Kickstarter

“Going into it, we knew that we weren't building this to sell this, and we weren't trying to create a public company. And when we went out for investment, this was, you know, one of the first things we discussed with people.”

“In fact, 18 months before Kickstarter went live, Indiegogo, another crowdfunding site, was launched.”

“We did have one actual venture capital investor. Again, not that much money.”

“So we said, hey, you need to show where your prototype is at. You need to add the risks and challenges of this project as you see them. In the checkout process, we had Kickstarter is not a store, and we linked to some of our policies to let people know what di…”

“We actually looked back at all the companies we featured, and at least one-third of those companies got off the ground with money raised on Kickstarter.”

“Recently, we passed the three billion dollar pledge mark.”

“There was this social friction before that existed, and the model has been able to eliminate that, or even put it in a way that's socially positive.”

“One of the people we met was Andy Baio, who really helped us kind of Figure out what kind of technology we should be using, and helped us interview the developers that we would hire, and he eventually became our first CTO. That was tremendously helpful because…”

“I think, you know, the first six months, not at all, no revenue. I think within a year after that, so probably within the first 18 months, we got in the black.”

“I cannot code and I couldn't code, but I think I had a sense of what it should feel like. I know what I like, I know what I think feels good when I'm on a site, but from the deep technical stuff, No, that was not my background at all. Yancey probably had been …”

“It took us a year and a half, so from that point, probably from there to early 2008, we raised maybe a 120,000 dollars in a year and a half.”

“I thought, what if the people that, Would want to come to the show could have a say in that. And if enough people could do that before a certain point, then the show could happen. And if not, then it doesn't. So that, that was it. That was the beginning.”

“First of all, with Chris Zaka, it was angel money. It was their personal money.”

“I think a lot of times big companies, they want to do a partnership, they want to sign a contract. That's, you know, we're like, listen, if you want to go do it, go log on the site. But if you want, like, some special stuff from us or whatever, I mean, that's …”

“I had a friend of mine, and her cousin is David Cross, the comedian from Arrested Development, and many other, Mr. Show, and great stuff. And so she connected us, and we went and had a drink at a bar, and I talked to him about the idea, and a few months later,…”

“And then two years ago, we became a public benefit corporation, which is still a for-profit company, but it means that the obligations of the board and the executives and the company is to balance the shareholder interest with greater stakeholders, including t…”

“And the big goal was 5000 straws, which would have been about 70,000 dollars. But we sold about 60,000 straws and closed a month later with 1.89 million dollars in the bank.”

“There's companies out there that are patrolling Kickstarter and looking to see when people throw a successful campaign. And as soon as they see that overnight success, Then they jump on it, and they use the measurements that are provided on the Kickstarter to …”

“I think, you know, the first six months, not at all, no revenue. I think within a year after that, so probably within the first 18 months, we got in the black.”

“I think at the end we produced a document over a hundred pages about how the site would function, with zero code written, mind you.”

“I had a friend of mine, and her cousin is David Cross, the comedian from Arrested Development, and many other, Mr. Show, and great stuff. And so she connected us, and we went and had a drink at a bar, and I talked to him about the idea, and, ah, a few months l…”

“One of the people we met was Andy Baio, who really helped us kind of figure out what kind of technology we should be using, and helped us interview the developers that we Would hire, and he eventually became our first CTO. That was tremendously helpful because…”

“I think going into it, we knew that we weren't building this to sell this, and we weren't trying to create a public company. And when we went out for investment, this was, you know, one of the first things we discussed with people.”

“If underneath the mandate is, at the end of the day, make the most money for shareholders, it's a really, it's not really a good fit for humans, and I don't think it's, It portends very well for society if this is what we accept as the only way to do it.”

“Well, I certainly didn't from any technical sense. I cannot code, and I couldn't code. But, I think I Had a sense of what it should feel like. I know what I like, I know what I think feels good when I'm on a site, but from the deep technical stuff, no, that wa…”

“It took us a year and a half, so from that point, probably from there to early 2008, we raised maybe a 120,000 dollars in a year and a half.”

“I thought, what if the people that, Would want to come to the show could have a say in that, and if enough people could do that before a certain point, then the show could happen, and if not, then it doesn't.”

“Recently, we passed the three billion dollar pledge mark.”

“If you want, like, some special stuff from us or whatever, I mean, that's just not what we do. It's a relatively open door, but you're not any better than some young creator who's working on their first idea.”

“And 200 people I guess we raised 300,200 people bought, and a hundred of them were investors.”

“The factory's made the men's and women's shoes exactly the same size.”

