Wallets still a sure bet, Metal Dice suggesting that business school is useless

Minimalist wallets holding steady at around $60,000 each and have been since they started. Useless metal dice also holding steady at $160,000. #ridiculous

The Man in the Arena

--Theodore Roosevelt

Six Steps to a Successful KickStarter [Crowdfunding] Campaign #100pointsforaliteration

In my own experience, and from reading other project creators' stories, this seems like a pretty standard way to successfully go about a KickStarter (or other crowdfunding platform) campaign:

"Pre-marketing" is getting press lined up before you launch your campaign. You'll notice a couple posts below that the wallets had press really soon after launch, which is difficult unless you contact people pre-launch and convince people to write about your project once it goes live.

Marketing probably continues once the campaign goes live too, but you want to make sure all the important outlets are going to cover you before you go live, otherwise you might have someone write a blog post after your fundraising campaign closes. #lame

Jeff Schwarting quoted by CNN

"There's a growing belief that play may be tied to learning -- but it's wrong. Play is learning," says Schwarting.

"Play provides a safe environment which embraces trial and error, eliminating fear of failure and encouraging experimentation, which leads to greater understanding of how things work and greater confidence in one's ability to confront challenges."

Design is everything

Design is the foundation of any creative work, so I'm trying to learn how to do it; here's a 2013 banner / background I did (in ppt!):

UNBELIEVABLE

This just blows my mind. People want what they want and turns out I'll never understand why. Metal dice that can't even be used now trending toward ...

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/124127689/precision-machined-dice/

SkinnyKing

In preparation for a KickStarter campaign, I decided to tie blog posts about a project to the dollars earned that day. For slim wallets, Uncrate.com is the must-have media outlet.

TGT (Tight) - $317,424

Supr Slim - $203,488

The Minimalist - $116,802

KickStarter Success: Fire the video crew because demand is EVERYTHING

"How to make a successful crowdfunding campaign" articles usually include these elements:

• Make a good product
• Take amazing pictures
• Make a phenomenal video
• Get blogs to write about your project

It's good advice, but it's wrong. Here's my evidence:

The Flip n'Grip

It's not over yet, but they're not going to make it.

The Flip n'Grip Wallet did everything right: 

• Their product is extremely well-thought-out and made of very high quality materials (the ol' "aircraft-grade aluminum" spiel)
• Their pictures are phenomenal
• Their video is one of the best on KickStarter
• They were featured on big time blogs (Core77, CoolMaterial, GearHungry, The Awesomer, etc.)

But while they did raise a good amount of money, it's nothing compared to similar products (the HuMn Wallet made $295,402), and, 57 hours from now, it will fail.

Contrast that with this project:

Precision Machined Dice

The project just got started, so it's still in progress, but KickTraq has it trending toward $134,663 - almost triple (that's 3x! #investorlaunguagenobodyunderstands) what the Flip n'Grip will end with.

Yet this dice project did almost everything wrong:

• The product can't even be used on wood or cloth tables because the edges are sharp
• There is only one picture on the entire page
• The video is terrible compared to others on KickStarter
• From the little research I did, this project was only featured on a couple mediocre blogs

So what's the deal? Why is the first going to fail and the second going to raise 4,000% more that it's goal? The only reasonable conclusion I can come up with is: demand. People just didn't want the wallet that badly, but for whatever reason seem to absolutely need these unusable metal dice!

And thus we see, demand drives everything. You can do the campaigning all right, but if there's no demand for your product, it won't do well. You can also do the campaigning entirely wrong, and if there is demand, you'll blow the rest of us away with head-scratching results.

Conclusion: in this age of information where we expect to know everything about everything before we take any risks, demand returns us to the reality of faith: sometimes you simply must step into the darkness.

The Three Reasons You May Not Succeed

Entrepreneurship is hard. People who attempt it are rarely successful, unfortunately. In the constant quest to simplify entrepreneurship, I've developed a theory about entrepreneurial (or new product) risk; there are only three reasons an new venture will fail, i.e., risks:

1. Production risk - can you actually produce it
2. Demand risk - will people actually buy it
3. Profit risk - can you produce and provide it profitably

Production risk is often spoken of as negligible, which I somewhat agree with (we walked on the MOON), however, I see a lot of hopeful entrepreneurs with huge ideas that they themselves cannot produce given their resources, so it's still a big deal.

Demand is the most nebulous, because there's simply no way to know if people will buy your product until you put it in front of them with the opportunity to actually buy it.

Profit is simple - it's about your ability to put together a team, find a supply chain, produce your product, establish distribution, sell, etc. profitably. That's it!

Here's a visual I made to help remember this / use as a canvas:

Produce Provide Canvas

I love the simplification frameworks provide, so I'll share one I created to simplify launching a new product. There are two main sections:

1. Production - how the product will be produced
2. Provision  - how the product will be provided to customers

Within each, there are only two components, yielding this simple yet perspicacious canvas. Try mapping your product onto it.

Big KickStarter projects