Product Startup Podcast Episode 162: Crowdfunding Prelaunch Strategy

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from the co-founder of the largest crowdfunding platform in the world on how to pre-plan, build,

00:00:06 Kevin Mako: and execute a successful crowdfunding campaign for your new hardware product.

00:00:10 Narrator: You're listening to The Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between.

00:00:18 Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for physical product startups, sponsored

00:00:22 Narrator: by PTC's two best-in-class 3D CAD product development software solutions, Onshape, and Creo, and produced by Mako Design + Invent, the original

00:00:30 Narrator: firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored specifically to

00:00:34 Kevin Mako: startups small manufacturers and inventors welcome back everyone i'm very excited to introduce will ford back to the

00:00:40 Kevin Mako: show will's a co-founder of LaunchBoom the world's largest crowdfunding platform he also runs the

00:00:45 Kevin Mako: crowdfunded summit a virtual crowdfunding event which i'm also a keynote at again coming up in may

00:00:50 Kevin Mako: twenty twenty three and as a quick heads up will is offering free tickets for a limited time to

00:00:54 Kevin Mako: listeners of this podcast today will is going to share some valuable knowledge in how inventors

00:00:58 Kevin Mako: startups and small manufacturers can use small trial marketing and sales techniques to gauge how successful a crowdfunding campaign will be.

00:01:05 Kevin Mako: Other tips and tricks along the way to a successful product launch and a story of how crowdfunding has changed over the years. Now on to the episode.

00:01:13 Kevin Mako: Hey Will, welcome back to the show.

00:01:15 Kevin Mako: It's great to be here, Kevin. Thanks so much for having me back. Always a nice talk to you. You are one of the foremost experts on crowdfunding in the world.

00:01:22 Kevin Mako: What better person to talk about crowdfunding today? How hardware startups actually launch their product using crowdfunding.

00:01:28 Kevin Mako: What is crowdfunding and what are some of the best practices? And how's it evolving now into 2023?

00:01:34 Kevin Mako: Because major changes have happened over the last 10 years and you've been through all of that. So just to kick it off, Will, just give us a bit of a background.

00:01:41 Will Ford: How did you get to where you are today? Yeah. And that's a loaded question, Kevin. And I won't go too deep down the rabbit hole.

00:01:47 Will Ford: But just to kind of keep things high level, I was working on my own product launch on Kickstarter.

00:01:53 Will Ford: And I was looking for a marketing agency to help me build what we call today a pre-launch community.

00:02:00 Will Ford: And so what that is is I thought, well, wouldn't it make sense to build a community of people that are excited about the product launch before going to Kickstarter?

00:02:09 Will Ford: And the idea was like by building a large community that's engaged, excited, when you go to Kickstarter, you should be able to have what I call as a launch boot.

00:02:17 Will Ford: effect where you get the entire campaign funded in the first day.

00:02:21 Will Ford: And when that happens, you become the top ranked on Kickstarter. So when Kickstarter sees all this outside traffic coming into their

00:02:27 Will Ford: platform and converting, they realize that the project's popular and that people want to see it. So they start to push it to their massive organic audiences of tens of millions

00:02:37 Will Ford: of backers worldwide. And when that happens, you start to get this organic lift from their audiences. And it makes it so much

00:02:44 Will Ford: easier to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars in pre-sale revenue. And the beauty of Kickstarter or Indiegogo is it's a pre-sale.

00:02:53 Will Ford: So you're just pre-selling your product. So as an entrepreneur, Kevin, the reason I gravitated toward Kickstarter in the

00:02:59 Will Ford: first place was I couldn't believe that I could take a prototype and I could pre-sell it to thousands of people worldwide and then take that money up front and have all

00:03:08 Will Ford: the time in the world to figure out manufacturing and delivery. So it basically kind of made it so much.

00:03:14 Will Ford: much easier, less risky for me to basically not have to come up with the big budgets up front and not have to figure out manufacturing up front.

00:03:22 Will Ford: So the beauty of Kickstarter and Indiegogo is it really is the best place to validate new product ideas and to do it much faster with much less financial risk.

00:03:31 Will Ford: Now, what's really interesting is when I first started experimenting with Kickstarter Indigo and launching products there in the early years, like I said earlier,

00:03:40 Will Ford: I was trying to find a marketing agency that could help me build that pre-launch community and help me properly prepare my campaign.

