Some two years ago we wrote about our learning from the recent 20 campaigns that were run by our startups. Our B2C startups HAX took part in almost 75+ campaigns which were successful. Out of all of them, the total 90% have succeeded in generating $100,000. Whereas, the rest 10 were able to generate $1 Million which put them amongst the world’s top 100. That all happened because of our pre-seed, even they were on very short time notices, but luckily maybe they were able to understand the things.
Now let’s discuss about what you need to do to succeed in 2017.
Technology Moving Up:
The limitation of Crowdfunding is no more to the extent of gadget of cheap consumers. In fact, it can be the case with them, like the Fidget Cube, which was able to end on almost $6.5 Million.
It is our focus as the investors, to keep focus on the hard things, so that we can help the startups improve and move fast. Just like the WAZER, which was able to generate $1.3 Million and the Lief Therapeutic was able to raise $400,000.
There are a very few exceptions that our startups had faced the copycats like situation. The innovated STEM Robots making startup was the rare exception which had faced such a situation. They just copied a hardware part and lacked in the software development, so it was not able to deliver better user experience. Jasen added that, usually the well-known and big companies won’t ever dare to copy something to affect their reputation.
Know your Industry and Niche:
The well-funded hits such as the Kreyos (Indiegogo, $1.5 Million) and the most recent one like Lily Robotic failed in delivering due to the technology and industry. You shouldn’t be doing crowdfunding if you are not well prepared with the necessary elements which are associated with your industry and niche.
HAX Experience: Spending 3 months with us in Shenzhen before crowdfunding has a reason behind it. The founders of the WAZER postponed their decision of crowdfunding when they were in Shenzhen. That was to get to know about the resources they have about their industry and be confident about their technology. Once they come to know about their industry and technology in a better way and they were confident, they made a great impression all around. Hence, were able to generate in a huge number.
The Best Page of Today:
It is almost over to just put a page online. Nowadays, it is important to have great illustrations as well as well-produced video. The illustrations will cost you maximum in hundreds of dollars, whereas they videos tend to range almost thousands of dollars. This totally depends on you, if you hire a freelancer or a well-known firm for this cause. As far as the HAX is concerned, its videos are done around $5000 to $ 10,000. But the main tagline is to keep the focus of the video on the product and avoid the distracting storylines.
HAX Experience: The “digital ski coach” Jamie Grant says that: “I noticed a lot of campaigns in a same category. And the key preposition I figured out straight up and went for was that, I choose the 2 part approach. One was the commercial and the second part was a separate section containing the founders of the product/company”.
Journalist needs to see evidences:
The journalists these days would like to take a live demo of your technology before they cover it. The hiring of the DIY and PR Specialists will cost you thousands of dollars. The results, however vary according to the product. That’s why, make sure that you evaluate your options carefully. You need to think that, the Tradeshow is actually your industry and you have to make the live demo flawless, so that you can convince the people and stand tall among other startups.
HAX Experience: The emails to the extent of journalists, our startups had tried almost everything in a well-defined manner for the better and improved results.
Viral Videos are the way to go:
These days we can witness a lot of viral video channels, so the innovative and viral videos are the way to go. Such a viral going campaign can evolve from an L or U or may be “double L” or “LU”.
HAX Experience: One of the project of HAX, such as Octopus which was picked up and had been able to get viewed millions of times. It resulted in generating thousands of dollars. Basically, its results are kind of inconsistent in the terms of ROI.
Advertisement also works:
We can certainly not deny the usefulness of the ad campaigns. Especially when we are talking about the Google AdWords and Facebook, they certainly are the best places to gain momentum in such campaigns.
HAX Experience: Thanks to the advertising, due to which some of our startups were able to generate double funding. The positive ROI played a vital role in this regards.
Community Building:
If you have a community created which can help and support you in holding and promoting your campaigns, then that certainly is Gold for you. In all that regards the Facebook Ads and the SEO can be worth fully beneficial for you. You can either get a paid service, but if you can’t afford to pay, then you can also search for online free blogs and use it for your purposes.
HAX Experience: The conversion rate of the email campaigns has been a bit low about 5%. Some of our startups were able to pile up thousands of emails and for about 10,000 emails they were able to get 500 backers. It was a bit low, but was quite an achievement as well.
Full Time Job:
I tell you what, this certainly is a full time job. Don’t think at some extent you would be able to stop this. It is always a compulsion to have backers sticking around with you. So this purely is a full time job and this fact is undeniable.
HAX Experience: The Revols had a full time person for the purpose of campaign promotion and just because of it, they were able to run their campaign smoothly. Whereas, WAZER was not prepared really well for the pre-launch and that made them to avail the Marketing and PR opportunities in the end.
Can’t predict anything:
You can’t predict anything in advance. Sometimes our audiences might not be there or maybe at that time they are not really interested in the campaign we run. That is why prediction is not the way to go at all.
HAX Experience: In the cases of two campaigns we ran for our startups, we were expecting some figure. But at the end, both of us, the founders and we were surprised by the results.
Results Never Predict the Future:
The results of a campaign can never ever predict the future for you. The results can vary from time to time, so it is important to be prepared for any possible outcome of a campaign and never aim too high always. If you are a startup and doing crowdfunding then your aim should be to make your appearance, get the feedbacks and identify the customer interests. So that next time around, you could gather an improved crowd funding results.
HAX Experience:
There was a rise of about $185,000 by the Makeblock in January 2013, which makes STEM robotics. They used the Kickstarter successfully to launch new products and till now it was able to sum up a total of 1.6 Million in its 5 campaigns. The latest one happened in the December 2016 for the STEM Drone launch, which gathered $830,000.
Conclusion:
The crowdfunding campaign is not a million dollar campaign in our point of view. Basically, it is a way to ship your product and get prepared for the fore coming business steps where you would need to grow and expand even more.
That is why while crowdfunding, you shouldn’t aim for Millions of dollars. Your focus shall be to accumulate as much as you could and make proper arrangements for your next campaigns. As they use to say that: ”Every day is not a Sunday”, so this quite implements here as well.
