Thinking about crowd funding? Three key lessons learned from running a successful Kickstarter campaign
Announcement posted by run4 16 Jan 2015
For many, crowd funding represents an ideal opportunity to get a product or business idea up and running. But what are the pitfalls? Here, the team behind the recently funded Bionic Runner share the lessons they learned during their 30-day Kickstarter cam
Brisbane, 16 January 2015 – Type ‘crowd funding’ into any search engine and you’re bound to discover a wealth of success stories. Products and companies that have raised millions in just a short space of time, and which have gone on to make millions for those who dreamed them up (In the US, the biggest crowd funding deal ever raised more than $13m). Indeed, in 2014, funds raised via peer-to-peer lending were up 161%, building on three years of continued growth.
Dig a little deeper, however, and you’ll also uncover the not-so-fortunate: the many thousands of examples of crowd funding campaigns that failed to reach their funding goal. It’s a common story.
With four years of product development behind them, deciding to launch their product on Kickstarter – probably the best known of all the online crowd funding platforms – was an easy decision for Steve Cranitch and Dr Henry Thomas, the co-founders of Run4 and inventors of the Bionic Runner.
“Kickstarter has a huge global audience, and is highly publicised by the media, so for us as a small, essentially unknown start-up company, it represented a great way to get our product in front of innovative thinkers, as well as the global media,” explains Steve.
“To a certain extent we used our Kickstarter campaign as a way to test the market – see what people’s immediate reaction was to our product – as well as gain investment whilst holding on to 100% of our company.”
Fortunately, the reaction to their Bionic Runner – the world’s first non-impact running fitness trainer that mimics the gait of running, designed to improve running training by removing the risk of injury from the two most common causes of injury – was overwhelmingly positive, and Steve and Henry saw their initial funding goal of AUD $40,000 met in just five days. Just a few days later and they’d made more than $100,000, as passionate runners from around the world decided to invest in their technology.
“We didn’t expect the running community to get behind us in such a huge way,” says Steve, who has continued to receive regular emails from amateur and professional runners and triathletes who can’t wait to get their hands on the Bionic Runner when it is distributed to investors in March this year.
Whilst theirs is a story of success, achieving a total of AUD $273,000 at the end of the campaign, both Steve and Henry acknowledge that, in certain areas, they faced unexpected challenges.
Lesson One: The hard work doesn’t end when the campaign goes live
“Reaching an audience of more than 13 million each month, we launched our campaign on Kickstarter thinking, ‘Right, this is it, let’s sit back and watch the investors come on board.’ We found this was certainly not the case,” says Steve. Instead, it became almost immediately obvious that it was down to them to drive traffic to their campaign.
“The number of investors and volume of traffic we drove to our campaign ourselves, through PR initiatives and social media, far outweighed that driven by Kickstarter itself,” says Steve. “Even when our campaign was chosen as a coveted ‘Staff Pick’ after just one day, it easily got lost amongst all the other campaigns. If we hadn’t actively promoted our campaign, we could have failed to reach our goal.”
Similarly, the volume of comments and queries that come through from potential investors throughout the life of the campaign demands constant attention.
“Kickstarter attracts innovative thinkers, who have a desire for detail,” says Steve. “If you haven’t answered their specific questions in your Project Description, then you can expect to be responding to a lot of individual questions before they are converted into investors.”
Lesson Two: Start creating a buzz long before your campaign goes live
Most successfully funded campaigns last just 30 days, which isn’t long to generate a buzz around your product on a global scale. Steve and Henry had the foresight to plan PR initiatives both in Australia and overseas well ahead of the launch of their campaign, ensuring relationships with key media had already been established when the time came to talk about their product.
“You don’t have to have a huge marketing budget, either,” says Steve, who drew on online resources such as eLance to hire short-term PR and marketing professionals in key markets. “If relying on unknown recruits, however, it’s important to ask for daily activity reports so as not to waste the opportunity you have to create a buzz,” warns Steve.
When it comes to creating buzz, Steve’s number one recommendation is to have product available for key influencers to review, before your crowd funding campaign goes live. “We had always planned to send Bionic Runners to bloggers, athletes and other key influencers ahead of our campaign launch, and had long since made contact with a number of writers who were ready and waiting to review our technology,” he says. “Sadly, manufacturing delays meant this didn’t work out, and we went live without having these reviews completed. Had we done so, I honestly believe our funding total would have been doubled.”
Lesson Three: Timing is Everything
When it was first launched as a campaign on Kickstarter, the Coolest Cooler failed to reach its funding goal. The second time around, the so-called “21st Century Cooler” now famously went on to raise more than $13 million, and become the number one funded project of all time. The difference? The first campaign was run during the winter months, whilst the second was launched in the summer.
“Most of our sales came from the USA and Europe. But it was in the middle of winter and snowing in many places – not the ideal time to launch a running product,” says Steve, who launched the campaign on December 1 – high summer in his native Australia.
Ultimately, their campaign to launch the Bionic Runner into the global running community was a huge success, and with pre-ordering going live on their website in the next few weeks, Steve and Henry have a busy 2015 to look forward to.