00:03:46 Will Ford: So I'd have a beautiful video, have an engaged audience ready to buy. So when I go into Kickstarter or Indigo, I had that LaunchBoom effect. And after doing a ton of

00:03:54 Will Ford: research, I realized there's no one out there providing any support for any campaigner or product creator. And I actually reached out to Kickstarter's team.

00:04:03 Will Ford: This is like back in 2014. I reached out to Indiegogo's team. And I asked, hey, you know, who can support my product launch? And they're like, well, we don't offer those services.

00:04:11 Will Ford: We're more focused on the backer experience. best practices, good luck. We hope you succeed. So that's when the light bulb went off, Kevin. That's when I was like, wait a minute.

00:04:20 Will Ford: There's an opportunity here to build a marketing agency to actually support the product creator, the entrepreneur.

00:04:28 Will Ford: And basically, I decided to buy launchroom.com and build it. And that was years ago, almost a decade ago. And here we are today. We've gone through

00:04:37 Will Ford: a lot of growth. We've also gone through a lot of change, Kevin.

00:04:40 Kevin Mako: Yeah, I'm excited to dive into those details here shortly. Well, it's quite a story, you know, 10 years being in the crowdfunding space. And I really

00:04:47 Kevin Mako: like how you've identified the pre-launch, because I think when most people are first looking into

00:04:52 Kevin Mako: crowdfunding, whether it's Kickstarter or Indie Go-Go, they think of this idea of putting it on the platform and then having all these sales roll in throughout that 30-day cycle.

00:05:01 Kevin Mako: But the reality is, and what you identified really early. First of all, is that you need support for this sort of thing. And one way or another,

00:05:06 Kevin Mako: you can't just go in blind and try and figure this out on your own from day one. One, you need the support. Two, you need to look at building the community in advance of

00:05:15 Kevin Mako: your actual campaign. And that really is the key difference between success and failure on Kickstarter, especially with some of these

00:05:22 Kevin Mako: mega campaigns, especially if you can hit your target on that magic day one formula, which you

00:05:26 Will Ford: figured out. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And literally, we could spend the next two hours talking

00:05:31 Will Ford: about pre-launch, because at the end of the day, for everyone listening today, it's the most important thing to focus on when launching any product.

00:05:40 Will Ford: And what we've done over the years is we've actually put a lot of time in work and we've built out a much more sophisticated pre -launch system.

00:05:49 Will Ford: In the early days, Kickstarter first opened its doors, which wasn't long ago. We Kickstarter Indiegogo, they both started roughly around the same time, 2008, 2009.

00:05:58 Will Ford: And in the early days, there were a ton of backers looking for cool projects, but there weren't as many projects there because they were early.

00:06:03 Will Ford: So you could just post your product and you could raise a bunch of money. And then, Shortly thereafter, a few years later, a lot of product creators are realizing like,

00:06:12 Will Ford: wait a minute, these product launches are raising like hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars in pre-launch revenue, and they're not putting that much into it.

00:06:19 Will Ford: Like, this is, of course, the ideal place to launch. But over time, it became super saturated with hundreds and eventually thousands of products launching every week, every month.

00:06:28 Will Ford: So that's where pre-launch became even more important. And what we've done over the years is we've evolved.

00:06:34 Will Ford: So when we first started, our goal was to build just a simple lead funnel. and do Facebook, Instagram advertising, and get people to opt in submitting their email address

00:06:43 Will Ford: so we can notify them when we'd launch. And that process, it still works today, but you're going to get a lower conversion there. You're usually going to get somewhere

00:06:51 Will Ford: between 5, 6% conversion rates off an email list, especially if it's focused on the campaign and you've done it through Facebook, Instagram, and built that audience.

00:07:00 Will Ford: But we took it one step further. We realized that if we collect the email address, well, let's see if we can get them to commit to a reservation.

00:07:08 Will Ford: And what that means is as soon as someone opts in and gives an email, we then take them to another page and we say, thank you so much for your interest in our product.

00:07:16 Will Ford: Please know that the first thousand backers are going to get an even better deal and they're going to get early delivery before everybody else.

