{"id":3437,"date":"2018-11-08T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2018-11-08T13:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/?p=3437"},"modified":"2024-07-24T12:05:55","modified_gmt":"2024-07-24T16:05:55","slug":"how-to-launch-a-successful-kickstarter-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/how-to-launch-a-successful-kickstarter-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Launch a Successful Kickstarter Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2013and is a Kickstarter the right choice for your venture?<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

A Kickstarter for MagiMask, a portable cinema experience, is a little more than 20 days into its campaign and already passed its initial $23,000 goal. Before launching the successful fundraising campaign, Ludenso, the company behind MagiMask, spent their summer participating in BU\u2019s Norway Program<\/a>, a 10-week program made up of graduate students from all over Norway. In addition to taking entrepreneurship courses at Questrom School of Business, many of the students called the BUild Lab home while working on their own startup ideas. <\/span><\/p>\n

Since participating in the Norway Program in 2016 and 2017, the Ludenso team has been busy preparing and launching its most recent <\/span>Kickstarter campaign<\/span><\/a>. Innovate@BU caught up with the team to find out how they prepped and what strategies BU Terriers can use to launch their own fundraising campaigns.<\/span><\/p>\n

INNOVATE: Let\u2019s start with your product. What is MagiMask?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ludenso:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>We wish to help bridge the gap between the physical and digital world, by providing tools for thousands of developers<\/span><\/p>\n

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The MagiMask gives a crystal-clear AR experience<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

through our open source platform for mobile AR. With the MagiMask and the optimized trackers we have created, developers can create magical content for millions of customers. This lets people worldwide experience a new digital reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our first product, the MovieMask – your portable cinema, aimed to change the way people consume their media content. It has sold over 10,000 units across 70 countries and can be found in over 500 retail locations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our team consists of passionate and visionary doers, coupled with experienced investors who have committed their time, resources and capital towards making Ludenso a global brand. Our shared vision is to change how people engage and interact with technology – for the better.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INNOVATE: Can you briefly tell us how did it all started and where you are now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ludenso:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>We got the idea for MovieMask after watching “The Hateful Eight” by Quentin Tarantino in San Francisco back in January 2016. After such an amazing cinema experience, it struck us how we in our everyday settle for the portability of our smartphone screen, despite the inferior experience.\u00a0 That’s why we set out to recreate the cinema experience, in a more portable way. During 2016, we made over 30 prototypes that we tested on over 1000 users, and the first MovieMask was born.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two years into our company journey, we had successfully developed, launched, sold and delivered over 10,000 units to over 70 countries. However, as stated above, MovieMask was never the end goal. It was the stepping stone we needed to have a fighting chance within the booming AR-industry, where we aim to become the leading hardware platform for mobile AR within 2019, a leader within mobile AR by 2020, and a leader in AR generally by 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The MagiMask and our previous product (MovieMask), can both be used to get cinematic experiences with Netflix, HBO, and other streaming apps<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

INNOVATE: What other options of funding did you consider before choosing to do a Kickstarter campaign? What were some of the key factors behind this decision?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ludenso:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>To be honest we think it would be foolish to only go for one funding channel when creating a product. There are many uncertainties and costs that are hard to take account for,\u00a0and that’s why most Kickstarters fail to deliver – even super-successful ones like\u00a0<\/span>The Coolest Cooler<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>Zano<\/span><\/i><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/i>or most notably, the<\/span> Lily Drone<\/span><\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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The MagiDice and the MagiTile enable stable tracking and lets you control digital objects<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In short, many founders and creators significantly underestimate what it costs to take an idea to market. The pre-production\u00a0<\/span>phase, scaling the production, and shipping it out to thousands of backers is a massive job. Sometimes, especially for Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCGs), the actual production cost might only be 20% of your total costs for the project (distribution, customs, taxes, molds, and marketing take big bites of your budget). But sometimes it might be the only cost the creators consider. And this is before we consider the support that follows, like the Coolest Cooler who had over 60,000 backers to follow up. If you are solely dependent on one stream of funding – that doesn’t get bigger after your initial campaign – the road ahead is going to be hard.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In our case, we have been working with parallel sources of funding, ranging from experienced investors, partnership deals and soft funding from governmental schemes. This has made us much more rigged towards unforeseen events, and gives us greater chances of succeeding, regardless of whether the Kickstarter becomes super-successful or “just” works as a proof of concept.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INNOVATE: Once you knew you were going to do a Kickstarter campaign, where did you start?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ludenso: <\/strong>The first thing we did before deciding to run a Kickstarter was to figure out if this was actually something people needed and wanted to pay for. We did this by testing our prototypes with different customer segments. This way we got feedback on what they liked, suggestions for improvements, and we asked if they would be interested in buying our product – and at what price.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since we saw a great need for our project, we decided to do a crowdfunding campaign. Before we started, we knew that there were a few important things we had to do to reach our target audience:<\/span><\/p>\n