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MenuIs there a particular point you want to be before you go crowdsource to prevent your idea from being swiped?
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Brita's sheer size prevented them from doing anything. They're not in the business of making beautiful, sustainable water pitchers. They're in the business of making mass, plastic, functional water pitchers. They make millions more than Soma (for now) and it may not even be on their radar.
Read: Small Is The New Big from Seth Godin or David and Goliath (Malcolm Gladwell's latest) for more on this.
Stealth is bullshit. Nobody steals ideas and makes millions anywhere except in the movies. It's about execution.
Nothing. You have to understand that an idea isn't worth anything if you can't execute it. I could come up with an idea to fly to Mars, but unless I have the resources and ability to do it - it's not going to happen. Context: I wrote about Ghost - https://ghost.org - a full 6 months before it went on Kickstarter. The first version of the product was delivered (open source, so really anyone could "swipe" it) a year after I first made the idea public. There is very little value in ideas. There is a great deal of value in the people who execute them. Is your idea interesting? Do you have the experience and skillset to make it happen? If yes, then you have nothing to hide. Further reading: http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html
You want to think about it from your user's perspective: what level of product development do your potential backers need to see to trust you and believe in your product? That's the minimum level of development you'll need prior to you starting a crowd-funding campaign. Yes people can steal your idea, however there are lots of people selling snake oil out there (falsely advertised products)... If you haven't built a demo or prototyped or what you claim can't be accomplished easily... then the internet will smell that it's a scam, and you'll loose trust with the potential users. Thus, in terms of product dev think about users.
In terms of risk mitigation (people stealing your idea) with crowd-finding, it's part of the consumer game. So, figure out a good strategy to keep the "how" protected via patents or vague enough so users will trust you and copycats will have major hurdles copying you. If you can't do this for your particular product, have everything else in place to ship so you can easily seize first mover's advantage.
Source: we just performed two successful crowd-funding campaigns on kickstarter... and we love soma. They documented their process and opened up a lot of their resources. I'm a fan of their work.
Related Questions
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What are some marketing strategies that can be used to obtain your competitor's customers and gain more market share?
Lot of ways 1. Target their fans on facebook - if they are big (20k+) you should be able to select them as an interest 2. Bid on the same keywords as them on adwords search and/or display - this requires some technical chops but there are ways to find your competition's placements. If you can get there and present a better ad and/or outbid them, you can get the clicks they are used to getting. 3. Find where their customers are spending time online - another thing that will take some chops but you can find out what blogs, facebook pages, etc your competition's fans are looking at and get in front of them there. This is an indirect method. Most of the other options you will have are some variation on that theme. Make sure you have a way to stay in front of them (like retargeting or email marketing) if you want to make your investment go as far as possible! Good luckJR
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How can I get press for Kickstarter campaign in advance before launching?
Have a great story / hook. Reach out to outlets who 1) are relevant 2) write about Kickstarter campaigns regularly. Determine why you want the press, pre-launch. It should either be for social proof for your "Kickstarter As Seen In Logo Banner" or to drive any traffic to a landing page to gather pre-launch opt-in emails. That is explained more in these blog posts. Enjoy... http://crowdfundinghacks.com/this-kickstarter-project-is-already-funded-and-it-hasnt-even-launched-yet/ http://crowdfundinghacks.com/how-kittyo-used-the-macgyver-trick-to-crush-their-kickstarter-goal/ http://crowdfundinghacks.com/how-kittyo-gathered-13000-opt-in-emails-in-only-5-months-part-1-includes-successful-templates-strategies-etc/CH
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When launching a product on Kickstarter, how and when do you get press coverage?
It's all about building a relationship with these journalists and bloggers. You want them in your pocket long term. Ultimately, they are usually interested in the same things as you, which gives you a chance to connect on a deeper level and make an online friend. If you make a friend, then maybe they can even introduce you to their other journalist friends when the time is right. Ps: when you finally do send them your stuff, keep it short and make sure your visuals get the point off without them needing to read a description. Visual storytelling is huge. Remember: people don't like to readJM
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Launched my first startup yesterday and didn't get as much momentum as expected. What is one area of marketing would you focus on?
Good luck! Forget about SEO. This is just a temporary improvement. Not worth your effort right now specially if you have to pay. If is free, take it as long as it doesn't distract you with "useless busy" work. Focus on the emails. This has huge upside potential!! A video is a powerful tool that automatically enables you to connect with those who share your interests and can make people find you simply because they like you. This also reassures them that you haven't forgotten about them, that you are doing what you can but also need the communities help. Share this on all your social networks. Leverage the power and newly harnessed interest of Periscope or Meerkat of both and announce(schedule) through Twitter a video pitch of what you trying to do. This will get you potential viral spread if you ask your viewers to use a hashtag or to simply tweet your live streaming. If you have backers you're doing something right, you just have to now drive traffic to the campaign. Not really work on the pitch itself... Now you're in the numbers business... :) Humberto Valle Best of luck.HV
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For a company in its beta phase, what advice / tactics would you suggest to launch a successful crowdfunding campaign?
Starting crowdfunding while in beta is good - you already passed part of the way. So for backers it is less risky to support you. When I've started my project - the only real option was KickStarter. Now it is the same because only KickStarter has "blockbuster" effect - huge paying audience. On KickStarter you'll collect at least ten times more if to compare to #2 IndieGoGo. Sure if your project will pass KickStarter moderation. But it is worth trying. Giveaways, in my opinion, is always better: you test your production chain & keep full control over your business. Also the product is the core of your business and improving your product will lead to higher valuation. If you have community - try to make it bigger & tell your followers about your crowdfunding plans so they prepare to back you when funding starts. If there is no community - start to build one. Also prepair press kits & at least 10 updates (when 30-50-75-100-150-200% of goal reached, explaining functions of your product etc.), make spreadsheet with press (also include communities related to your project) contact details, check your project category on the selected crowdfunding platform for projects related with yours (for future cross promotion). Hiring expert is pretty useless, I think. Calls on clarity.fm will work better as you not tied to one person and may get more opinions, probably, for the same price. And it is not so much information in the net about crowdfunding to lost in it. All you need (considering you already have great product) is: 1. good project page (which means video + photos + text) 2. good work with press (not so much may be done: press kit + send it over the contacts you have - the result is related to kit quality and amount of contacts) 3. some ways to utilize KickStarter organic traffic (that's "30% rule" & crosspromotion - these ways generally don't cost a penny and both work great for me and 2 more projects I've mentored). Call me for details - I'll be happy to help.SK
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