00:07:23 Will Ford: So if you do want the best deal today, before we go to Kickstarter or Indiegogo, all you have to do is place a $1 money back guarantee

00:07:31 Will Ford: deposit and you're going to lock yourself into the best deal right now before we go live. only 1,000 units available.

00:07:38 Will Ford: Now, the reason that next step was so powerful is because those people that place that dollar commitment are 30 times more likely to

00:07:46 Will Ford: back the campaign versus that email opt-in through the link funnel. So what's really cool about that reservation system is that

00:07:53 Will Ford: now, on average, a third or more of those reservations will become a backer when you launch

00:07:58 Will Ford: on Kickstarter. So, you know, from a high level, Kevin, if we spend, you know, two, three months before a Kickstarter Indiegogo campaign.

00:08:05 Will Ford: And let's just say we just collect 3,000 reservations, dollar reservations. We know when we launch on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, we know we're going to

00:08:13 Will Ford: have a thousand or more backers instantly within the first hour, always the first day. And then

00:08:18 Will Ford: that comes to like the next point, which is how we set the campaign goal. So a lot of people

00:08:23 Will Ford: when they come into crowdfunding, they'll go, well, I want to raise a million dollars, right? Everyone

00:08:27 Will Ford: does. But at the end of the day, you don't want to set your campaign goal at a million. What you want to do is the opposite. You want to set the campaign goal.

00:08:34 Will Ford: You know, we generally set those goals anywhere from 10 to 50,000. And that goal is manipulated upon the pre-launch data that we know will convert before we go live.

00:08:42 Will Ford: So the idea is you go to Kickstarter Indiegogo and you crush that campaign goal within the first couple hours after it goes live, always the first day. And then you

00:08:51 Will Ford: become the most popular on the platform. Then the platform being Kickstarter Indigo, they start to promote the project to their audiences.

00:08:58 Will Ford: And then you see this massive LaunchBoom effect where you go

00:09:01 Kevin Mako: from 10, 50,000 to hundreds of thousands and potentially millions by the end of the campaign. That's so powerful.

00:09:07 Will Ford: And you guys have seen numerous six, seven figure campaigns through this sort of model. Yeah. When we first started, I'd say in the early years, it definitely took a

00:09:17 Will Ford: couple of years to figure all this out, to be honest. A lot of it was trial and error. And then what was

00:09:22 Will Ford: nice about Launch Room is this is the first company that I've self-funded without angel investors or investment. So it forced us to be a lot smarter with how we grew.

00:09:30 Will Ford: So we grew slower in the the beginning. And we, honestly, it forced us to be smarter in a lot of the decisions we were making.

00:09:36 Will Ford: Once we figured out the right process and we were able to build those systems to emulate the same

00:09:41 Will Ford: type of outcome for all our clients, that's really when we stepped on the gas and started to scale.

00:09:45 Will Ford: And the way I started to scale LaunchBoom, I actually did the riskiest thing ever. I actually

00:09:50 Will Ford: took a meeting with Kickstarter in their offices in Brooklyn and I laid out my business model on their

00:09:55 Will Ford: desk. And I said, hey, this is why our campaigns are doing hundreds of thousands, millions of every time we launch them. This is what's called pre-launch.

00:10:02 Will Ford: And we pioneered that. We invented the pre-launch. And the reason I call it risky is because it was because Kickstarter had way deeper pockets

00:10:09 Will Ford: than I had. And they could have easily ripped off the model and done it themselves. But at the time, they were more focused on the backer experience.

00:10:15 Will Ford: They weren't us focused on the creator side. So they said, well, this is genius. Why don't we make you a partner? And we'll just send you every campaigner that needs support.

00:10:24 Will Ford: So as soon as that happened, and that was back in like 2016, it was like this avalanche of deal flow that came through from Kickstarter recommending the creators

00:10:33 Will Ford: work with our team. So that was really helpful in helping us start scaling launch from early on. So I then did the same thing with Indiegogo.

00:10:40 Will Ford: I went to Indiegogo's offices in San Francisco and I said, hey, Indiegogo, this is exactly why our campaigns are doing so well.

00:10:46 Will Ford: If you send us any intros to anyone who needs support on the product creator side, we'll bring them back to your platform and it'll be a much bigger campaign outcome.