“Ah, and then it went on the Kickstarter's homepage, and on their mailing list, where they send out sort of interesting projects, and, ah, it went to a hundred and, you know, 20,000 dollars in four days, and I had to stop it.”

“There's companies out there that are patrolling Kickstarter and looking to see when people throw a successful campaign. And as soon as they see that overnight success, Then they jump on it, and they use the measurements that are provided on the Kickstarter to …”

“And the big goal was 5000 straws, which would have been about 70,000 dollars. But we sold about 60,000 straws and closed a month later with 1.89 million dollars in the bank.”

“Yeah, in terms of the growth so we did, including the Kickstarter in 2014, we did about four or 500,002 1015 was two million for the year, and then for the year of 2016 it jumped to about twenty million or so.”

“We, you know, we wanted to just please the customer, so we had six patterns with our Kickstarter. We said, mix and match, do whatever you want, kind of, and tell us what you want. Huge mistake.”

“237,000 dollars.”

“Kickstarter kicked off all the hardware people at this point, so this is 2012.”

“And that, she ended up raising a 104,000 dollars.”

“I think it's just that you do have to be deluded when you're in those stages. You have to not think about the odds. You know, you have to have just incredible belief that it is worth it.”

“We put a 100,000 dollar goal up for 30 days, and we ended up hitting 250,000 dollars of pre-orders on Kickstarter. And another two 50 can our website in the following 30 days after close. We had almost half a million dollars of pre-orders off of like a three m…”

“Our first pump was overheating in the unit because of the design constraints, and, you know, almost was like, 80% of the pumps, Alex, died within the first 30 days of the units going out on Kickstarter, and it was it literally put us out of business almost.”

“And we asked for 30,000 dollars, and then over 30 days, you know, people almost helped us to raise almost 60.”

“I believe we sent about 1100 boxes to different customers, and we got like 60% of them to sign up. So right away we had 607 hundred subscribers.”

“And so we did a 30 day campaign. We went out to raise 25,000 dollars, and we ended up raising 210,000 dollars.”

“I mean, we never had a return.”

“The Kickstarter raised 17,000 pounds, yeah, and This was the kind of funny part of it was that, okay, there was 92 ovens were sold through the campaign, but we sold another 200 on the back of the extra press that happened in the following month.”

“At the time we were, out of all the restaurants on Kickstarter, I think we were the third most successful at that 150,000 dollar mark. But we also had the most supporters just because we had it, we did it very organically, and like our average was less than 60…”

“Five 50, so half a million dollars.”

“And I think in the first day in Kickstarter, we sold over 200,000 dollars in bikes.”

“Yeah, if I remember correctly, we sold about 2000 bikes that year, 1500 in the first month, and then 500 in the next six months that follows.”

“Yeah, in hindsight, Kickstarter probably wasn't the easiest way to raise money, but it was an amazing way to get attention and get press and prove the concept.”

“I didn't want family and friends because I didn't want the polite donations. I wanted like stranger people to tell me whether or not this was something that would resonate with them.”

“And that's, what's just so awesome about presale in general and Kickstarter is that you're truly, you're not serving, you're getting like money votes. And when people vote with their dollars, it's a big, it's very different than when they're voting with like a…”

“We wanted to pre-sell about 4000 pounds worth, and we sold about 18,000 pounds worth.”

“We raised a total of a 166,000 Canadian dollars.”

“The delusion that I had, and I think the delusion that we all have as entrepreneurs, if I cut through that delusion with some common sense from the future, to be honest, who knows if I would have gone through with it.”

“I went from CEO, stayed on as chairman for many years, then was just a board member, brought on a new chairman, and then, really, as of about six months ago, I am now liberated.”

“Kickstarter comes out, they have a good design experience, they have a curated product, so it's easier to just have upfront positive stories, but they definitely don't scale as rapidly as they could either.”

“Within the first 24 hours, we passed the one million mark.”

“And I said, 10,000 dollars. That seems about right. That's how much we'll earn off of it. And Matt immediately said, five million dollars.”

“And we raised like five million dollars on Kickstarter for that campaign.”

“We're 10 years later, and it is still, holds the record for the most number of backers of any campaign in history.”

“So 219,000 backers made means that because most people wanted more than one deck we had to produce 700,000 decks of cards for our very first print run.”

“If I contact a local card manufacturer, I was like, what's the minimum order? And he said you have to produce a thousand decks of cards. Like, that's the minimum here. I was like, cool, ok, fine. And I was like, well, how much does that cost? And he said, oh, …”

“Go to Kickstarter to build a community. It's not there to raise funds. It has the side effect of raising funds, but you're really raising a community, and that's the place to do it.”