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Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

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Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#31

Post by miahi »

blackguardx wrote: post #22
conesus wrote: post #4

Ok, there's a chance I'll gain some valuable insight from posting this, which beats the cost of putting myself out there, so here goes... I just completed a 30 day hardware Kickstarter last week and spent $22k on the video ($18k for main video, $4k for founder interview) and raised $57k, which is an outlier to this data. I can tell my campaign is not in the Video Budget / Amount Raised graph because it would stick ou…

I saw your prototype at a HDDG meetup in SF. I think your campaign was very well done. If you fell short of your internal goal, it might be price related. You are in impulse buy territory, but the product might be too niche for that price. I ran a failed crowdfunding campaign back in July. We raised ~$25k of a $100k goal. We spent $7k on the video and another $500 on google, FB, and twitter ads. The ads didnt seem to…

A one-channel scope is useful, but it still feels as cutting your left arm when you are used to (and need) more than one channel. And these days most of the things are digital, so that means SPI/I2C/whatever with more than one line, and even then, A-B is quite important. I guess you can't combine two of them with a hardware trigger in/out so you can synchronize them and simulate a two-channel.

As it is, it's more like a toy scope, fortunately pretty close to impulse buy prices as these things go, so I guess it will be alright. I would buy one but it's iOS only, so I'm stuck with my Rigol :).

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#32

Post by conesus »

ajiang wrote: post #29
conesus wrote: post #4

Ok, there's a chance I'll gain some valuable insight from posting this, which beats the cost of putting myself out there, so here goes... I just completed a 30 day hardware Kickstarter last week and spent $22k on the video ($18k for main video, $4k for founder interview) and raised $57k, which is an outlier to this data. I can tell my campaign is not in the Video Budget / Amount Raised graph because it would stick ou…

What was your mailing list size before the campaign?

Mentioned in this comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13878836 - and I will reiterate how important that one number is to optimize, because in order to do so it means optimizing other processes first, like ad messaging, compelling product, and sizing the market.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#33

Post by daveguy »

conesus wrote: post #13
Retric wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offence, but that seems like an ultra niche product which may be part of the problem. Clearly some people like the idea but home automation + wood seems iffy to me. Worse only 4 buttons seems like a poor fit for home automation. One button suggest getting as many as you need, 4 is kind of an odd compromise.

Ah-ha, we hit my area of expertise which is talking about how four buttons is all you need. It's a 16 button remote. Hold a button down to switch to that button's app, and each app has its own four buttons. Buttons can also perform multiple actions at once. So you step into your home and press a button and everything welcomes you home: the lights fade up (hue, lifx), the music fades in (sonos, iTunes, spotify), the h…

You never really explain how you can set that up easily and use it efficiently.

It looks like it would be tedious to set up and annoying to use if you have to keep different mappings in your head without any visual feedback. Was the feedback auditory?

So the primary issue is not showing how this thing is pleasant to use.

The second issue is you claim to be able to use it without any smart devices. Anyone with any home automation knows that's a bunch of bull. You control all kinds of things with like special outlets, hue, etc. Why would I buy something like this if I don't have any multi hundred dollar home automation equipment? That is a severe audience limiter.

Saying you don't need any special devices while explaining how it controls special devices just comes off as insincere.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#34

Post by conesus »

daveguy wrote: post #33
conesus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah-ha, we hit my area of expertise which is talking about how four buttons is all you need. It's a 16 button remote. Hold a button down to switch to that button's app, and each app has its own four buttons. Buttons can also perform multiple actions at once. So you step into your home and press a button and everything welcomes you home: the lights fade up (hue, lifx), the music fades in (sonos, iTunes, spotify), the h…

You never really explain how you can set that up easily and use it efficiently. It looks like it would be tedious to set up and annoying to use if you have to keep different mappings in your head without any visual feedback. Was the feedback auditory? So the primary issue is not showing how this thing is pleasant to use. The second issue is you claim to be able to use it without any smart devices. Anyone with any hom…

That's fascinating. I had heard feedback around the setup before, but I didn't realize it would be beneficial to show how quick it is to pair smart devices to the remote. I easily could have done that in an animated GIF.

Secondly, the remote actually controls much more software than it does hardware. I use it while watching videos, playing music, reading my news reader, as my alarm clock, and to handle my iMac (turn off screen when I go to bed). But I could have done a much more narrative way of explaining that instead of heaping it in a list. I just thought the software side wasn't as interesting as the hardware side. When the devices ship and people learn how it works, that may work out well after all.

Good fodder for the next campaign!

