CEO of Cinemood Mikhail Bukhovtsev and Marketing Director Daria Mingaliyeva told the site how the campaign of the Multikubik project (a gadget that allows you to view cartoons on any surface) on the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform went on and how it could be made more effective. Zera Chereshneva talked to the heroes of the material.

1. You never know what will happen after the launch of the campaign.

It all started on April 19 at 1 am Moscow time in a San Francisco hotel: part of the team flew there to coordinate the processes. We seriously prepared for the start of crowdfunding on a foreign platform, visited the Indiegogo office, attracted them to help for a percentage of the campaign, took a lot of advice from experts, thought out strategies and models for attracting customers in advance. We collected an email base of 15 thousand people, promoted communities in in social networks and got pre-orders.

In general, there were enough aces in the sleeve to press the Start button with a calm heart. We pressed - and after that all our plans failed. Absolutely everything that we have been preparing for months has stopped working. Failed advertising on Facebook, email-mailing stopped working. Of the 15 thousand pre-orders, no more than 2% of customers were in a hurry to actually pay the bills. We seem to have entered another matrix. Panic, apathy and jet lag ended on the third day, the matrix was read, we came to our senses, sketched out a new plan and began to experiment.

2. The most difficult thing in crowdfunding is the first three and last three days of the campaign

We knew that without a successful start, money cannot be raised. It is necessary to prove to everyone that people need your project, that they are ready to vote for it with a dollar - this means that half of the declared amount must be collected no later than three days. We did it in a day.

3. Your Indiegogo Page Shouldn't Look Too Pretty

We have been preparing for the release of the second product for a long time, invested about $50 thousand in it and were pleased with the visualization of the project. But people were very suspicious of our "licked" layouts and perfect pictures. This baffled them. If we are a startup, they thought, then why is everything so well done, where did the professional video come from, the texts verified by the marketer?

We counted user feedback, realized that it looks like a corporate stuffing, and not like the work of a startup team of 15 people, and simplified the picture as much as possible.

4. The American public is not much different from the Russian

At first, we were tormented by deja vu: in Russia, exactly a year ago, we were already turning the story with pre-orders for the first product. At home, we did everything through our own website, and the process was quite successful. We thought the American audience would be very different from the Russian one. They racked their brains over new delivery models, brainstormed all night long to impress Americans, changed the concept of product delivery.

And so, when all our brilliant ideas were brought to life, the reaction of local residents was the same as that of the Russians: requests for discounts, funny comments, the same questions. We have much more in common in mentality than we think.

5. Do not rely on the support of the American press

We can say that we failed foreign PR: we started work in this direction too late. Personally established contacts did not work well: arranging a meeting with a journalist from an American publication is more difficult than inviting a top manager for a cup of coffee famous company. Local journalists do not like meetings, they are more comfortable with Skype interviews.

We knew that for good traffic we needed a publication in TechCruch, but even creating a letter according to the canons of Mike Butcher (Chief Editor of TechCruch), in response we received the phrase: “And you call this a product?”.

The tactic didn't work. We accepted defeat and sat down to brainstorm how to gain trust. Later, we received an invitation to attend the TechCrunch conference for free, and there we caught his attention with Butcher's cardboard tantamare in full height with the same quote. This made him laugh a lot, thousands of selfies of two Butchers, live and paper, scattered across the network - but the publication never appeared.

We understood that we couldn’t cope on our own, and in parallel with trying to find an approach to the press, we were looking for an agency that would do it for us. The price of all was from $ 10,000 per month without any guarantees.

But one of the most popular mom bloggers, Gina Lee Tank, who used to do material about us, turned out to be the owner of a small agency and offered us much more interesting conditions for half the price - simply because she liked the project. We also connected the PR Serve agency, which was highly recommended in Indiegogo, but it did not bring results.

6. You need to learn how to correctly calculate the strength of the team even before entering Indiegogo

We flew to San Francisco a day before the launch, the first three days we slept for five hours, we worked for both America and Russia. The team at launch was scattered across three cities in three countries. The back office remained in Moscow, a few people were at the Indiegogo headquarters in San Francisco, some participated in the Bang & Olufsen accelerator program in Denmark (we won it in the Next Step Challenge a little earlier).