00:10:54 Will Ford: So it's a win-win for everybody. So that's early on how we started scaling. And then, as we all know, Kevin, the pandemic hits,

00:11:01 Will Ford: right? So when the pandemic hit, like everyone else, I was scared to death. I was like, oh, God,

00:11:06 Will Ford: that people are going to want to put food on their table versus back a project they might get 12 months from now, right?

00:11:11 Will Ford: Fortunately, I couldn't have been more wrong because the government started printing a bunch of money, handing out money to everyone. People are at home and they were

00:11:19 Will Ford: spending way more time on social media. So they're seeing more of our products, more of our ads. And so

00:11:24 Will Ford: Next thing I know, the pandemic was the best thing that ever happened to crowdfunding. We went from like 30 employees in early 2020 to just under

00:11:32 Will Ford: 100 employees by the end of 2020. And that's because we were the largest agency in the space.

00:11:38 Will Ford: So as we were bringing in more projects, we had to continue to hire more people to

00:11:42 Will Ford: support just the workload to make sure we had more bandwidth to accommodate all the product launch need. And that worked really, really well for us.

00:11:49 Will Ford: Like we went through super hypergrowth from 2020 all the way up until. about 2020, early 2022 is when that COVID bubble popped. And, you know, we were launching hundreds

00:11:59 Will Ford: of products a year. It was awesome. All our products were doing six or seven figures. Our clients were super happy. My team was happy. It was a fun experience.

00:12:08 Will Ford: That being said, once we got through the pandemic, and I'd say roughly about a year ago, Kevin, I'd say first quarter, 2022, all of a sudden,

00:12:18 Will Ford: we just saw this like massive decline in product creators looking for agency support. And the reason

00:12:24 Will Ford: I say there was a decline is because what was happening was like a lot of those dollars were starting

00:12:28 Will Ford: to dry up, that money that was handed out from the government started to dry up. And what we realized were that product creators were looking for lower cost solutions.

00:12:36 Will Ford: And basically the problem with the agency model was that you had to be funded in order to work with us. And to give you an idea what that

00:12:43 Will Ford: looked like, Kevin, like you had to have at least $50,000 or more in order to afford the full LaunchBoom suite and agency model.

00:12:51 Will Ford: But fortunately, during the pandemic, I'd create a a second program that we called consulting and coaching.

00:12:58 Will Ford: And it was more of a hybrid model of like do it yourself coupled with software tools to make it easier to do it yourself as an entrepreneur.

00:13:04 Will Ford: And then we also had daily coaching calls with my internal experts that would help answer questions and move them through the process.

00:13:11 Will Ford: But the beauty of that coaching consulting model was we could provide it for a fraction of the cost compared to that 50K agency cost.

00:13:18 Will Ford: So what was happening was people would come into LaunchBoom and they weren't qualified or they didn't have the budgets for the agency, we could still support them.

00:13:26 Will Ford: We would just downsell them into our coaching consulting program. And what was so interesting was exactly a year ago, as the agency

00:13:34 Will Ford: demand started to decline, the coaching consulting platform started to exploding growth. Instead of having

00:13:41 Will Ford: like 20 agency clients come through launch from a month, we started having 50 to 60 consulting coaching clients come through, the more cost-friendly program.

00:13:50 Will Ford: And so that's kind of where the light bulb went off again,

00:13:53 Kevin Mako: Kevin, and that's when we decided to pivot our entire business here at Launchbone. Wow. And what was that pivot?

00:13:59 Will Ford: What was the big change from agency to consultancy, which is a very bold move, by the way. Thank you, man. It's fun to kind of look back on it all because

00:14:07 Will Ford: it was definitely a stressful year for me personally because we were the largest crowdfunding agency in the world, literally a year ago.

00:14:14 Will Ford: And then we decided to dissolve our agency and put all our focus and effort into supporting the coaching consulting model.

00:14:24 Will Ford: And then also turn that into more of a community of entrepreneurs and product creators so that we could give them better support,

00:14:30 Will Ford: better software, better tools, but more importantly, create a much better cost solution. So now for a fraction of the cost compared to my agency model, they

00:14:40 Will Ford: could have the same type of outcome that the agency would yield, but now they keep more of the profit at the end of the

00:14:46 Will Ford: campaign. And the reason that's so powerful is because they can take that extra margin and reinvest it back into their continued growth and scale.

