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Guest: Yuri Dvoinos, CIO of Aura & Serial Entrepreneur.
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.
Episode Overview
Yuri Dvoinos explains how the Jammy Guitar team used crowdfunding to collect feedback from customers who had committed real money, not just expressed interest. He covers market gaps, audience segmentation, post-campaign outreach, MVP learning, version planning, campaign platforms, and marketing content that feels credible to buyers.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- What is the portable Jammy Digital Guitar?
- Crowdfunding provides instant, high-quality feedback from real customers!
- A large factor in their success was that they identified a gap in a market with lacklustre products and filled the gap with their product.
- They received a lot of immediate feedback from people who said they loved the product on the crowdfunding platform.
- The primary reason they wanted to do a crowdfunding campaign was not to secure funding but rather to get real customer feedback from backers who had actually pre-purchased the product.
- Make sure you celebrate your campaign’s successes once it has finished!
- After that, leverage your campaign to get interest from prominent people in the industry.
- There was a clear signal from the crowdfunding campaign on the subset of customers who were very interested in the product and why they wanted it.
- Customer segmentation can be very valuable when striving to find your ideal target audience, as you can develop a product exactly for them.
- Version 2.0 comes after launching an MVP.
- Consider leveraging both Kickstarter and Indiegogo!
- As you evolve, you will figure out how to reduce costs associated with hardware development.
- Consider different types of video and image creation methods when crafting marketing materials! Content made by staff, owners, and users often resonates best with consumers.
Episode transcript
This transcript is provided for accessibility and reference. Download the SRT transcript.
Read the full episode transcript
Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn how to use crowdfunding to collect key customer feedback from a leader who's built 15
Kevin Mako: companies over 15 years. This is the Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in hardware product development,
Kevin Mako: prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between. Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product
Kevin Mako: development for hardware startups. Welcome back, everyone. I'm very excited to introduce Yuri Dvoinos to the show.
Kevin Mako: Yuri is the founder of 15 companies that have done tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
Kevin Mako: One of them is the Jammy portable guitar, which did $250,000 in funding on its first crowdfunding campaign, then $500,000 on the second.
Kevin Mako: Today, Yuri will share valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on the value of customer feedback on a crowdfunding campaign, how to use that feedback to do a great second version of your product and other crowdfunding tips for success for your hardware product.
Kevin Mako: Now on to the episode.
Kevin Mako: This show is produced by Mako Design, the original firm providing end-to-end consumer product
Kevin Mako: development services tailored specifically to hardware startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.
Kevin Mako: Take your product from idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com. Now on to the episode.
Kevin Mako: Hey, Yuri, welcome to the show.
Yuri Dvoinos: Hi, thank you for having me.
Kevin Mako: We're really excited today to have you on to talk about your experience in scaling through crowdfunding.
Kevin Mako: You did multiple crowdfunding campaigns.
Kevin Mako: with the Jammy product, which is really cool. But you've also been a part of venture funding,
Kevin Mako: millions of dollars in funding, tens of millions of dollars in revenue across your organizations
Kevin Mako: in some years and whatnot. So what better person that knows all of these different startups,
Kevin Mako: both from a venture perspective, but also from a founder perspective, a manager perspective,
Kevin Mako: you've essentially done it all. And really drilling down onto why you took the crowdfunding
Kevin Mako: approach with Jammy and then why you chose to scale up doing then multiple crowdfundings with
Kevin Mako: newer, better variants of the product, as you learned from versions before.
Kevin Mako: So before we get into that whole story, just give us a bit of a background on how you became
Kevin Mako: the big success story that you are today.