On the fifth day we understood our major mistake: one part of the team lay with its tongue hanging out, and the second worked in the same calm mode. We distributed the load incorrectly, and two important stages overlapped each other, we began to do everything at once. Now we understand that the launch of the campaign on Indiegogo should have been moved.

7. Not all spam in your inbox is worth ignoring.

From the first day the campaign was launched, our mailboxes were flooded with dozens of offers from spammers and advertisers who supposedly knew the secrets of driving traffic to the crowdfunding page. At first we simply deleted these letters, and then we began to study them. As a result, two proposals out of ten turned out to be really worthwhile. We realized that all this rubbish needs to be read and analyzed, among it you can find a lot of useful things.

8. There are internal platform tools that can generate traffic

The platform has an algorithm for issuing interesting Gogofactor projects. On the very first day, we got to the first page of Indiegogo - this ensured automatic inclusion in the "Trends" mailing list on the platform's email database, in addition, a post appeared on the Indiegogo Facebook page.

Another non-standard way is a recommendation from a successful crowdfunder of another project after the end of his campaign. When we went through the acceleration program in Denmark, we became friends with a local startup that creates Instamic mini microphones. This project was just successfully completing its campaign, and in the final, the creator sent letters to all his customers in the style: “I got acquainted with a cool project - take a look at what the Russian guys are doing, what a cool product.”

Shortly before the start of our campaign, Indiegogo officially launched the secret perk (promo code) feature - we were one of the first to try it out. Later we learned that there are interest clubs inside the platform - communities of geekomaniacs who hunt for special discounts, where participants place Special offers"for their own". It was funny to find a local Groupon inside the crowdfunding platform. We also placed our ad with a promotional code in the Backer Club and received orders from there.

9. New platform features can kill your plans

In April, Indiegogo launched another innovation - the ReFund feature, with which the client can return their funds at any time. We learned about it when several customers suddenly canceled their orders. Now each buyer can withdraw money from the platform until the product comes into his hands. That is, the user's trust must be maintained from the beginning of the campaign to the release of the product and sending it to the recipients, which is about six months or a year. Such a change in conditions is not at all in the hands of the crowdfunder.

10. Try all the tools, something will definitely work

When we realized that the plan failed, and there was no time to build a new one, we began to try everything. We connected all partners to the process, forced them to make advertising banners and write about us on their pages in social networks, composed new ones partnership programs related to Indiegogo. We tried many services, and the most effective were these:

• Buzzstream.com - a tool for selecting contacts and influencers;
• Thunderclap.it - ​​a tool for raising a hashtag and setting a trend in social networks (people agree that at a certain moment a post with certain content is published on their behalf);
• Hey.press is a platform for finding relevant journalists.

Every day we changed something, we still have screenshots of all daily changes with the results in our phones. We realized that successful crowdfunding is not blind luck. You work 14 hours a day for four weeks, your nerves are on edge, time is always running out. In general, the most important thing that gives Indiegogo is a sense of time. It becomes material, you hear how the counter is ticking, you start to think and act faster.

Despite all the failures, we became the first Russians who crossed the threshold of the Indiegogo office, raised more than $100 thousand in two weeks and received an invitation to participate in the world's best technical conference TechCrunch for free.

Over the past month, we have attracted $200,000 in investments from Starttrack and unexpectedly won first place at Startup Village, winning 3 million rubles - which, by the way, caused panic and anger among some innovators, judging by their Facebook posts.

Now we are in a state of panic and euphoria. We are getting requests for affiliate programs. We began to make B2B sales: children's camps, schools, kindergartens, development centers, rehabilitation centers, large and small retailers. Now they are buying a product at a price two times lower than what it will be after the appearance of the product on the shelves. Yes, this is a story about trust, but the money will return to the company in any case, so the risks for them are minimal.

We made 10 prototypes of the future portable projector, and every time they are picked up by strangers, we get new feedback and correct the product. But the main thing is the effect of interaction: you show the projector to an adult and see how he forgets about everything and starts talking about his children. So we understand that we do not sleep for good reason.

Features of the most popular crowdfunding sites.