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#35

Post by arafa »

Many of the graphics here violate visual best practices, which can make them very misleading (the scatter plot in particular). The most egregious is the use of a log-scale on three of the graphics, which isn't highlighted at all. Humans don't compare and interpret log scales well (see The Elements of Graphing Data by Cleveland, etc.). I would've much rather seen percentages (say on return on investment) or break out the analysis into tiers that were more comparable.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#36

Post by blackguardx »

miahi wrote: post #31
blackguardx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw your prototype at a HDDG meetup in SF. I think your campaign was very well done. If you fell short of your internal goal, it might be price related. You are in impulse buy territory, but the product might be too niche for that price. I ran a failed crowdfunding campaign back in July. We raised ~$25k of a $100k goal. We spent $7k on the video and another $500 on google, FB, and twitter ads. The ads didnt seem to…

A one-channel scope is useful, but it still feels as cutting your left arm when you are used to (and need) more than one channel. And these days most of the things are digital, so that means SPI/I2C/whatever with more than one line, and even then, A-B is quite important. I guess you can't combine two of them with a hardware trigger in/out so you can synchronize them and simulate a two-channel. As it is, it's more lik…

You are very perceptive. We had a prototype of two scopes synced with a cable we called "nunchuck mode," but we shelved it because we weren't sure how useful that would be.

I think the main selling point is the portability and remote measurement aspects. It fits in your jeans so you can literally have a scope with you at all times. You can also capture waveforms from over 100 ft away.

I was worried about the one channel limitations when we first decided to go with this form factor. After thinking about my own scope usage, though, I realized that I use only one channel on my four channel scope 90% of the time. More channels is obviously better, but not always necessary in every instance.

Thanks for the feedback.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#37

Post by blackguardx »

conesus wrote: post #23
blackguardx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw your prototype at a HDDG meetup in SF. I think your campaign was very well done. If you fell short of your internal goal, it might be price related. You are in impulse buy territory, but the product might be too niche for that price. I ran a failed crowdfunding campaign back in July. We raised ~$25k of a $100k goal. We spent $7k on the video and another $500 on google, FB, and twitter ads. The ads didnt seem to…

Oh nice, I just bought it because it looks useful. I would have liked to see more photos of the oscilloscope hooked up to boards, esp. with clips on both the probe and ground pins. I plan to hook up probes to it and not have to hold it in my hand as it runs. I have a small office and I bought it to replace my much bigger oscilloscope, since all I use it for it to hook up a voltage graph to my boards. And I already us…

Thanks! You make a good point about our photos. This illustrates why marketing is so hard. We wanted a more "human" element to our media, but maybe our potential customers don't care about that and just want to see features.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#38

Post by programminggeek »

conesus wrote: post #4

Ok, there's a chance I'll gain some valuable insight from posting this, which beats the cost of putting myself out there, so here goes... I just completed a 30 day hardware Kickstarter last week and spent $22k on the video ($18k for main video, $4k for founder interview) and raised $57k, which is an outlier to this data. I can tell my campaign is not in the Video Budget / Amount Raised graph because it would stick ou…

I live in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'm a techie, but my house isn't.

I watch your video and don't identify with any of it. I don't have smart lights, a sonos, or any of the things you would use your remote for.

Here is the other thing. I would lose your remote about 100x a day if I had one. I live with 3 agents of chaos known as children and they would put it places I'd never find.

Last, it's $50, which as silly as this sounds... IS TOO MUCH. I balked at buying a $30 replacement remote for my Roku. It feels like as a user I'd just use a phone app for all of this or at some point tell my phone or some smart connectected Google/Apple/Amazon device like Alexa to do these things.

Worst of all, my tech friends look a lot like me and my less tech friends are even less likely than I am to want a 4 button wood remote for $50.

You built a beautiful product that is really neat, but it's really niche. Too niche for me to imagine it making more than $100k on Kickstarter.

In 5 or 10 years smart house tech might be more common, but I've been saying that for a while and it isn't there yet. I was thinking smart house startups a decade ago, so smart houses might be "the year of the linux desktop" problem...

Do yourself a favor, buy a copy of Gary Halbert's The Boron Letters on Amazon. Read it cover to cover, pay attention to his advice on selling hamburgers and your next product will sell 10x as much.

Good luck! -Brian

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#39

Post by maneesh »

Interesting. I've run two campaigns. The first we spent 5k on the video, and did 280k. The second campaign, we spent 2k on, and did 343k. I would say the video was negligible --- but the email list, marketing, product dev, and promos were far more important. As we prep for our third campaign, I'm thinking more about the video quality however.

[1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pavlok-breaks-bad-habits [2] http://indiegogo.com/projects/shock-clock-wakeup-trainer-nev...

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#40

Post by Scirra_Tom »

Does anyone else feel that Kickstarter has turned from helping cash strapped startups and individuals raise funds for interesting projects into a low-risk small business pre-order system?

I feel it's a shame people are spending $20,000+ to try and convince you to donate them money, I don't feel it was in the original spirit of Kickstarter earlier on.

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