Yuri Dvoinos: Yeah, absolutely. So I launched my first startup in 2009 right after I graduated from
Yuri Dvoinos: National Technical University. And this was a cybersecurity consumer offering, which is now
Yuri Dvoinos: called Clario. And ironically, it was one of the most successful things I've done. It is the
Yuri Dvoinos: company that hit eight figures in annual revenue. And at some point of time, we got
Yuri Dvoinos: 50 million downloads of our security software. And we wanted to explore other businesses and other
Yuri Dvoinos: verticals. So we had almost like a corporate venture arm where we would fund talented teams or high
Yuri Dvoinos: potential individuals and back some of the ideas. Some of those were our ideas. And this is how
Yuri Dvoinos: Jammy Guitar was born. So this was one of those projects.
Yuri Dvoinos: Up until now, I've launched 15 different products. This is probably the one of the most
Yuri Dvoinos: emotional products I've ever done because hardware is just a different beast. You can touch it.
Yuri Dvoinos: You can carry it with you. It's just so different from software.
Kevin Mako: Looking forward to talking about jammy. Just give us a bit of a high level. What is jammy?
Kevin Mako: And then let's talk about what you did from the crowdfunding angle.
Yuri Dvoinos: Yeah. So when we were, when we started working on jamming, what we wanted to do was,
Yuri Dvoinos: was the most portable electronic guitar. So imagine you want to take your guitar with you on a
Yuri Dvoinos: hiking trip or you just want to jam in a meeting room and you really want to, you know, just
Yuri Dvoinos: put your headphones on and then jam a little bit or maybe record some of the tunes that you have on your
Yuri Dvoinos: mind. Products that were available on the market at that time were really not doing a good job,
Yuri Dvoinos: in my opinion. And we wanted to fill that gap. This is one of those ideas.
Yuri Dvoinos: where you pitch it and you're like, yeah, you can disassemble the guitar, you can put it in
Yuri Dvoinos: your backpack. And everyone was like, really? Like, I want that. Like, that's a really appealing idea.
Yuri Dvoinos: So we almost immediately got this feedback. People were saying, like, do the crowdfunding. I'm going
Yuri Dvoinos: to back you guys. Which we did. And one of the things that, well, of course, we strategized and we wanted
Yuri Dvoinos: to understand, like, what exactly do we want to build, what's going to be the industrial design, the
Yuri Dvoinos: economic, all of those things. We wanted to do a prototype.
Yuri Dvoinos: But at some point of time, when we were know what we were built in exactly, and we had a really
Yuri Dvoinos: good idea, okay, so that's exactly, it's going to work. We know we're going to make it work.
Yuri Dvoinos: Then it's almost like you want to achieve the market fit. And the other part of this, it's the reason
Yuri Dvoinos: it's called product market fit. I think it's not just about your product. It's also about what market
Yuri Dvoinos: will say, how users will react to what you're doing. Of course, we wanted to raise funds. And we did,
Yuri Dvoinos: our first Indiegogo campaign raised a quarter million dollars for us, which was twice as
Yuri Dvoinos: more as we wanted to raise. So we think we've exceeded the goal and this was great. But it's really
Yuri Dvoinos: not the number that will fund the entire venture. The reason we wanted to do the Indiegogo campaign is actually
Yuri Dvoinos: less of the revenue aspect of that, which is, I think, is counterintuitive for a lot of people
Yuri Dvoinos: that I talk who are, you know, exploring the hardware ventures. And the biggest value,
Yuri Dvoinos: the biggest value out of that, of the Indiegogo campaign was the feedback from backers and,
Yuri Dvoinos: you know, the community that we created around them because we had a vehicle to communicate them,
Yuri Dvoinos: provide feedback. And also, what will resonate and what sort of aspects of the product does
Yuri Dvoinos: resonate, what are their wishes for or requests for product fine-tuning? So you get
Yuri Dvoinos: this immediate high-quality product feedback from people who are beckon you with real money.
Yuri Dvoinos: And that that's probably was the most beautiful part of this campaign.
Kevin Mako: That's so powerful. And it's such a big part of crowdfunding. We've talked about it a bunch on the show,
Kevin Mako: and we've done a lot of stuff on tricks and tips around actually building the crowdfunding campaign.