Shutterstock Photos

Over the past two months, two Ukrainian projects have successfully conducted fundraising campaigns. In July, startup Ecois.me raised $67,000 on Indiegogo, and on June 16, over $220,000 on Kickstarter received a Concepter for a second-generation iBlazr flash. Today, crowdfunding platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo are among the best places to raise funds for your product. Despite their American roots, they are also great for foreign startups, including those from Ukraine.

Exclusively for Forbes Ivan Pasechnik and Anton Dyatlov, the founders of the Ecois.me project, told about all the features and secrets of working with each of the sites.

Crowdfunding platforms are becoming more and more popular among developers of innovative products in Ukraine. Their main advantage is the ability to check how interesting the product being developed will be on the global market, and as a result, to raise funds for its development.

Preparing a campaign is a rather costly and time-consuming process that lasts from several months to six months, and in some projects even longer. During this time, a video is filmed, media materials are prepared, communication is conducted with potential backers (investors in crowdfunding projects) and journalists, a Roadmap is compiled and financial plan, the development process is activated as much as possible.

An important aspect for launching a crowdfunding campaign is choosing the right platform. Separately, it is worth noting that the unwillingness to familiarize yourself with their rules in detail can cause very serious problems, up to the removal of the project from the site.

Before launching the Ecois.me crowdfunding campaign, we took a closer look at the two largest platforms - Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Each of them has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Account registration

The first question that arises before launching a crowdfunding campaign is access to the site.

Everything is easy with Indiegogo. Add new project can be a resident of any country who has reached the age of majority (from the age of 18), without verifying his identity and bank account.

With Kickstarter, things are a little more complicated. Only citizens of the following countries can add a company: USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Norway. Data on citizenship and bank account are manually moderated (up to seven days). Separately, it should be noted that the currency of the campaign corresponds to the currency of the country of the registrar, and it is impossible to change it to another. At first glance, this is an insignificant issue, but most of the backers are in the United States, and launching a campaign in a currency that they do not understand reduces conversion - potential users do not understand how much money they actually gave away.

If the founders are not residents of these countries, but still decide to launch a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter, they will have to use the services of intermediaries. On average, the price for adding to the site fluctuates around $2000, as well as 1-3% of the campaign.

Financing

There are two types of fundraising - Fixed and Flaxible.

fixed makes it possible to withdraw funds only when the goal is reached. This type of fundraising is used by both Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

Flaxible allows you to withdraw funds even if the goal has not been reached. This negatively affects the person's trust in the product and the team, which can affect the success of the campaign. This type of fundraising is only available from Indiegogo. For example, the Ukrainian project Ecozy raised $30,000 during the campaign, and after it ended, another $10,000.

Indiegogo also implemented a pre-order system - InDemand. After the fundraising deadline, it remains possible to order the product.

Below are the fees that platforms charge for their services.

In Indiegogo, when using the flaxible model, the backer has the opportunity to pay for the goods both through Paypal and with a credit card. When using Fixed - only with Paypal. Kickstarter only accepts credit card payments.

Separately, I would like to draw attention to the fact that when working with Indiegogo, you must immediately link a Paypal campaign account. We did this only in the middle of the allotted fundraising deadline, and all the money collected before that was sent to personal account one of the founders who was tied initially. On the same day, Paypal blocked the account and demanded to provide Additional information to unlock.

Campaign design and moderation

Indiegogo and Kickstarter have different approaches to campaign design and moderation. For Kickstarter, the content, the quality of the campaign design and the possibility of the subsequent sale of the product are important. This is reflected in the requirements for the project, moderation and the severity of the rules after the launch of the campaign.

To pass moderation, the team must submit real photos of the device or its prototype. Rendering is prohibited. All interfaces presented in the screenshots must be fully functional. Moderation of projects on average lasts up to seven days. Only 40% of all companies are checked manually, the rest - by Kickstarter algorithms.

It is forbidden to place projects related to charity, training courses, trainings, gift certificates, as well as projects in which there is a monetary reward on the site. For example, a campaign was launched on Indiegogo to raise funds for the restoration of a destroyed zoo in Tbilisi.

Indiegogo is leveling up its projects in a different way. By writing to technical support platform, you can get high-quality assistance from the team, starting with the design of the project and ending with the withdrawal of funds. A project manager is assigned to the project, who leads a certain topic of projects, in our case - technological. Campaign moderation before launch is not carried out.