00:14:55 Will Ford: Because crowdfunding is just the first piece. It's the launch. It's a validation. But after crowdfunding, all of our clients want to keep growing. They want to

00:15:02 Will Ford: keep scaling. So the beauty of the pivot was that now we can support more entrepreneurs. It's way more volume than ever.

00:15:10 Will Ford: Like I said earlier, like during the pandemic, we were pumped if we were launching one or two products a week.

00:15:14 Will Ford: Today, right now, we're launching anywhere from four to five products a week. Today, I know that we made the right move. It was a super bold decision. And honestly,

00:15:23 Will Ford: it was scary. I'd never made such a drastic pivot in my professional career with any other business that I've ever started.

00:15:30 Will Ford: And to go from the largest crowdfunding agency in the world and then to pivot towards this coaching consulting model to provide lower cost solutions to product

00:15:37 Will Ford: creators, it was risky. Because if it didn't work, Kevin, we were probably going to be in a pretty tough position. And I'll never forget it because we made the actual pivot

00:15:46 Will Ford: last summertime, June, July, 2022.

00:15:49 Will Ford: And when we made the pivot, Kickstarter and Indigo, we're like, Will, what are you doing?

00:15:54 Will Ford: They're like, wait, are you guys leaving crowdfunding? Like, are we in trouble? What's going on? And I'm like, no, crowdfunding is still stronger than ever,

00:16:00 Will Ford: but the demand is shifted. The demand doesn't want the expensive agency solution anymore. They want the lower cost solution, which is exactly what we're providing. And we're giving

00:16:09 Will Ford: them a better experience at the same time and a better outcome. And as soon as they understood what we're doing, Kevin, they were like extremely relieved.

00:16:17 Will Ford: To have one of the bigger agencies kind of totally leave the industry would have been one thing, you know. But once they realized what we're

00:16:23 Will Ford: doing, they were even more excited about our partnership.

00:16:26 Kevin Mako: They continued to drive tons of business to our team every week, every day. I'm really fired up and energized because I know that we have the

00:16:33 Kevin Mako: right model for the entrepreneur and it's working. Yeah, that's amazing to see. And it was really interesting to me.

00:16:39 Kevin Mako: I talked to you obviously previously about this and about your pivot, and I thought it was an incredibly bold play as you were doing it. And now to see that it is

00:16:47 Kevin Mako: working and that it's something that is essentially allowing more entrepreneurs to launch their product via crowdfunding. That was what was very exciting about for me, especially

00:16:55 Kevin Mako: being in the product design space for startups, one of the biggest bottlenecks to any hardware startup is how to get to market.

00:17:03 Kevin Mako: And you've really just reduced the barrier of getting that product to market, but making it such a lower price and educating folks on how they can launch their

00:17:11 Kevin Mako: own campaigns, giving them all the tools, the resources, and at a fraction of the cost, but still getting those results of those six, seven figure plus campaigns.

00:17:19 Kevin Mako: That to me is very exciting for the hardware development industry as a whole, because that is really putting more power into

00:17:25 Kevin Mako: the hands of hardware startups to compete, to get their products out there, to compete with big corporate, to get out market faster and learn from that experience.

00:17:34 Kevin Mako: And as you said, grow from the crowdfunding campaign because that really is just the start. And it's a big thing that we talk about with our hardware startups too.

00:17:41 Kevin Mako: Well, first and foremost, you've got to make a great product. You have to have a good thing to sell. When you're ready to sell, use crowdfunding to get that

00:17:47 Kevin Mako: initial client base and pay for it, which is the real beauty about crowdfunding. And then from there, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

00:17:54 Kevin Mako: You build a brand. You build a business. You build something that's multi-generational that's going to have global spread. And that's the power of what you're

00:18:01 Kevin Mako: doing by enabling more entrepreneurs, the ability in a cost-effective manner to actually, actually go to market. So I want you to actually break it down a bit.

00:18:08 Kevin Mako: Explain a bit how the program

00:18:09 Will Ford: works and what's in it so that we can understand those models and how they fit within their overall

00:18:14 Will Ford: launch strategy using crowdfunding as a first step to get a new product to market. Yeah, perfect.