Kevin Mako: But what I wanted to talk to you today was about more of that feedback loop, because you
Kevin Mako: were one who really took that to heart, focused on feedback as your number one priority, as you
Kevin Mako: mentioned. And as a result of that, you got this incredible feedback from people who
Kevin Mako: had actually pulled out their credit card and pre-purchased your product. So you get to know what
Kevin Mako: they like about your offering, what they don't like about the offering. And then, of course,
Kevin Mako: you've already got these customers lined up. So it's an amazing double-edged sword where you're
Kevin Mako: getting this great feedback. And at the same time, then you're all, you've also had those sales ready to
Kevin Mako: go. What you then did is leverage that to another campaign through that feedback. So, you know,
Kevin Mako: for my notes here, I'm just looking at your
Kevin Mako: campaign, you had almost 700 backers just on your first campaign, $358,000 U.S.
Yuri Dvoinos: in funding. What happened after that? Well, let me just say that what happens right after you
Yuri Dvoinos: close the crowdfunding campaign with that results, you celebrate. You absolutely celebrate because
Yuri Dvoinos: it's an absolute win. You want to acknowledge the mom that you've done something right, for sure.
Yuri Dvoinos: But then what happens next is a lot of hard work and it's your next chapter.
Yuri Dvoinos: In our case, we delivered the prototype and part of this was working really
Yuri Dvoinos: hard to fine-tune things, to make sure that everything will work well as we start shipping the
Yuri Dvoinos: product. But the other part, which we were doing in parallel, was also evangelizing the product a lot.
Yuri Dvoinos: We were participating in the NAMM Show in Nashville, and we got Best of Show Award.
Yuri Dvoinos: Nice.
Yuri Dvoinos: which was, yeah, it was very, very nice. This was in 2018. So next year after we did
Yuri Dvoinos: the first Indiegogo campaign, that got us a lot of traction and a lot of interest and feedback from
Yuri Dvoinos: folks who were into the music industry. And I guess even before we really start, like, selling
Yuri Dvoinos: the product, we realized that there was a clear signal of what audience, of what segment of our
Yuri Dvoinos: customers, like, really want to get the product.
Yuri Dvoinos: play, the most excited. So it seemed to us that the biggest fit was with music professionals.
Yuri Dvoinos: This is a relatively niche audience. So it's a smaller audience from a segmentation perspective,
Yuri Dvoinos: but they were, they got it immediately. They wanted it. They were okay with the price. At the time,
Yuri Dvoinos: we were selling like $4,500 MSRP, which is a pretty high price for a music gadget. And we got,
Yuri Dvoinos: we managed to get a lot of feedback. And at a time, I remember that,
Yuri Dvoinos: I really like two DJs. I think they are Italian, Giolì & Assia. And I follow them
Yuri Dvoinos: on Insta, and one of those days, I wake up, I watch their story, and they're jamming with our product.
Yuri Dvoinos: Like, I literally fall out of the bat. I was like, amazing. No way. It's just up until now,
Yuri Dvoinos: I remember this moment and it gives me such a big kick. Those moments. And then, of course,
Yuri Dvoinos: there were other musicians who tried our product.
Yuri Dvoinos: they gave us this feedback. So this is, I think, was the biggest learning out of all those
Yuri Dvoinos: things within the two years that we really wanted to nail the professional segment. And in order
Yuri Dvoinos: to do that, we felt that we need to launch the second generation of the product. So not only this
Yuri Dvoinos: was a portable guitar, but this was a fully functional media instrument. So you could have played
Yuri Dvoinos: using strings techniques. You could have played
Yuri Dvoinos: would win, you could have played whatever you wanted to, just like with a synthesizer.
Yuri Dvoinos: And we've done a lot to focus on those, on that group. And this is why we launched the second
Yuri Dvoinos: crowdfunding campaign, which actually was launched on both Indiegogo and Kickstarter. I was another learning.