Not so critical differences are also in the number of awards - up to 10 for Kickstarter and up to 20 for Indiegogo. Awards are an important part of a company's marketing. They can be used as a newsbreak by making unique discounts on certain days. So, for Father's Day, we prepared a limited series of sensors at a discount, thereby attracting new backers.

Another difference is in uploading videos: with Indiegogo you can add videos from YouTube and Vimeo, with Kickstarter you need to upload to the site, after which it will be compressed to a resolution of 640x480. YouTube and Vimeo can become an additional channel for user acquisition. good example is the Flic campaign, with 12,987 purchases. So far, their videos have already been viewed 227,000 times and the number of views continues to grow.

It's worth noting that after the end of the campaign, Kicktarter closes the ability to edit the project, which forces the team to update the description several hours before the end. For Indiegogo, this functionality remains available.

Statistics and work with backers

During fundraising, it is important to understand who the customers of the product being developed are and how you can convey your idea to them.

Indiegogo provides everything for this necessary tools- internal system statistics, the ability to add Google Analytics and track Facebook ad statistics. In addition, Indiegogo from the very first days of the campaign provides access to all backer data, which allows you to understand who the target audience product, and start a dialogue with them. Dialogue with backers is also carried out via mail.

Kickstarter only gives access to internal statistics. But, despite this, it is possible to communicate with backers using messages within the system. According to our friends who launched Kickstarter campaigns, this system is not very convenient.

Trust in the site

An important parameter for successful company- audience confidence in the platform.

Kickstarter wins in every way here. The quality of projects and the trust of the audience is ensured by strict moderation and removal of projects in case of violations. This can happen when adding deliberately false projects, selling existing products, copyright infringement, product pledge by the founders of the project, direct links to the company page from advertising platforms such as Google or Facebook.

The success rate for Kickstarter campaigns fluctuates around 54% versus 9.8% for Indiegogo. The reputation of Indiegogo is also spoiled by the lack of response from the administration to deliberately false projects or projects that are technically impossible to implement. A striking example is the Ritot bracelet watch, during which there were heated discussions about the possibility of technical implementation. After the fundraising was completed, the team began to regularly publish updates on the development of their technical part. It remains to be hoped that the team will be able to finish their product, and the backers will receive their bracelets.

Not so long ago, on June 11, there was the first precedent when the US Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against the creators of The Doom That Came to Atlantic City project. In 2015, they raised $120,000 out of a $35,000 claim, but never released the game.

Platform audience

An equally important factor is the size of the audience. To begin with, it is worth understanding who is the audience of crowdfunding platforms. If you look at the innovation acceptance curve in the market (shown below), these are innovators. The most receptive to innovation, education and quickly adapting audience. It will make up the vast majority of your customers.

Kickstarter has a clear advantage in terms of audience size: 1.1 million subscribers on Facebook and 1 million on Twitter, versus 340 and 230 thousand for Indiegogo.

There is an opinion that there is “no money” on crowdfunding sites, but this is not entirely true. After the campaign collects more than 30% of the target in a short time, it is included in the platform mailing list, posts are published on Facebook and Twitter. From just one Indiegogo mailing list, we received over $10,000 orders.

There is also an opportunity to get to the main page of the site. Kickstarter selects projects manually, while Indiegogo does it automatically.

It is worth noting that Indiegogo provides functionality for an affiliate program. Each user receives a unique link, after which the project team can see how many people have bought the product and give an incentive reward for this. If you correctly build an affiliate program, you can achieve viral effect and significant sales, as was the case with Flic - for five purchases of the device by friends, a person received it for free.

conclusions

Despite the fact that Kickstarter and Indiegogo solve the same problem - raising funds for the project, upon closer examination, the sites turned out to have many differences. Launching campaigns on both sites implies different strategies and project preparation levels, and a different set of tools to achieve the goal.

If the team understands that the deadlines are running out, and it does not have time to produce a full-fledged prototype, or there is simply not enough funding, the only right decision is to launch on Indiegogo. Equally important here is the support of the crowdfunding platform team. Especially if this is the first launch of such campaigns.

Kickstarter is worth considering if the project has a working prototype and a strong marketing component.

