them as like advice stories for stuff and we had them look at our things. And then they told us how they did. And we took the best parts from a lot of different campaigns. That's really smart. Yeah, that's the engineers approach,
Guests: right? As you go out there and do your research, consolidate it all and then come up with a plan. I see a lot of things that are done really well in the campaign. Can you mention maybe a few of them that you think that you did particularly well that you could give some advice to other people
Guests: that are starting their campaign i think our video turned out to be really good and we actually had a really long process finding people that could help us because we were as we are a startup we can't really afford the biggest companies to help us so we had to find really good people
Filip Valica: who could help us make this in not too high price you can know but also uh like you prepare a lot before the video was shot.
Guests: Make a script, make a, like, plan the scenes and who is going to be in it and what were we going to show and make it short so it doesn't bore the people. A lot of things to think about.
Filip Valica: And it was a big process just doing the video, like to plan it out and to have those, like as Rasmus said, like a lot of people. We met a lot of video guys, looked at a lot of samples from what they have made and to go with our gut feeling of the people we think was really good.
Guests: And then also we were in the control of how do we want it to be ourselves from looking at a lot of other Kickstarter videos. Yeah, and looking through your page, you can tell that you put a lot of time in the video as well as a lot of the graphics.
Guests: You've got some really nice infographics on your page as well as an animated infographic, which is something that's trending this year. Did you create those yourself or did you hire somebody to do those? We had somebody.
Guests: The video we had some people helping us with and we had a good. graphical design we have some people helping us and also the animations yeah so it's a relatively
Filip Valica: large project then as you start to add people to the team can you talk about maybe how big your team got and how many people it took to bring this project to success we had like two guys helping us with
Filip Valica: the video and my girlfriend was in the video helping us as an actor actress and then we had the graphical
Guests: designer that's one more person and another friend helped us with the animations and then we had maybe two bull guys helping us with the PR general advice so when it adds up it's like it's a few people
Guests: but the important thing is to realize that we can't do everything ourselves even though we want to maybe like even if we could like even if we could do some nice design we don't have the time
Filip Valica: to do everything because it's it's a lot of things to do so we have to have some people that does some stuff for us yeah when you're first starting out with a project especially for project like this that looks like something that you bootstrap I'm
Guests: imagine that this was done on the side that you have your day jobs and you have your clients and you have other projects that you're working on and this is more of a labor of love so to speak this is just a project that you really are passionate about is that right yeah it was in the
Guests: beginning the first time we worked on this on the side but now we have now we're almost
Filip Valica: working full time on this actually because it's a lot it's a lot of stuff to do and and we saw that as we spend more time to it we can do it faster like that's why it's
Filip Valica: Also one of the reason why it was a bit slower in the beginning, and it took this couple of years to reach where we are now.
Guests: Yeah, so as you increased the size of your team, how are you able to reward them for participating? Because it's really hard to pay people up front whenever you don't have money coming in for many product sales. Yeah, it's been different, like with some different people.
Guests: Like, depends how involved they have been. Like, all of those people haven't been really involved.
Filip Valica: So some of them have helped us just for it. They have been friends, they have those for free, and some we have given some money, and some are going to get something in the future. Like, it depends of what they have done. Yeah, so you have to be a bit creative whenever you're talking to everybody, right?
Filip Valica: Because I think the first thing people will ask for, especially if it's people that you haven't worked with before, is, you know, they'll ask to be compensated with money.
Guests: But I imagine that you want to hold on to as much cash as you can because you need to spend it on on things that you can't trade or barter for, like your manufacturing, startup costs and all sorts of other things. That's one of the hard part.
Guests: Now when we're working full-time with this, how are we going to keep ourselves like paying the business and stuff like that? We're like searching for scholarships and like government support in some places and we have to get some place to an incubator that we can be for free, for example, now.
Guests: And you have to be creative in those things. Yeah, that's a great idea.
Filip Valica: I'm glad that you brought up government grants and in contest and incubators and things like that. I think that's one of the things that's overlooked a lot. There's a lot of resources that are probably local to you or within driving.
Filip Valica: distance to you that don't get advertised as much because they might be non-profit or they're non-commercial options to some of these issues, you know, working with artist spaces to get some of that office space, like you said, if you don't have an incubator nearby. Yeah, I think it's a lot of options.
