CDPS_G4_Crowdfunding_Module 4
Interview with Zach Dunham
The design and technology outreach lead at Kickstarter
Vivian
Eric
Dora
Cindy
Kickstarter creator
The Public Radio
Pre-tuned single station FM radio in a mason jar 
How did the idea come up?
Taken the electronics class from Edx that MIT offered
Collaboration with Spencer Wright
Great chance to continue learning about electronics
Kickstarter ended up becoming a great place to test the idea
What preparation need to do before launching a campaign?
Setting expectations
Asked what they would pay for the product
Gauge a general price point 25000 $
Set a goal
How'd to know it would be appealing to people?
500 Backers supporting and that would be a successful
Do a Beta test run on Grand stress
Get feedback
How to make sure it was successful when still running ?
Friends and family
Interview on the Canadian public broadcasting
Raised just under $90000 on Kickstarter
15,000 or so on in their website
How it manufactured ?
Bought in bulk from essentially Ball Jar
The parts of the radio manufactured in China/ Taiwan
The circuit board from Massachusetts.
Advice
Try to visit a factory beforehand and the tail-end
Create a healthy margins for the product/ Know break-even margin
Understand what's your cost
Sense of the various scenarios
Crowd Funding for Startups
Common way to launch or sustain a startup
Can work to raise additional money
Protect your idea
Purple
Orange
Pre-existing to raise additional funds
Gray
One time business
New and Ongoing as organizations
Fashion, Games, Technology, Food, Production Design
Film, Theater/Dance, Arts
People come frequently
Can access resources and additional funding (eg. employees)
Can Validate the idea is good or not
Can help initial funds to launch your company
Fashion, Games,
Can also be a deliberate process
IP
Who does Crowd Funding?
People are copying ideas of Kickstarters and producing before them.
patents, trade secrets and copyrights
Mostly Tech and Designs for patents and secrets
Filing first (4,000 to 6,000)USD
the most powerful way of discouraging competition
Comics, Music, Publishing for copyrights
Average age of a Kickstarter funder is 39 years old
50% married
17% are minorities
Successful projects with high goals
Innovative projects
Effort that went into preparation Generally technology or design projects
Women and crowdfunding
Women tend to worse in raising funds
Interview with Antina Lee 
COO of Perseous Mirror Company
raised 100,000 at kickstarter
Fraud and Failure: Why the Crowd Can be Smart
But they do better in crowdfunding
Kickstarter
Start with Wh, what is raising money for?
13%better than men
large projects slightly higher chance of failure
smaller projects have a higher chance of failure
Smart Home Ecosystem product that help people
include Information about a day
next bus
messages over the night , emails ,
camera for selfie
The Wisdom of Crowds
that argues that crowds are really smart
The Madness of Crowds
crowdfunding is receptive in the past for hardware
dont get lot of venture capital funding
wanna search any other similiar companies in the market
Supporting area they care about
found out crowdfunding as a really good opportunity for early adopters
What preparation did before launching the campaign ?
Activism
3 or 4 months bucket preparation
1. own research about market 2. try to understand customer segment
That women are actually interested in supporting other women under represented
Women want to support each other
- click splash page and collect how many (data)
4.Typical stuff (video,Q&A, paper) PRPotential Journalist
Any effect from the press ?
Made the Press
snowball effect
Where are you banking ?
Search the traffic
A. Kickstarter
B. Facebook
Heavily on Facebook
crowds or experts were better at judging things
you get crowds together you get things like witch hunts
when they worked together
Theater Case 
money for arts: Kickstarter > National Endowment
But FB is not a huge drvier for campaign numbers.
What Other Professional help?
Feeling, Planning and Manage the campaign process
At the beginning
Having trouble is unlikely to happen
E.g: Video not rendering
Hectic
In the middle
Things would get into routine
More manageable
Shiipping Costs
At the end
Things go crazy again
heavy and irregular sized objects
internationally
Shipping fees is included in campaign numbers
plan out your campaign goal
Planning
project percent of your campaign international backers
Suppliers
Duration
Informing delivery dates
Other issues
Don't be rush 🚫
Starting earlier at least 6 months earlier
building our Email list
Facebook ads
Initial research
Kickstarter page
$15,000 would be 10,000 e-mails on your list
Conservative: 50,000 e-mails
Time: at least 6-12 months
Media: Social Marketing 
Actually sign a contracts
include a link to your Website splash page
get feedback from
positive loop
Close community
Managing backers when the campaign is down and still on delivery
Commit to updates once a month first of all, and then in between
Keeping up to the backers questions
Kickstarter webpage
E-mailing privately
Being Consistent
Telling the backers what to expect and delivering on that
National Public Radio
Sharing openly the process of how the product were making
Interest a lot of people
96% are employed
40% have full-time job
not a way for earning money
Find free lancer
Affordable
Raised than expect
Using data
Last 24 hours
can't unpledge towards the last 24 hours
these are relatively small ranges, and
the failure rates are pretty low
fraud rates are low
Linus's law 
the experts-good at minimizing risk
The Crowd-have wider tastes Iand
be more tolerant of successes and failures
have enough people looking at a problem, to someone the answer's going to be trivial and they'll know how to solve it right away.
there's lots of people looking at the project.
threshold that to give time to evaluate the project
can't run away with the cash necessarily
shut down projects that people flag as potentially fraudulent
people can't run away with the cash necessarily
spotting potential fraud