What I Learned From a Failed Kickstarter.

The first time we got lucky. We had the right mix of novelty and na?vety. We launched our Kickstarter, while still students, for our Jet Pack backpack in May 2013, hitting our $17k goal in two days, and eventually raising $56k.

We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, or really where our success was coming from. We thought everyone was excited about the childhood inspiration behind our backpack. And with that assumption we launched our second Kickstarter a year later.

And it took that project flopping to come to some important realizations and we ended up learning more from our failed Kickstarter than our successful one:

1. Tell the Product's Story in One Photo: You only have a few seconds to hook someone; can you show what is unique, new, or better about your product in one photo? Why should anyone care about what you're trying to create? With the aesthetically distinct Jet Pack someone could look at the photo, and in a few seconds decide if it was "dope" or not. With the Anti-Gravity Pack it took a GIF or a video for people to start to decide if they were interested or cared about magnetic modularity. There's enough crap in this world - make something new, unique, or better. It will make it easier for you to pitch your project to journalists, influencers, and media outlets and it will bring better products into the world.

2. Tell the Right Narrative: As a designer I often fall into the pitfall of wanting to show the whole journey a product went through to get to the end user - but not everyone cares. (Though some people on Kickstarter or Behance want to see that full process). The inspiration behind the bag frankly may not be that inspiring. It's likely that the aesthetics, technical advantages, integration of a new functionality or tech, is what will get someone excited enough to put money towards your cause. We got lucky with the Jet Pack in that it was so obviously unique. With the Anti-Gravity Pack our childhood inspiration story flopped, but the modular functionality story resonated enough to get write ups and backers. Make sure that narrative is obvious in your photos, videos, and copy. 

3. Any Project Can Get Funded: It's my personal opinion that any project can get funded. You just need to drive enough people to your campaign. And then factor in what your conversion rate is - is it 1%, 7%, or 30% of people that see it will back it? To get that traffic you will probably be relying on those with established and engaged audiences - blogs, news outlets, lifestyle websites, Instagram influencers, etc. If you've created a valuable or unique project that is easy to understand then you'll get the attention of writers, as well as improve your conversion rate. And you can always go with "World's [insert superlative] [insert product] . . . " if you're not feeling very creative.

We came to realize that when people were looking at our Anti-Gravity Pack Kickstarter, they simply just didn't get it, and no media outlets were picking up the project for the same reason. We canceled the project and took the next month to clarify and streamline our story, take new photos, and make a new video.

We launched the same exact product, but this time we focused on the modular functionality of the magnetic coupling hardware instead of the childhood inspiration. We hit our $20k funding goal in four days, and ended up raising $38k. It was successful for the reasons I mentioned above - though it continues to be a much harder product to communicate than the Jet Pack.

So now, another year later, we've launched our Special Ops Backpack on Kickstarter, and you can be the judge of whether we've successfully taken these lessons into our fourth Kickstarter.

TLDR: To have a successful Kickstarter, make something new, unique, or better. Tell that story in one photo. Use that hook to get coverage, which will then drive enough people to your project to get it funded.