So youโve invented and prototyped a really cool new thing and youโre going to run a Kickstarter campaign โ Congratulations! If youโre like us, you might be thinking that once youโve twisted the last wires and run the final tests, the hard part is over. Boy howdy, are you wrong.
We are Mebotics, LLC., and we invented the Microfactory: A hybrid 3D printer and milling machine with four print-heads, a full on-board computer, custom software, swappable hardware and a chassis built for rugged portable manufacturing-on-the-go. We built and tested five versions of our โMachine shop in a boxโ, out of pocket and in our spare (ha ha) time. Weโre industrial designers, engineers, and (obviously) unstoppable superheroesโฆ.but putting together the Kickstarter almost drove us all completely insane. Here are some tips and pitfalls we encountered that may help you survive where no engineer should go: The marketing-infested world of campaigning for money.
1. What do you mean, listing the features isnโt good enough? So hey, we just described the Microfactory to you โ isnโt it awesome? Soโฆwhy havenโt you bought one yet?? One of the temptations youโre going to run into is to write exhaustively about your cool productโs super-fabulous feature-set and then wait for everyone else to see the light and start throwing money at you. Sorry, dude. People give money to things that can communicate how cool they are to them, and most people donโt communicate the same way engineers do. Get ready to pull your hair out trying to think โ and re-think, and re-think โ of clever phrasings, super-non-technical analogies, and fun examples of why that thing you sweated over for a year is worth someoneโs five dollar donation. Having at least one really creative reward, catchphrase, or marketing tactic will really benefit you here, so start thinking about them early. Getting โoutside the boxโ is way harder than it sounds.
2. Youโre on call more than your doctor. Inventing, building, and testing cutting-edge technology, especially if youโre doing it on the side, already feels like an extra full-time job. But thereโs a difference between emails and calls from your co-conspirators on your project and the ones you get during your Kickstarter campaign, and itโs the same difference between caring for a hamster and babysitting newborn twins: The former can wait a few hours, while you bathe, sleep, or think about your reply. The latter cannot. Your Kickstarter will get not only messages, comments, and emails (plus Facebook and YouTube comments, Tweets, etc.,), but also emails from distributors in countries youโve never heard of, students who want more information for a term paper theyโre writing, marketing companies who are sure they can solve all your problems (for a fee), and awesome blogs and publications whoโd love to help you out by letting you spend a few hours writing them an article (cough). And none of them can wait — not if you want to maximize exposure and give your baby the best possible chance of getting the funding it needs to grow up strong and healthy. Someone very wise told us, โKickstarter is a marathon, not a sprintโ โ and thatโs great advice. Do pace yourself, but also be prepared to look up exhausted from email number four hundred and twelve, and realize that youโre only on day three.
3. And youโll need to bring your best manners. Letโs face it โ sometimes there are no stupid questions, only stupid people. Sometimes there are people who simply find it easier to question by criticizing, or who want to make you detail every possible spec that you canโt know yet because you havenโt done a manufacturability study — thatโs what you need the money for. And sometimes there are perfectly good questions from perfectly smart people who nonetheless lose their shine after youโve answered them six or seven or twenty times. But DONโT LOSE YOUR COOL, no matter what โ this is utterly key. It helps to have several people rotating the responsibility for answering questions, comments and emails, so that as one of you gets tired or frustrated, someone else can swap in. Weโve done some things right with this one: Make use not only of the FAQs on Kickstarter (and your own website, if you have one), but also, keep a shared document of replies to common inquiries that you all consider acceptable. Youโll need to tailor them a bit for every response, but having most of the information copy-pastable will lighten the load a lot. Also, always be as transparent and honest as you possibly can be โ admit when you donโt know something, or canโt reveal something for business reasons. Itโs better to be nice and fallible than to try to control everything and get caught fudging even a tiny fact. Remember the crucial lessons of the Streisand Effect: On the Internet, positive messages are tough to spread, but negative ones go like wildfires. Oh yes, and always, always say Thank You.