Yuri Dvoinos: The audiences are different. When we were launching the first crowdfunding campaign, we had such a heated
Yuri Dvoinos: debate. It's like, no, we have to go Indiegogo. We know there are some guys are saying the results are
Yuri Dvoinos: better. And other was like, no, we have to do Kickstarter.
Yuri Dvoinos: is more credible. Like, do both. What we've learned, the audience, they don't, they don't
Yuri Dvoinos: overlap. We've managed to collect almost half a million dollars from both platforms by running
Yuri Dvoinos: them to relatively same time. There's a couple big things there that I love that you mentioned
Kevin Mako: in your story here. One of them was that you identified in the early days before you ran the campaign
Kevin Mako: a potential customer segment. You say, hey, this would be great. If we could have a super
Kevin Mako: or pull their ball guitar. People would love this. To throw in their backpack, whatever.
Kevin Mako: But what you did with the crowdfunding campaign is you really isolated your best customers,
Kevin Mako: especially for the type of product, A, that you had then, but that also you maybe had vision to
Kevin Mako: grow into at a later stage. And that's the second thing that I thought was so profound about what you're
Kevin Mako: talking about. And something that a lot of hardware startup struggle with is not having too many
Kevin Mako: features or not doing feature creep on their first version. You very carefully put out a first
Kevin Mako: version that didn't have the full suite that you mentioned in your second version.
Kevin Mako: You listen to your customers on selling the first one, which was successful. You isolated a target
Kevin Mako: market that wanted it. People bought it before it was even on the shelves. They bought it on crowdfunding,
Kevin Mako: which is a real testament to the quality of the idea, the fact that they're willing to pull out their
Kevin Mako: credit card before that thing is even able to be tried in a store or any other way, especially
Kevin Mako: for a musical instrument. And then you use that feedback from those customers to figure
Kevin Mako: figure out, okay, what are we really going to do to nail the market on a second round?
Kevin Mako: And your second campaign was almost twice the size across Kickstarter and Indiegogo, like you said,
Kevin Mako: over a half a million dollar raise now for the version 2.0 or the pro version, you guys called it
Kevin Mako: the Jammy EVO at the time. So that's so important for a hardware startup that's just at the very early stages
Kevin Mako: of product development to think, what am I going to launch with? Even if it's not the vision,
Kevin Mako: what I eventually want to do down the road, know that it's always easier, especially as a limited
Kevin Mako: budget hardware startup to start with your MVP version, but of course, never sacrifice in
Kevin Mako: quality. Make sure you have a great quality product. Listen to your customers on your first campaign
Kevin Mako: or your first sales. It doesn't even have to be crowdfunding. However you're selling it, you'd be
Kevin Mako: selling it through retailers, wholesalers, partners, distribution channels, influencers, direct to customers,
Kevin Mako: whatever it might be. The point is to get your first version out to market, listen to those
Kevin Mako: customers, and then use that. As you said, this was more important than the money to you on your
Kevin Mako: first campaign, using that feedback in order to make a great product for your version 2.0.
Yuri Dvoinos: Yeah, I think that's right. I think you hit this on the nail. I think we also, what we've also done, we understood the hardware components much better, so we were able to reduce the MSRP price. We shaved almost 100 bucks, which was easier because, of course, you get this feedback, like, just make it cheaper is too expensive. I think it's universal.
Yuri Dvoinos: Price is just, it's such a critical aspect to the hardware business. And this is, I think, part of the things that make it really hard.
Yuri Dvoinos: There is so much that's happening.
Yuri Dvoinos: Cash flow is interesting for the hardware components.
Yuri Dvoinos: But my biggest learning is that definitely do the crowdfunding.
Yuri Dvoinos: You secure the revenue early in.
Yuri Dvoinos: This is probably one of the nicest things that you can do about the hardware business.
