Here is a throwback to a community knowledge huddle that we hosted. Marcos Bulacio from PANGEA took us through the ten steps to create a successful crowdfunding campaign in Southeast Asia.
(We don't have a huddle this month because Surya has finals for his FINAL SEMESTER. all the best Surya! in the event of a True False question, always pick "neither true nor false").
Here is what PANGEA does!
Marcos Bulacio is the Co-Founder & CEO of Pangea. They aim to develop innovative, ecological products for the outdoors, and use part of the funds to clean the world. For every $10 raised for their sustainable and biodegradable bamboo outdoors towel, they collect one pound of trash.
One of the amazing aspect is the global community they have built over the years. We just love a thriving sustainability community helping to creating sustainable cities and communities.
They have since ran a few successful crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter and Indiegogo InDemand.
They have recently launched their second Kickstarter for the PANGEA Eco Towel 2.0. Let's take a look back at the insights that Marcos has shared when running the first Kickstarter.
Are you an early-stage impact making founder looking to release a new product, that fills a missing need, into a competitive market? What tools are you using to analyse sales volume to help you make data-informed choices? Are you using frameworks to help maximise your limited manpower in order to be efficient?
These are the few of many questions that Marcos has brought up during the talk. Let's dive a little deeper into how to take your product from idea to reality!
Marcos subscribes to the belief that this equation helps him apply to anything he wants to accomplish:
Ideation
Validation
Plan
Design
Source
Create Campaign
Pre-Launch
Launch
Manufacture
Deliver
And everything begins with ideation... what is the problem that you're trying to solve? There is a feedback loop between the Ideation and Validation part of the process where both are being developed in parallel.
Marcos went out talking to people in order to identify the problems of existing product solutions and figure out how to fix them with his product. With a target group in mind, he started crafting solutions by being customer-centric.
These are also backed by interviews, surveys, market research, competitive analysis, market size analysis (he used Jungle Scout and Amazon Scout) etc. All of these help to create scope to answer a very important question:
What makes me different?
In order to stay on track, he uses a Work Breakdown Structure that breaks down all the different components into tasks, that is supplemented by a Gantt chart which outlines what needs to be done, and milestones and expansion plans. That is the A team in the making with clearly defined boundaries, focus, and direction.
Marketing wise, he recommends a prelaunch strategy of growing the social media audience by resonating your values with the target market in order to get them to convert when the campaign starts. He mentioned working with PR, blogs, and influencers by sending them samples. He also tested the ads to improve the Facebook pixel.
90% of the money they raised came directly from Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube Ads! Thus it is important to keep tracking the performance.
Even as the Kickstarter campaign was concluded, the crowdfunding journey did not end there. He went on to Indiegogo InDemand that lets them continue their journey to raise money without falling into debt as manufacturing the product would take months.
After three iterations of the prototype with feedback reinforced by the target audience, it was production time. A few tips that Macros mentioned were patenting, having a detailed purchase order, returns policy, NDAs, timeline of each stage of manufacturing, offering an incentive if production finishes in time, and hiring a third party inspection company for quality control.
Whew. That was a lot of information and insight dropped by Macros during the community knowledge huddle. BUT like what Marcos has mentioned, as long as we have a clear goal and breakdown the steps, the road ahead is much more accessible.
Click here for the video for nuggets of information not mentioned in the blog such as his marketing budget, returns on advertising spend, triple restriction and etc!
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