Before launching a crowdfunding campaign, it is always worth remembering that the money raised does not guarantee its success. At the end of the allotted time, the biggest and most difficult stage begins - project development, communication with customers and bringing the product to the final stage. Only 30% of the teams that collected the necessary amount were able to keep their promises and implement the product.

Also, when preparing a crowdfunding campaign, it is worth considering the costs of marketing, video shooting, and much more. On average, it takes about $10,000 own funds commands.

Instead of an afterword

There are a lot of crowdfunding platforms, and when choosing where to launch your project, you should not focus only on Indiegogo and Kickstarter. This is just a tool that allows you to bring the project to life. And as a tool, it has a unique set of properties aimed at the implementation of specific tasks.

For example, the Ukrainian project Hyko, a smart bear that teaches children how to save energy, raised $65,000 on the Doorgaan platform. The author of the project was aimed at Western European markets, where the culture of economy and respect for natural resources is developed.

If you look at Ukraine, Biggggidea, which specializes in raising funds for cultural projects, and the Ukrainian Charity Exchange, which helps raise funds for the treatment of children and social projects, have been operating in it for several years.

Probably, there are no people left in our geek community who have not heard about the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform (we even prepared a special one about financing projects there). But today I would like to tell you about its main competitor - Indiegogo. To acquaint you with the principles of site robots and its main advantages and disadvantages?

What is the difference?

Indiegogo is the same crowdfunding platform as Kickstarter, but with a few differences. In the case of Kickstarter, there are only two options for the development of events: the project collects the set amount and receives all the money (minus the commission of the site and Amazon, somewhere around 10-13%), or the project does not find proper funding and all funds are returned to people's accounts. Everything, the third is not given. On Indiegogo, the rules are different (the administration is more loyal there). In case of successful promotion, the startup receives all the money (the site takes only 4% for itself), if the specified amount could not be collected, then the funds can also be received, but in this scenario, the commission is already 9%. But the third scheme of work appeared recently (this summer), it is called - users can “donate” money to the project, even if the collection campaign has already ended.

As I already said, the administration on Indiegogo is more loyal than on Kickstarter, because only potentially successful projects are selected on the second platform (recently there was even ). Therefore, startups that do not have money for large-scale advertising campaign, preparing high-quality video and processing other small moments, Indiegogo is usually chosen. There are no restrictions on topics anywhere, but for some reason Kickstarter appealed more to lovers of technology and various gadgets. And Indiegogo has gained its popularity through personal projects, philanthropy, music, sculpture, films and other similar topics. By the way, Kickstarter attendance is many times higher.

A bit of history

The site first saw the world in 2008 at the Sadness independent film festival and initially specialized only in working with films. Already in 2010, the site entered into a partnership with MTV New Media, after which various content began to be created based on ideas (startups) posted on the site. In February 2012, Indiegogo came to the attention of US President Barack Obama, who invited the site to the Startup America project to introduce entrepreneurs to the basic crowdfunding model. As of January 2014, the number of successful transactions has exceeded 200,000.

If you remember the most successful projects for the entire existence of the site, then this is, of course, Ubuntu Edge (it was necessary $32 million, it was possible to raise $13 million), (it was necessary $50 thousand, it was possible to raise $1.5 million), family (it was necessary $100 thousand, it was possible to raise $2.3 million), (it needed $200 thousand, managed to raise $2.8 million) and, of course, who collected the required amount of $380 thousand in a few hours, and now the developers are seeing $1.17 million in their account (and this is 17 days before the end of the fundraising campaign).

Scheme of work

What actions should the owner of the project take that it was published on Indiegogo? There is nothing complicated, everything is done in just a few steps. First you need to write the text, take photos, record a video, in short, prepare all the necessary information about the startup. Also choose the financial and time frame. Sometimes it is possible (desirable) to update the data on the page so that investors can see that some work is being done. If you first choose the “Keep it all” type of crowdfunding, then the money transferred via PayPal goes immediately to the account of the startup owner (minus the commission), and those funds that come through the bank are credited only after the campaign is completed (besides, this may take up to 16 days). That's all. The main task is to tell about your project to the maximum number of people (through social networks, advertising and other means).

For Indiegogo, it doesn’t matter what country you are in, but there are still currency restrictions. The site supports: dollars (USA, Canada), euros and pounds sterling. Some (very clever) companies use this kind of platform to "probe" the reaction to their product - they look at the number of pre-orders, reviews and even then apply the information received to improve their products.

