Crowdfunding on Kickstarter: Lessons Learned | Founders Network

Every quarter, Founders Network hosts member socials in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.  At our most recent New York dinner (pictured above), we caught up with Carolina Misan Alvo, founder of Carolina Alvo, and learned about her success crowdfunding on Kickstarter for “The Perfect Petite Dress“.  Here are a few of her lessons learned:

Crowdfunding on Kickstarter is about market validation. 
For a serious startup founder, crowdfunding on Kickstarter is less about raising funding and more about proving demand. Carolina designed her campaign around the goal of introducing her product– custom petite fashion, and convincing backers that there was an unmet need in the market for that product.

Use Incentives to validate pricing assumptions.
Crowdfunding on Kickstarter requires you to set pledge levels and rewards.  Don’t just pick arbitrary levels and rewards.  Rather, offer your product at various price points to help validate pricing assumptions.  For example, Carolina set several levels with her dresses as the incentive and learned that $199 was the sweet spot.

Test features.
Crowdfunding on Kickstarter can help you identify and test assumptions about your offering with feedback from backers.  For example, through conversations with backers, Carolina learned “Made in America” was not as important as originally assumed; information that could have a profound impact on her business model.

Get backing from people you don’t know.
Crowdfunding on Kickstarter is often bi-modal,  starting off strong with initial support from friends and family, then dropping into a demoralizing lull before the final deadline.   To be successful, you need to reach out beyond your existing network for support.  We were happy to learn Carolina tapped into her Peer Advisory Board for these intros and encouragement. She noted, “I attribute both the decision to raise crowdfunding on Kickstarter and the ultimate success of my campaign to the support I received from my Peer Advisory Board,” which includes Founders Network members Jay DeDapper of Buzztala, Pierre-Marc Diennet of nTangle, Zeb Dropkin of RentHackr, Brendan Fairbanks of Perchwell and Chris Sim of Kadaxis.

Have any other Kickstarter campaign advice to add to the list? If you are an FN member, join the conversations about Kickstarter happening in our community.

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