Have you ever thought about how, under the guidance of light, a small entrepreneurial dream can burst out with amazing power on the KICKSTARTER platform? Today, let me take you into an entrepreneurial story full of passion, challenges and opportunities.
In five days, just five days, the project we launched on KICKSTARTER reached the target amount. Looking back at that moment, I deeply feel that choosing KICKSTARTER as our starting point was the right decision. It not only provided us with an overseas online press conference platform, but also allowed us to raise funds in advance before official mass production. Can you imagine that feeling? People from different countries hold the samples we personally sent and use their languages to introduce them to others. That kind of recognition and emotion that transcended national boundaries still makes my heart surge.
But all this is not easy. KICKSTARTER does not support mainland companies, and the payment method only supports overseas corporate bank accounts. In order to solve this problem, we registered a US company and a Hong Kong company, and went through a lot of hardships to apply for a corporate bank account in Hong Kong. That afternoon, in the business hall in Hong Kong, I passionately described our product design concept and business plan to the account manager in Cantonese. At that moment, I deeply felt how important it is for an entrepreneur to sincerely describe your dream to others.
We also faced challenges during the production of the promotional video. European and American models in the Pearl River Delta are expensive and take a long time to shoot. But as an entrepreneurial team, we finally found a foreign teacher from Zhuhai Kindergarten to help with the filming. We wrote the script ourselves, it was shot at my house, and even my cat made an appearance. Despite the limited conditions, we impressed the audience with our sincerity.
The first time we submitted the project, we were rejected. KICKSTARTER wants to see the whole process from 0 to 1, so we re-uploaded the manuscript, assembly process, factory photos, 3D printing videos, etc. Here, people come with the mentality of helping an idea come to fruition. We don’t have gorgeous product details pages, only authenticity and heart.
To promote our project, we tried various marketing methods. The most effective one is to find bloggers for evaluation. While we don’t have the budget to pay bloggers, we can provide samples and distribution links. After sending 74 emails, ten bloggers agreed to help us shoot videos. This conversion rate is actually very high. The secret is that this email must be written very, very carefully. At that time, we would carefully read the content of each blogger to analyze the fit with our products.
In the end, with almost no reserved funds, we exceeded our crowdfunding goal through bloggers’ videos and community newsletters. Now I am communicating with the factory on requirements and designers on implementation details every day. It's all really like a dream. I used to be a product manager in the Internet industry, and I had never done these things before. But I find that the value of experience seems to be getting lower and lower, and what we need more is to be able to solve problems creatively.
Now our team collaborates remotely every day. I have a partner in Europe. We usually communicate through the two tools Feishu and gather. This new way of working allows us to respond to challenges and opportunities with greater flexibility.
Now we need interns who are excellent in the design field to join our team. You can work completely remotely, from anywhere you want. You only need two and a half hours of online collaboration time a day, and you can arrange the rest of the time freely. This job is definitely not easy, but if you also want to do something amazing, then please join us! Let's create more possibilities and surprises together!
Share on Twitter Share on Facebook
Indie123
Comments
There are currently no comments