If you find an error, please highlight a piece of text and click Ctrl+Enter.

More and more entrepreneurs - both beginners and quite experienced ones - are considering crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo as a source of funding for their project, and competition on these sites is growing. But just because people try doesn't mean they succeed.

The Next Web asked Clay Hubert, founder and CEO of Spindows and creator of KickstarterHacks, about the pitfalls. As an expert in crowdfunding, he has already helped 26 entrepreneurs raise total funds of about $2.1 million.

There are two main types of crowdfunding, and they are for two very different types of startups. Platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo work on the principle of remuneration - in exchange for supporting the project in financial terms, participants receive a reward (most often, this is the product itself). These campaigns are best suited for creative teams who want to raise enough money to complete a project - typically $50,000 or less.

There are also platforms like Fundable.com, which are based on the principle of participation, where for a contribution an accredited investor can receive a part of the company's shares. They are suitable for startups that are looking for $50,000 or more.

You need to understand that $50,000 in this case is only an approximate guideline, just $10,000 for putting documentation in order and $5 million for an analytical SaaS application are two different things.

When people find interesting projects, they often share the find with friends. This is such an element of discovery. Better yet, Kickstarter or Indiegogo works as an exclusive online store offering to buy an item that you won't find anywhere else. Pebble watches didn't raise $10 million because their creator is a nice guy (although he really is), they raised that amount because users wanted Pebble watches. Pebble made an amazing product and told the story of this product brilliantly. This is the key to the success of a crowdfunding campaign.

What are the most common mistakes people make when launching a campaign? There are several key mistakes that are repeated over and over again. The biggest one is when they think marketing will take care of itself. But the press likes to write about multimillion-dollar projects, and a $30-50 project may well pass by. The truth is that you have to create interest in your campaign yourself. Kickstarter and IndieGoGo are doing great job to promote interesting projects, but most of the opinions and funds (usually 80-90%) come from outside the platform. As with any good online marketing, you need to be aware of specific audience segments that are in desperate need of your product. If you think that "everyone" needs it, get back to work. You cannot make something that everyone needs without exception, you need a unique product for a specific audience. Ideally, the audience is created in advance using email newsletters, a blog, and social networks. You need to create marketing plan even before launch, because after launch it is already too late. The clock is ticking.

The second big mistake is how people value their rewards. When you buy from sites like Zappos, there is virtually zero customer risk: Zappos invests in free shipping and excellent customer service. You are not Zappos. Many crowdfunding projects never launch, and those that do are often significantly late in delivery. In the case of collective financing, there is an inherent client risk. To minimize it, the founders of the project should set the cost of the product below the manufacturer's recommended retail price.

Five tips for launching a campaign:

• Create a unique and interesting product


• Prepare an interested audience in advance (this takes months, if not years)


• Tell a story that can go viral. Ask yourself if people will share this video even if they didn't invest in the project?


• Create a marketing plan


• Set the reward bar below the market price. Add as much value as possible to each level

Crowdfunding is definitely not for everyone. Kickstarter has a very specific list of categories and principles that projects must meet, and if your project doesn't, Kickstarter is the wrong choice. IndieGoGo is more flexible in this regard, there are other platforms, but crowdfunding is generally not suitable for any project. Products that are not new and unique are unlikely to generate the interest needed to make a campaign successful. The same can be said about campaigns that have not decided on a specific audience.

Crowdfunding can provide a project with a number of benefits beyond fundraising. There are quite a few entrepreneurs - such as David Ellner of Panna - who have used Kickstarter to test market demand and then attracted venture capital. Successful crowdfunding can also create or fuel a buzz around a project.

It's sad that Canonical's Indiegogo campaign failed, but they made two critical mistakes. Firstly, they set too high a goal ($32 million - an astronomical amount for crowdfunding projects). But their second mistake is even worse than the first - they preferred fixed funding to flexible. Unlike Kickstarter, which offers everything or nothing, on Indiegogo, in the event of an unsuccessful campaign, you can get at least what you managed to collect (with a slightly larger percentage paid to the site). Canonical came up with an innovative product and told a good story, they built a strong community and raised over $12M, which is a lot of crowdfunding. By choosing flexible funding, they could take the money and bring Ubuntu Edge to market. However, now more than 20 thousand users will simply take their money back.