Filip Valica: And as you said, we have been contacted with like hundreds of people want to help us with advertising and stuff like that during the campaign and they charge big things for it. And we have so far issues and not use any of those, even if it could have made our campaign
Guests: even a lot bigger but if you take away all the fixed costs that we already have of manufacturing and shipping and stuff like that it wouldn't be much left even if we raise more money of using
Guests: those services talk a little bit about some of the costs here to get people an idea of how much money they should be raising for their own Kickstarter now a lot of the products that I've experienced in
Filip Valica: their landed manufactured cost in the country is sometimes between one-third and one-quarter of what it will sell for, you know, taking into account all the, you know, sales and advertising costs and
Filip Valica: marketing costs and maybe sometimes there's retailers that are involved in which case, manufacturing costs has to be even lower than that. Are you creating a large profit through your Kickstarter or are you just
Filip Valica: breaking even or is it just to fund be the molds and the initial production run and you're self-funding some of the initial orders that you're going to be selling through your site? I would say like we're not going to do any profit like during the Kickstarter campaign
Filip Valica: and we are probably going to have to add a little bit more money as well to cover because the big part of a product like this is the tool is so that is going to be about
Guests: everything that we get on Kickstarter we have some other funds that we're going to put in to cover everything else yeah so you're not going to be sitting on a beach with a laptop collecting funds from Kickstarter expecting that you're going to become rich as order
Guests: come in no not in a couple of years I think and I think that's one of the hardest things to show people is I think they expect now that everything will go viral and now their idea is going to be fully funded and they'll make tons of money and in
Guests: reality it just helps you source some of the funds to kind of keep your project going forward but you still have to have that faith that you're going to be successful and like you said you're going to end up putting a lot of your own
Filip Valica: funds into it that must be pretty difficult especially if you have you know other projects going on or other products that you're looking to fund or I'm sure friends and family sometimes might not always be the most supportive of your idea you know I can't
Filip Valica: believe you're going to put this much money into this side project right now that we're
Guests: getting funded they are starting to understand why we are doing this why we are putting so much energy into this and it's worth every minute of it because making your product live
Guests: like this it's priceless yeah it's it's super fun and now people like our friends and people around that they see the vision that we had like other people except us like our products it was harder
Guests: to explain like we have this it's a self-watering pot and we have this minimalistic design and even if we have showed it it is hard for people to get into our vision but now when we have done the successful campaign we have explained everything on the kickstarter page we have done the
Filip Valica: movie and people also see that other people like it so so it's a big exchange in the game yeah it must be incredibly validating congratulations guys on being able to get this
Filip Valica: far with it and it looks super professional the your Kickstarter page looks amazing the product looks very elegantly designed so you can tell people that have a lot of design experience have worked on this thanks the the next time we're gonna
Filip Valica: make product we talk about launching that on Kickstarter too probably it's gonna be much easier the next time when we already have people knowing about us and
Guests: what we do I think that that's gonna help us a lot when you make another campaign that you have these backers already there And you can post another product and you can get an instant backers in that way. Right.
Guests: And the reason to be on Kickstarter is not just get funds. It's also to get people to know about our product because, like, they've got some attention to it. So a lot of more people that than before knows about our product now. So it's a good way of releasing, I think, products.
Guests: Yeah, that's a very good point, developing that community and developing an audience around you. As you've gone through this project, have you learned something that you can pass along to people that said, okay, you know, on our second project that we're going to do, I think we're going to make
Guests: some of these changes. I know you mentioned about maybe getting email addresses a little bit earlier. You know, now you have an audience. It looks like some of the other stuff that you did went pretty easily and it was pretty straightforward.
Guests: But I imagine that there were probably some steps along the way that they didn't go quite as planned. It's nothing major that we would change, I think. But as you said, like we would start earlier to collect emails to get proud, to follow
Filip Valica: of us and to know about that probably just before lunch so we can get people to get in to help us in the beginning of the campaign and most of the things we know now is like small
Filip Valica: details it's like who which websites to contact which journalists and which which blogs and which
Guests: services to use that can help us because we have used some things that that haven't been that
Filip Valica: helpful and so it's it's on the detail level but it would make it's much easier for us to do a second campaign. And also, when it comes to marketing, we don't really have that competence that
Filip Valica: would be ideal, I think. So if we had the marketing person within our team, that would be even greater, I think, because now we had to improvise ourselves and do our research and, you know,
Filip Valica: find out how Facebook ads work and AdWords work. And that's something that you would like to have known before you started.
Filip Valica: For marketing amateurs, you guys did a fantastic job. So congratulations on your success. Thanks again for sharing your story with us and for showing us how you came to market.
Filip Valica: Can you share with people how they can get their own botanium and how they can maybe connect with you in the future for other projects? Yeah, you can go to our website, botanium.fm.
Filip Valica: It's now the making to the Kickstarter page, but in the future it's going to be the website for the product. Guys, thanks again for coming on the show. really appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us and hopefully we'll have you on the show again
Filip Valica: in maybe six or nine months and you can talk about your future projects that you're working on sure it's a lovely thank thank you very much thank you i hope that you took away some great points about product development and kick starter from johannis and rasmus here my three takeaways
Filip Valica: for this week number one make it easy to iterate since it can take a few prototypes to get the design of a product right we can considerably shorten this time by buying our own tools or using
Filip Valica: local equipment to speed up the process. I certainly don't advocate everyone buying a 3D printer or some other expensive gear if you don't need it, but it's worth contacting local freelancers or
Filip Valica: makerspaces and seeing what's available. Number two, focus on the minimum viable product. It's difficult to keep a design simple, especially with input from a broad audience. Keep your end goal in
Filip Valica: mind and edit without mercy. What is the problem that your product will solve better than anything else on the market. Focus on that, and the rest is jewelry. Number three, hire help on a budget.
Filip Valica: Personal product-based businesses, unlike software development and many service-based businesses, require much more cash up front. Save as much as you can for production and try to barter with
Filip Valica: friends and freelancers with future products or services in trade. If you'd like to get these takeaways in your inbox every week, just go to the product startup.com, scroll to the footer of any
Filip Valica: page and sign up to the weekly wrap-up. As usual, if you have any questions or comments, I've put all the links that we've covered under the show notes posted on the product startup.com.
Filip Valica: Join me next time as I speak with Jason Markow with text artist. He's part surfer, part-twisted typographer, and he's been warping words from his Carlsbad Village studio since 2011. Normally I don't have artists on the show, but this one's going to be a little bit different.
Filip Valica: So make sure to check out that episode next week.
Filip Valica: Thank you for taking part in the annual audience survey without input from listeners and readers like you, I'm really creating content in the dark. So your support makes the product startup possible. And I thank you for listening
Filip Valica: on the show and reading the site. To go to the product startup.com, click enter now to get started. Thanks again for joining me and I hope that you're taking action on your products. I'll see you again next week.
Filip Valica: Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Product Startup podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success.
Filip Valica: This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent, the first firm in in North America to provide global caliber end-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product businesses.
Filip Valica: If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to MakoDesign.com. That's M-A-K-O-Dign.com for a free consultation from one of Mako-Design for design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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