“We spent four years designing and perfecting the Bionic Runner, so to see it so instantly appeal to runners on a global scale is a dream come true,” says Steve. “Now we can’t wait for March, when the first Bionic Runners will be air freighted to our Kickstarter investors” ENDS
More: http://www.run4.com
Contact information:
Running Trainer Pty Ltd
T/A Run4
PO Box 52
Broadwater
NSW
2472
Australia
CEO: Steve Cranitch
CTO: Henry Thomas
Marketing and PR: Lizzy Fowler
For all press enquiries please contact +61 (0) 430 925028 or email lizzy@run4.com
Times of availability: 9am-7pm EST or by appointment.
Dig a little deeper, however, and you’ll also uncover the not-so-fortunate: the many thousands of examples of crowd funding campaigns that failed to reach their funding goal. It’s a common story.
With four years of product development behind them, deciding to launch their product on Kickstarter – probably the best known of all the online crowd funding platforms – was an easy decision for Steve Cranitch and Dr Henry Thomas, the co-founders of Run4 and inventors of the Bionic Runner.
“Kickstarter has a huge global audience, and is highly publicised by the media, so for us as a small, essentially unknown start-up company, it represented a great way to get our product in front of innovative thinkers, as well as the global media,” explains Steve.
“To a certain extent we used our Kickstarter campaign as a way to test the market – see what people’s immediate reaction was to our product – as well as gain investment whilst holding on to 100% of our company.”
Fortunately, the reaction to their Bionic Runner – the world’s first non-impact running fitness trainer that mimics the gait of running, designed to improve running training by removing the risk of injury from the two most common causes of injury – was overwhelmingly positive, and Steve and Henry saw their initial funding goal of AUD $40,000 met in just five days. Just a few days later and they’d made more than $100,000, as passionate runners from around the world decided to invest in their technology.
“We didn’t expect the running community to get behind us in such a huge way,” says Steve, who has continued to receive regular emails from amateur and professional runners and triathletes who can’t wait to get their hands on the Bionic Runner when it is distributed to investors in March this year.
Whilst theirs is a story of success, achieving a total of AUD $273,000 at the end of the campaign, both Steve and Henry acknowledge that, in certain areas, they faced unexpected challenges.
Lesson One: The hard work doesn’t end when the campaign goes live
“Reaching an audience of more than 13 million each month, we launched our campaign on Kickstarter thinking, ‘Right, this is it, let’s sit back and watch the investors come on board.’ We found this was certainly not the case,” says Steve. Instead, it became almost immediately obvious that it was down to them to drive traffic to their campaign.
“The number of investors and volume of traffic we drove to our campaign ourselves, through PR initiatives and social media, far outweighed that driven by Kickstarter itself,” says Steve. “Even when our campaign was chosen as a coveted ‘Staff Pick’ after just one day, it easily got lost amongst all the other campaigns. If we hadn’t actively promoted our campaign, we could have failed to reach our goal.”
Similarly, the volume of comments and queries that come through from potential investors throughout the life of the campaign demands constant attention.
“Kickstarter attracts innovative thinkers, who have a desire for detail,” says Steve. “If you haven’t answered their specific questions in your Project Description, then you can expect to be responding to a lot of individual questions before they are converted into investors.”
Lesson Two: Start creating a buzz long before your campaign goes live
Most successfully funded campaigns last just 30 days, which isn’t long to generate a buzz around your product on a global scale. Steve and Henry had the foresight to plan PR initiatives both in Australia and overseas well ahead of the launch of their campaign, ensuring relationships with key media had already been established when the time came to talk about their product.
“You don’t have to have a huge marketing budget, either,” says Steve, who drew on online resources such as eLance to hire short-term PR and marketing professionals in key markets. “If relying on unknown recruits, however, it’s important to ask for daily activity reports so as not to waste the opportunity you have to create a buzz,” warns Steve.
When it comes to creating buzz, Steve’s number one recommendation is to have product available for key influencers to review, before your crowd funding campaign goes live. “We had always planned to send Bionic Runners to bloggers, athletes and other key influencers ahead of our campaign launch, and had long since made contact with a number of writers who were ready and waiting to review our technology,” he says. “Sadly, manufacturing delays meant this didn’t work out, and we went live without having these reviews completed. Had we done so, I honestly believe our funding total would have been doubled.”
Lesson Three: Timing is Everything
When it was first launched as a campaign on Kickstarter, the Coolest Cooler failed to reach its funding goal. The second time around, the so-called “21st Century Cooler” now famously went on to raise more than $13 million, and become the number one funded project of all time. The difference? The first campaign was run during the winter months, whilst the second was launched in the summer.
“Most of our sales came from the USA and Europe. But it was in the middle of winter and snowing in many places – not the ideal time to launch a running product,” says Steve, who launched the campaign on December 1 – high summer in his native Australia.
Ultimately, their campaign to launch the Bionic Runner into the global running community was a huge success, and with pre-ordering going live on their website in the next few weeks, Steve and Henry have a busy 2015 to look forward to.
“We spent four years designing and perfecting the Bionic Runner, so to see it so instantly appeal to runners on a global scale is a dream come true,” says Steve. “Now we can’t wait for March, when the first Bionic Runners will be air freighted to our Kickstarter investors” ENDS
More: http://www.run4.com
Contact information:
Running Trainer Pty Ltd
T/A Run4
PO Box 52
Broadwater
NSW
2472
Australia
CEO: Steve Cranitch
CTO: Henry Thomas
Marketing and PR: Lizzy Fowler
For all press enquiries please contact +61 (0) 430 925028 or email lizzy@run4.com
Times of availability: 9am-7pm EST or by appointment.