Starting with a smaller goal or choosing a flexible funding option, Canonical could have been hugely successful with their Ubuntu Edge.

Cinemood CEO Mikhail Bukhovtsev and Marketing Director Daria Mingaliyeva told the site how the campaign of the Multikubik project (a gadget that allows you to view cartoons on any surface) on the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform went on and how it could be made more effective. Zera Chereshneva talked to the heroes of the material.

1. You never know what will happen after the launch of the campaign.

It all started on April 19 at 1 am Moscow time in a San Francisco hotel: part of the team flew there to coordinate the processes. We seriously prepared for the start of crowdfunding on a foreign platform, visited the Indiegogo office, attracted them to help for a percentage of the campaign, took a lot of advice from experts, thought out strategies and models for attracting customers in advance. We collected an email database of 15 thousand people, promoted communities on social networks and collected pre-orders.

In general, there were enough aces in the sleeve to press the Start button with a calm heart. We pressed - and after that all our plans failed. Absolutely everything that we have been preparing for months has stopped working. Failed advertising on Facebook, email-mailing stopped working. Of the 15 thousand pre-orders, no more than 2% of customers were in a hurry to actually pay the bills. We seem to have entered another matrix. Panic, apathy and jet lag ended on the third day, the matrix was read, we came to our senses, sketched out a new plan and began to experiment.

2. The most difficult thing in crowdfunding is the first three and last three days of the campaign

We knew that without a successful start, money cannot be raised. It is necessary to prove to everyone that people need your project, that they are ready to vote for it with a dollar - this means that half of the declared amount must be collected no later than three days. We did it in a day.

3. Your Indiegogo Page Shouldn't Look Too Pretty

We have been preparing for the release of the second product for a long time, invested about $50 thousand in it and were pleased with the visualization of the project. But people were very suspicious of our "licked" layouts and perfect pictures. This baffled them. If we are a startup, they thought, then why is everything so well done, where did the professional video come from, the texts verified by the marketer?

We counted user feedback, realized that it looks like a corporate stuffing, and not like the work of a startup team of 15 people, and simplified the picture as much as possible.

4. The American public is not much different from the Russian

At first, we were tormented by deja vu: in Russia, exactly a year ago, we were already turning the story with pre-orders for the first product. At home, we did everything through our own website, and the process was quite successful. We thought the American audience would be very different from the Russian one. They racked their brains over new delivery models, brainstormed all night long to impress Americans, changed the concept of product delivery.

And so, when all our brilliant ideas were brought to life, the reaction of local residents was the same as that of the Russians: requests for discounts, funny comments, the same questions. We have much more in common in mentality than we think.

5. Do not rely on the support of the American press

We can say that we failed foreign PR: we started work in this direction too late. Personally established contacts did not work well: arranging a meeting with a journalist from an American publication is more difficult than inviting a top manager of a well-known company for a cup of coffee. Local journalists do not like meetings, they are more comfortable with Skype interviews.

We knew that for good traffic we needed a publication in TechCruch, but even creating a letter according to the canons of Mike Butcher (Chief Editor of TechCruch), in response we received the phrase: “And you call this a product?”.

The tactic didn't work. We accepted defeat and sat down to brainstorm how to gain trust. Later, we received an invitation to attend the TechCrunch conference for free, and there we caught his attention with Butcher's full-length cardboard tantamare with the same quote. This made him laugh a lot, thousands of selfies of two Butchers, live and paper, scattered across the network - but the publication never appeared.

We understood that we couldn’t cope on our own, and in parallel with trying to find an approach to the press, we were looking for an agency that would do it for us. The price of all was from $ 10,000 per month without any guarantees.

On the other hand, one of the most popular mom bloggers, Gina Lee Tank, who used to do material about us, turned out to be the owner of a small agency and offered us much more interesting conditions for half the price - simply because she liked the project. We also connected the PR Serve agency, which was highly recommended in Indiegogo, but it did not bring results.

6. You need to learn how to correctly calculate the strength of the team even before entering Indiegogo

We flew to San Francisco a day before the launch, the first three days we slept for five hours, we worked for both America and Russia. The team at launch was scattered across three cities in three countries. The back office remained in Moscow, a few people were at the Indiegogo headquarters in San Francisco, some participated in the Bang & Olufsen accelerator program in Denmark (we won it in the Next Step Challenge a little earlier).