00:18:19 Will Ford: So Kevin, let's just say like, you're a product creator and you and I were connecting right now and you're like, all right, well, I get this super cool product.

00:18:27 Will Ford: Now, how can you help me leverage crowdfunding to maximize my pre-sell opportunity? And so today, the way it works is as soon as, you know,

00:18:35 Will Ford: you and I connect, basically what we're going to do is we're going to onboard you into our launch room

00:18:40 Will Ford: community. So our launch room community, we actually host it on a platform called school. And so all of our clients are actually connected to each other in

00:18:49 Will Ford: this community. It's actually really cool, Kevin, to see kind of how it's grown and what it's evolved into. Because what's happening

00:18:55 Will Ford: is right now we have over a thousand active clients that are somewhere in the process. There

00:19:00 Will Ford: are other in pre-launch, they've just launched and they're maxing out their crowdfunding campaign, or

00:19:04 Will Ford: they're just wrapping it up and getting ready to ship and fulfill to their backers. And so what's really cool is that we have over 1,000 active clients today that are in the

00:19:13 Will Ford: community and they're all helping and supporting each other. They're sharing resources. They're sharing contacts.

00:19:19 Will Ford: They're backing each other's campaigns, which is kind of cool to see. And so as soon as you become a lawsuit member, we bring you into the community.

00:19:26 Will Ford: And then the first thing we look at is, all right, tell us more about your product. And then we start diving into the messaging, the positioning.

00:19:33 Will Ford: what is truly superior about your product? What's the real value that your product compared to any other competitor in that same vertical?

00:19:40 Will Ford: From there, we then look at, okay, now, what is the product going to sell for? So a lot of our clients come in and they've got these super cool products, but they have no

00:19:49 Will Ford: idea what to price the product at. They think it should be $100 or $200, but they don't really know.

00:19:54 Will Ford: And so the beauty of our model is as soon as they come in and we work out the messaging, the positioning,

00:19:59 Will Ford: we figure out what type of price points they need to hit to hit their margins. Then at that point, we have software and tools that we used to have as an agency, but now we've

00:20:09 Will Ford: customized them to make them super user-friendly for the early-stage entrepreneur that has never launched a product.

00:20:14 Will Ford: And what they can do is they can use our software to literally drag and drop messaging images of their product.

00:20:20 Will Ford: And now we can help them not only build their lead funnels, but the reservation funnels. And so the reservation funnels is something that is going to give

00:20:29 Will Ford: every entrepreneur the edge when it comes to launching their product successfully on Kickstarter on Indiegogo because we can literally do what's called AB split testing.

00:20:38 Will Ford: So what's really cool is we can test different messaging, different positioning, but we can also test different lead offers.

00:20:44 Will Ford: So Kevin, you might come to me and say, hey, Will, I need to sell my product for 99 bucks. My cost is 20 bucks and I need to have that type of margin in order to cover

00:20:53 Will Ford: all my other business costs so I actually make a profit at the end of the day. And so what's cool is that we can say, cool, Kevin, let's test $99.

00:21:00 Will Ford: But based on this market research, we think that we might be able to sell for $1.99. So we can actually test two different lead offers.

00:21:07 Will Ford: And the other advantage we have is our clients get access to the seven plus million backers that have backed one or more of our projects from day one here at LaunchBoom.

00:21:16 Will Ford: So we share that backer data with all of our clients to make it easier for them to do that

00:21:21 Will Ford: split A&B testing, but to do it for a fraction of the cost because we already have the data.

00:21:25 Kevin Mako: So now we run the lead offers and we figure out what's going to be. converting the best. And whichever converts the best, whatever metrics are the strongest, that's going to be

00:21:34 Kevin Mako: the lead offer we take over to Kickstarter and Indiegogo. That's great. Because you're basically using

00:21:38 Kevin Mako: data and using test to figure out what truly is going to work, not just your idea of what you think

00:21:43 Will Ford: might work, but what the market is likely to identify. The closer you can get to understanding that data, exponentially more successful a campaign is going to be.