4. The end is the beginning, grasshopper. While itโs tempting to think that you โhave finished makingโ your Kickstarter campaign when you click the Launch button, youโve actually only just started. Your potential backers and the community you reach are going to give you a lot of feedback, and itโs important to listen, to respond, and to be ready to take advice on your stroke while youโre mid-lap. This isnโt a late-night infomercial when You Talk, They Listen: Kickstarting is a community, not a one-way street. So all that writing, photographing, and video-making you did to get to this point? Be ready to do it over, to tweak it, replace it, and update it โ yes, while youโre hearing and responding to and engaging with the community thatโs giving you all the great feedback. As an example, we had to modify our pricing and rewards structure quite a lot in the first week โ hours of work that weโd done already, undone and redone while we were at our breakneck busiest! โ but it was completely worth it. We had neglected to provide a pre-order option at a low enough price point โ something we couldnโt have really guessed at on our own. Only your potential supporters can tell you what you need to do to get their support, and while itโs good to do early outreach and talk to your community before you get to the point of asking for launch money, sometimes you just canโt reach them until youโre already mid-campaign.
5. Youโre a writer too, right? No doubt your team is full of excellent engineers, but unless one of them is harboring a hidden desire to become the next Great American Novelist, youโre going to need the help of a writer. Writing is tough work, and running a Kickstarter means doing it both constantly and perfectly โ grammar and spelling mistakes are deadly, but so are errors in tone, degree of detail, length, colloquialism, and (over or under use of words like) etcetera. Filling out the Kickstarter and creating a webpage is just the beginning โ youโll need to spend time writing longer responses to media inquiries (giving much of the same information as in your Kickstarter, but tailored for different audiences), and doing lots of brainstorming to come up with the perfect short, catchy phrases and invented words (::cough::Microfactory::cough::) thatโll describe your device perfectly at a glance. If your team is like ours, the last substantial writing any of you did was probably a book-report โ and if thatโs true, buckle down and hire a writer, or at least a proof-reader. And make sure itโs someone you like, because youโre going to be talking to them an awful lot.
6. A pictureโs worth a thousand words (which makes a video worth 24,000 words per second). People will want to see what your invention can do, and why it matters to them, which means coming up with as many creative applications for your work as you canโฆand then a few more. Thinking up cool ways to use your machine may sound easy, but in reality you probably know that itโs cool because youโre a tool / hardware fiend and you know cool when you see it โ but your supporters are going to be interested for reasons beyond just technical wow-factor. You made it, so of course you love it; they need to see how it connects to their lives. As the creators of a device that incorporates a nearly-unlimited toolset, can print in more simultaneous colors and materials than any other, and that combines additive and subtractive machining in one feature-packed unit, youโd think we would have been bursting at the seams with possible-use ideasโฆbut when Kickstarter time came, we really wished that weโd been keeping a list of every time someone said, โOh, you know whatโd be cool?โ It would have saved us a ton of time and effort to just have those things written down โ we could have then simply taken a ton of photos and videos of the machine doing them, for use in our Kickstarter and updates. As it is (thanks to the communityโs advice โ see #4), weโre catching up and brainstorming tons of cool applications with our supporters, and catching them on video and in pictures for dissemination as we continue.
But take heart โ weโre not insane yet, and chances are good that youโll survive too. Running a hardware Kickstarter is a bit grueling, it happens when youโre probably already feeling overworked, and it relies on some skills that may not come naturally to your team — but seeing an email from someone at 2:30 in the morning saying, โYour project is simply awesome!โ (thanks, Andrew!) makes answering the next thirty or forty messages a lot easier. And of course, Kickstarter is worth the effort for the opportunity it provides, for projects like ours (and yours!) to get off the ground and on with their job of making the future awesome. Best of luck to all of us!
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