On the fifth day, we realized our main mistake: one part of the team was lying with its tongue hanging out, and the second worked in the same calm mode. We distributed the load incorrectly, and two important stages overlapped each other, we began to do everything at once. Now we understand that the launch of the campaign on Indiegogo should have been moved.

7. Not all spam in your inbox is worth ignoring.

From the first day the campaign was launched, our mailboxes were flooded with dozens of offers from spammers and advertisers who supposedly knew the secrets of driving traffic to the crowdfunding page. At first we simply deleted these letters, and then we began to study them. As a result, two proposals out of ten turned out to be really worthwhile. We realized that all this rubbish needs to be read and analyzed, among it you can find a lot of useful things.

8. There are internal platform tools that can generate traffic

The platform has an algorithm for issuing interesting Gogofactor projects. On the very first day, we got to the first page of Indiegogo - this ensured automatic inclusion in the "Trends" mailing list on the platform's email database, in addition, a post appeared on the Indiegogo Facebook page.

Another non-standard way is a recommendation from a successful crowdfunder of another project after the end of his campaign. When we went through the acceleration program in Denmark, we became friends with a local startup that creates Instamic mini microphones. This project was just successfully completing its campaign, and in the final, the creator sent letters to all his customers in the style: “I got acquainted with a cool project - take a look at what the Russian guys are doing, what a cool product.”

Shortly before the start of our campaign, Indiegogo officially launched the secret perk (promo code) feature - we were one of the first to try it out. Later we learned that there are interest clubs inside the platform - geekomaniac communities that hunt for special discounts, where participants post special offers “for their own”. It was funny to find a local Groupon inside the crowdfunding platform. We also placed our ad with a promotional code in the Backer Club and received orders from there.

9. New platform features can kill your plans

In April, Indiegogo launched another innovation - the ReFund feature, with which the client can return their funds at any time. We learned about it when several customers suddenly canceled their orders. Now each buyer can withdraw money from the platform until the product comes into his hands. That is, the user's trust must be maintained from the beginning of the campaign to the release of the product and sending it to the recipients, which is about six months or a year. Such a change in conditions is not at all in the hands of the crowdfunder.

10. Try all the tools, something will definitely work

When we realized that the plan failed, and there was no time to build a new one, we began to try everything. We connected all the partners to the process, forced them to make advertising banners and write about us on their pages on social networks, composed new affiliate programs related to Indiegogo. We tried many services, and the most effective were these:

• Buzzstream.com - a tool for selecting contacts and influencers;
• Thunderclap.it - ​​a tool for raising a hashtag and setting a trend in social networks (people agree that at a certain moment a post with certain content is published on their behalf);
• Hey.press is a platform for finding relevant journalists.

Every day we changed something, we still have screenshots of all daily changes with the results in our phones. We realized that successful crowdfunding is not blind luck. You work 14 hours a day for four weeks, your nerves are on edge, time is always running out. In general, the most important thing that gives Indiegogo is a sense of time. It becomes material, you hear how the counter is ticking, you start to think and act faster.

Despite all the failures, we became the first Russians who crossed the threshold of the Indiegogo office, raised more than $100 thousand in two weeks and received an invitation to participate in the world's best technical conference TechCrunch for free.

Over the past month, we have attracted $200,000 in investments from Starttrack and unexpectedly won first place at Startup Village, winning 3 million rubles - which, by the way, caused panic and anger among some innovators, judging by their Facebook posts.

Now we are in a state of panic and euphoria. We are getting requests for affiliate programs. We began to make B2B sales: children's camps, schools, kindergartens, development centers, rehabilitation centers, large and small retailers. Now they are buying a product at a price two times lower than what it will be after the appearance of the product on the shelves. Yes, this is a story about trust, but the money will return to the company in any case, so the risks for them are minimal.

We made 10 prototypes of the future portable projector, and every time they are picked up by strangers, we get new feedback and correct the product. But the main thing is the effect of interaction: you show the projector to an adult and see how he forgets about everything and starts talking about his children. So we understand that we do not sleep for good reason.