00:21:51 Will Ford: Yeah, just a cool story. You'll love this, Kevin. So I had this client in Sri Lanka, and they had this really cool product. It's called Spring. It's

00:21:58 Will Ford: It's like this compression leg wrap. You wrap them around your calves and there's different modules that will massage your calf and one of your major arteries are in your calf.

00:22:06 Will Ford: It massages your calves and keeps the blood flowing. So when you get to your destination, you actually have no jet lag.

00:22:12 Will Ford: It's amazing. So this team in Sri Lanka that was manufacturing this product cost spring. They're like, Will, we want to sell this for $99. That's what we want to launch at.

00:22:20 Will Ford: So I started running the reservation funnel and the data was horrible. The conversions were awful. No one was converting. And I couldn't figure it out because

00:22:28 Will Ford: I actually have the product and it's awesome. I'd spend more money on them easily more because it's such a great product.

00:22:34 Will Ford: And so I told the team in Sri Lanka, I was like, you know, guys, this product is great. And I think that the consumer, because consumers are smart. You can't fool consumers today.

00:22:43 Will Ford: There's too much resources and information on the internet that makes it really easy for consumers to make better decisions.

00:22:50 Will Ford: So I told the team in Sri Lanka, I was like, hey, guys, based on the research we've done in this vertical,

00:22:54 Will Ford: any other competitor close to you are selling their products for thousands of dollars. So would you guys be comfortable if we tested a lead offer at 189 instead of 99?

00:23:03 Will Ford: And let's just go to market at retail at 299. So the backer feels like they're getting a discount on Kickstarter or Indiegogo and it's going to help us get a better conversion.

00:23:12 Will Ford: So the team said, hey, well, we have to make this work. We'll do whatever you say, let's do it. So we tested the 189 offer and the data was incredible.

00:23:19 Will Ford: We were getting massive conversions. So we realized that's the right price point. So then we took that into the crowdfunding platforms.

00:23:26 Will Ford: And when we launched that product on Indiegogo, we ended up. up having a million dollar campaign. Wow. Right. And the Sri Lankans love me because I made a way more margin, right?

00:23:36 Will Ford: The cost never changed. Just the price that the consumer is willing to pay changed. And it was basically double where they wanted to start.

00:23:42 Will Ford: So that's another great example of why the testing is so imperative during the pre-launch, because there's so much we don't know about a new product

00:23:50 Will Ford: until we actually kind of get into the trenches. We start testing different lead offers and we figure out what the market will support.

00:23:56 Will Ford: Once we've done that work, then it's easy to build the

00:23:58 Kevin Mako: pre-launch community around it. And then when we go to Kickstarter Indiegogo, we're always going to have that LaunchBoom effect.

00:24:04 Kevin Mako: And we're going to be able to make the margins our clients need to successfully produce, deliver, and go on to scale. That's very powerful stuff, Will. How can people find

00:24:12 Kevin Mako: out more? What's the website? And of course, as always, I will put the links below for anyone to check it out. Also, I wanted to chat about the upcoming crowdfunded summit.

00:24:20 Kevin Mako: Thanks for having me again on as a keynote speaker there coming up in May.

00:24:24 Will Ford: But I know that you're for a while, anyways, offering a free ticket to that event if people sign up in the near future. So where can they find access to what you're doing?

00:24:33 Will Ford: And where can they get access to that free ticket for the upcoming crowdfunded summit? Yeah. So if anyone wants to learn more about crowdfunding, just go to LaunchBoom.com.

00:24:42 Will Ford: Launchboom.com. You go there. You'll learn so much. We provide a lot of free education, a lot of free resources there.

00:24:48 Will Ford: So go there if you're starting your journey into crowdfunding or you're just curious or interested in learning more. Now, to your point, Kevin, what I'm excited about is our next

00:24:56 Will Ford: crowdfunded summit. So the crowdfunded summit is a virtual summit that we created during the pandemic.

00:25:03 Will Ford: While everyone was stuck at home, my conference schedule was wiped out like everyone else is, and I challenged my team.

00:25:08 Will Ford: I'm like, hey, guys, why don't we host a crowdfunded summit and why don't we invite the industry

00:25:13 Will Ford: experts and the best of the best in so that we can educate everyone who's interested in learning while they're stuck at home.