Yuri Dvoinos: Because the revenue comes in, almost like pre-sales, pre-waters, good validation,
Yuri Dvoinos: early feedback without necessarily hitting the shelves.
Yuri Dvoinos: And then, yeah.
Yuri Dvoinos: My only other learning that we've done after lunch in
Yuri Dvoinos: crowdfunding campaigns is that it was interesting how direct sales through our own
Yuri Dvoinos: online store were actually lower than Amazon sales.
Yuri Dvoinos: And I've really learned that unless you have a really good brand, unless you have a really good
Yuri Dvoinos: credibility, like people, people would rather order your products on Amazon.
Yuri Dvoinos: And I initially thought this was just the brand and credibility thing.
Yuri Dvoinos: And then I actually discovered that it's also for.
Yuri Dvoinos: convenience because Amazon have prime and expedited deliveries and all of those beautiful
Yuri Dvoinos: things.
Yuri Dvoinos: You probably don't have that.
Yuri Dvoinos: So most likely people will expect you to be there.
Yuri Dvoinos: And that's, you know, something else that you need to plan and be diligent about from a
Yuri Dvoinos: cash flow perspective and in a business model perspective.
Kevin Mako: Well, that's a nice thing about crowdfunding too.
Kevin Mako: You can launch via crowdfunding, learn all of these great things, improve your processes,
Kevin Mako: both on the product market fit, but also on the manufacturing side.
Kevin Mako: so that when you're ready to launch on Amazon, you're going to do a great job.
Kevin Mako: You're going to get great reviews.
Kevin Mako: As we all know, Amazon reviews are so important.
Kevin Mako: So make sure that you're developing a product that's great that really is matching that customer.
Kevin Mako: And what better way to learn than through your crowdfunding campaign?
Kevin Mako: Something that you highlighted there too, we talk a lot about in scaling the business and something
Kevin Mako: is important for a hardware startup to consider is the fact that your first production run is not going
Kevin Mako: to be your cheapest.
Kevin Mako: It almost never is going to be your cheapest.
Kevin Mako: First of all, it's just low volume.
Kevin Mako: So you don't have economies.
Kevin Mako: of scale to have the negotiating power.
Kevin Mako: But in addition to that, as you grow, not only are you getting volume, but you're also learning
Kevin Mako: a lot about the design and engineering process and really fine-tuning a lot of those details.
Kevin Mako: Arguably, you should almost over-engineer your product in the beginning, but again, that doesn't
Kevin Mako: mean over-engineer features.
Kevin Mako: Less features, but really well-engineered features.
Kevin Mako: And then as you scale, you can actually figure out how to maybe reduce some of the over-engineering
Kevin Mako: on, let's call it the excessive quality.
Kevin Mako: maybe or maybe not, depending on how your product's going.
Kevin Mako: But you could look at those things, especially with scale, spend some time with your designers,
Kevin Mako: your engineers, et cetera, really drilling down on costing down.
Kevin Mako: It's an exercise that does have a cost.
Kevin Mako: It is expensive.
Kevin Mako: It is something that's done both with design engineers and your manufacturing engineers,
Kevin Mako: the manufacturer itself, the supply chain around that.
Kevin Mako: So once you have that volume, you're in a much better position to negotiate, but you're also
Kevin Mako: far more intelligent at the processes.
Kevin Mako: And also you have the money to spend the effort on all.
Kevin Mako: all those tiny little details that really don't make sense for a version 1.0, but may make
Kevin Mako: sense when you're moving from hundreds of units to thousands and eventually on to tens of
Kevin Mako: thousands of thousands of units.
Yuri Dvoinos: Yeah, I think you got this right.
Yuri Dvoinos: The only other thing I wanted to mention about our crowdfunding campaign is that what worked best
Yuri Dvoinos: for us, and this is like a smaller tactics, I guess, is we've done both.
Yuri Dvoinos: We've done like a professional video, which was recorded in the studio, and we've also done
Yuri Dvoinos: like a semi-professional, almost like indie type of video by one of our most
Yuri Dvoinos: passionate employees, who's also like a stellar guitar player.
Yuri Dvoinos: And I think that resonated much better.
Yuri Dvoinos: The story from your own words, from your own team, showcasing the product, we really just had
Yuri Dvoinos: that person jamming in the car.
Yuri Dvoinos: And this was so powerful.
Yuri Dvoinos: And he did like a really good job.
Yuri Dvoinos: It was a really good music.
Yuri Dvoinos: And every single time I talk to anyone who was, you know, was seeing those campaigns,
Yuri Dvoinos: they're like, oh, no, I remember that guy.
Yuri Dvoinos: I was like, yeah, it's actually one of us.
Kevin Mako: Yeah, that's great.
Kevin Mako: You can never discount user-generated content, whether it's your staff, whether it's yourself
Kevin Mako: as a founder, whether it's your customers.
Kevin Mako: This stuff goes a long way, especially as you look at more advanced marketing or even just
Kevin Mako: validation down the road.
Kevin Mako: Maybe your primary video is a professionally shot video, but the next video is somebody using
Kevin Mako: it.
Kevin Mako: And maybe you're doing.
Kevin Mako: retargeting videos after that that are showing different people using it in different ways.
Kevin Mako: There's lots of different things depending on the type of product. But especially today, in
Kevin Mako: 24, people love authentic content. One of the big things that we talk about a lot on the show is
Kevin Mako: being the person behind the brand. Don't be afraid to get in front of a camera. It doesn't have to be
Kevin Mako: professional. Use your smartphone and just shoot a video of what you're working on on the product,
Kevin Mako: what you love about the product as the founder, what you're doing. And people will resonate with
Kevin Mako: that because big corporate can't do this.
Kevin Mako: Big corporate doesn't have the ability to, they have to outsource that to somebody who they
Kevin Mako: pay. You are doing it authentically and people see that, especially end customers. So it might be
Kevin Mako: the tipping point that gets them to place an order on pre-purchases via crowdfunding as opposed to waiting
Kevin Mako: to see it in the store. You know, that might be the difference, that authenticity, whereas if they were
Kevin Mako: hesitant before, they saw you, they trusted you, they loved your vision, they loved what you loved
Kevin Mako: about the product, they felt that connection and therefore they made a purchase decision.
Kevin Mako: So certainly think about that authentic video, which means low cost or even free. That's something
Kevin Mako: that's always great for a hardware startup. 100%. You're very much appreciated for all your words of wisdom
Kevin Mako: today and we look forward to talking to you again. Absolutely.
Yuri Dvoinos: Thank you for having me. Thanks and take
Kevin Mako: care. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast. If you found some value in the
Kevin Mako: show, please do us a huge favor and hit the like button and subscribe. If you have any
Kevin Mako: questions, guest suggestions, or anything else, feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email,
Kevin Mako: podcast at MakoDesign.com. This show is hosted by Kevin Mako, North America's leading expert on product
Kevin Mako: development for hardware startups, and the podcast is produced by Mako Design, the original firm
Kevin Mako: providing end-to-end consumer product development services tailored specifically to hardware startups,
Kevin Mako: small manufacturers and inventors. Take your product from IDEA to store shelves at MakoDesign.com.
Kevin Mako: That's M-A-K-O-Design.com. Thanks for joining and see you again soon.
Crowdfunding Validation Strategy
Use Crowdfunding to Learn Before You Scale
Planning a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign? Work directly with Kevin to pressure-test your validation goals, audience, campaign positioning, feedback plan, MVP scope, post-campaign priorities, and the path from backer insights to a stronger next version.
Kevin can also help evaluate agencies and specialists, shape the broader launch and funding strategy, and make relevant introductions when there is a fit.
Request a Crowdfunding Strategy Call
Tell Kevin what you are building, what you need to validate, and how far you are from campaign launch.