00:25:19 Will Ford: And when we launched the first one in September of 2020, I was blown away, Kevin. We had over 10,000 attendees from all over the world, and we had,

00:25:27 Will Ford: all the experts from the industry come in, present, share their trade secrets, and really help

00:25:33 Will Ford: more entrepreneurs get the support to have successful crowdfunding launches. Over the years,

00:25:38 Will Ford: it's grown and it's become so much more than it was in its infancy. And so that's why I'm excited about this next one, because the next one, we actually are going to have

00:25:47 Will Ford: a short list. So we're going to have less industry experts, but we're only going to have the best of the best industry experts attend this next summit.

00:25:56 Will Ford: And the idea now is to provide the best content, much more meaningful content that's going to be exactly what the attendees need to maximize

00:26:03 Will Ford: their crowdfunding campaigns, to produce their products, deliver great experiences to their backers, and then go on to scale and succeed and build awesome businesses.

00:26:13 Will Ford: So Kevin, I just want to thank you for coming back to crowdfunded summit. I know you've supported this over the years, but I'm really excited.

00:26:20 Will Ford: So guys, Kevin's going to be leading our manufacturing. panel, and he's going to be talking about the ins and outs of what to know, how to successfully

00:26:28 Will Ford: produce your prototype, what not to do, you know, because Kevin sees so many of the same common pitfalls and mistakes.

00:26:34 Will Ford: I know you deal with so many entrepreneurs worldwide, Kevin. And so just the fact that you're coming back, Kevin, to share your knowledge, to help educate our attendees with

00:26:42 Will Ford: how to successfully get their product made and into market, I can't thank you enough for taking

00:26:47 Will Ford: the time out of your busy schedule to be there with us and to support all our attendees that are going to come in from all of the world.

00:26:53 Will Ford: So again, anyone here who is going to be available May 9th, 10th, and 11th. It's a three-day virtual summit.

00:27:01 Will Ford: You can access it anywhere where you have internet access or Wi-Fi. So it doesn't matter what part of the world you're in.

00:27:07 Will Ford: If you have a really cool product or product idea and you want to leverage crowdfunding, definitely come to crowdfunded summit. It's going to be May 9th, 10th, and 11th.

00:27:16 Will Ford: You can go to crowdfunded summit.com. And this month only, the month of February, we're going to be offering free admission for anyone new to crowdfunded summit

00:27:26 Will Ford: that wants to come in, learn from the industry experts. We're going to have two keynote speakers. We're going to have Everett, the new CEO of Kickstarter.

00:27:34 Will Ford: He's going to be in there talking about all the cool stuff Kickstarter is doing this year to maximize campaign outcomes. We're also going to have Becky, the CEO from Indiegogo.

00:27:42 Will Ford: And she's going to be a keynote. And she's going to be talking about all the cool things Indigo is doing to help more entrepreneurs succeed as well.

00:27:48 Kevin Mako: So again, we've got a solid lineup. So again, it's not going to have like 50 speakers like last year. We're only going to have 13, but they're going to be the best of the best,

00:27:57 Kevin Mako: the people you need to know in order to maximize your outcome through crowd funding. Amazing. Well, thanks so much for that.

00:28:02 Kevin Mako: As I mentioned again, I'll put the links below so someone can click through. You heard it from Will. You have February here to get the free ticket. Very generous.

00:28:09 Kevin Mako: I appreciate that, Will. And I appreciate that you offering that to the listeners to the product startup podcast day. Thanks again for your words of wisdom.

00:28:16 Kevin Mako: And we will talk to you again soon. Thanks so much, Kevin. Take care.

00:28:20 Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast. If you found some value in the show, please do us a huge favor and leave us a quick five-star review.

00:28:27 Narrator: If you have any questions, guest suggestions, or anything else, feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email, podcast at MakoDesign.com. That's podcast at MakoDesign.com.

00:28:37 Narrator: This show is hosted by Kevin Mako, North America's leading expert on product development for physical product startups. Huge thanks to our sponsors, PTC,

00:28:45 Narrator: and their two best-in-class 3D CAD product development software solutions, Onshape and Creo.

00:28:49 Narrator: and Mako Design + Invent, the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored specifically to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:28:58 Narrator: Thanks for joining and see you next time.