In this episode of the CrowdCrux Crowdfunding Podcast, I talked with Jared Green, the cofounder of the BudStraps Kickstarter campaign, which raised $16,000+ from 590 backers in 32 days.
We covered a lot of important topics in this episode! Please take a second to rate the podcast on iTunes and leave a comment if you enjoyed it!
Episode Transcript
This transcript is sponsored by Fulfillrite! Ecommerce order fulfillment service made fast simple and easy. If you’re planning to launch a successful Kickstarter, I recommend checking them out to help coordinate the shipping and delivery of the rewards to your backers. I also would check out their Kickstarter Success Interviews.
Quick Links of Resources Mentioned
– The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law
– Alibaba: Website Jared used to find a company to produce the product.
– Hootsuite: Social media scheduling tool to help manage a campaign.
– CrowdfundingForum and KickstarterForum: Places to find reviews of service providers.
Introduction (and a fun fact about me!)
Hey guys! Welcome to the CrowdCrux Crowdfunding Podcast. My name’s Sal or Salvador. I hope yall had a great last week! It’s been really cold in NYC. Lots of snow. Lots of freezing wind. It hasn’t been all that fun, unless you’re a polar bear or a penguin. I think we got a record amount of snow.
I’ve been spending most of my time indoors catching up on work and reading. I’m reading this interesting book called The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law. I started this a while ago, but it covers a lot of topics that are key if you do end up having a successful business or want to protect yourself down the road, should you build a successful business.
It takes about trademarks, copyrights, what you need to do if you are working on a startup while you are also employed, and it’s just a lot of key topics. They are not very fun topics, but I myself have been burned in the past for not paying enough attention to the nitty gritty. That’s motivated me to read up on business law. I highly recommend this book.
The other thing I want to talk about before we dive into the interview, which is really good – a lot of awesome tips – is that I received this LinkedIn message from a guy who essentially, paraphrased, said that there isn’t all that much information about me on CrowdCrux. That’s sort of by design. I want most of the focus to be on tips and helpful resources.
However, the more I thought about it, the more I think he had a valid point. I think while I’m getting to learn about your projects and ambitions, I also want to share a little bit about my background. I want to do that with one behind-the-scenes fact each episode to share more about what motivates me as an entrepreneur.
The fact: I was adopted from El Salvador around the age of 1 and my parents are American. I grew up outside Boston in a small suburban town. I always knew that I was adopted. But, it wasn’t until I became a teenager until that fact actually influenced me.
I started to think, wow, my life could be so different had I grown up in El Salvador (in a rural section), which is a really poor third world central american country. There is a lot of gang violence and there really isn’t much opportunity or education. It’s likely I would have been in a gang, involved in guerrilla warfare, or maybe dead! It’s a violent country.
I really started to think about that in my teenage years and it made me feel like I had already won the lottery once in life. I got this opportunity to live in a well-off community and have a great education. It made me want to do something with my life. I felt like there was some reason why I was given this opportunity and that I need to give something back to the world, or contribute in some way.
This fact has motivated me a lot through my life thus far. Whenever I’m in a rut or not seeing success in some area, I remind myself that it can always be worse. It’s important to be grateful for the fortunate things in our life.
That’s the fact I wanted to share today. I think it’s also cool to think about your own life and events or circumstances that have shaped the course of your life, which may have been pure luck. Don’t forget to be grateful for these things. I think that fact inspires me at least to strive to live the best life I can.
The Interview
Sal: Today I’m going to be talking with Jared Green, who is the cofounder of the BudStraps Kickstarter campaign. This campaign initially had a goal of $10,000 and ended up raising over $16,000 from 590 backers. About an average pledge there of $30 over the span of 30 days. So some pretty phenomenal success there. Thanks for coming on the show Jared!
Jared: Awesome. Thanks for having me Sal.
Sal: Could you tell the audience a little bit about what BudStraps are and what they do and how you came up with that idea.
What are BudStraps and how did you come up with the idea?
Jared: First, let me credit my founder, Bill Woodward with creating the idea of BudStraps. A neighbor introduced the two of us and he said that Bill has a great idea and is looking for someone to help commercialize it. He knew I worked with new products. I just recently introduced a speaker system into Apple stores and the two of us hit the ground running. We started building the product.
BudStraps are a little neoprene strap that goes around the back of your neck and it has a clip on both sides and it clips on your earbuds to prevent them from falling off when you are working out, in the car, running, etc. Earbuds don’t currently have a solution for that. BudStraps is a simple solution to keeping your earbuds accessible and making running and riding safer.
Sal: Is this something that you came up with from having that kind of a pain-point?
DJared: Bill created the product out of that pain-point. He’s an engineer and he uses earbuds all the time on the subway. A lot of times an earbud would fall out when he was walking somewhere and he would have to stoop over and pick it up. He saw a lot of people taking their earbuds and storing them around their ears – just folding them over their ears or through their shirts to keep them nearby for when they need them. He figured it wouldn’t be too big of a problem to fix this.
Over the course of several months, he created the first prototype for BudStraps and by the time he met me, he already had a functioning prototype. We focused on honing it and making it a little more streamlined.
Why did you decide to go with Kickstarter and Crowdfunding?
Sal: When did Kickstarter or crowdfunding come into the process? Did you think about Indiegogo at all?
Jared: We did look at Indiegogo, but we realized that most funders of innovative campaigns were going to Kickstarter, simply for the fact that Kickstarter has everything you need to get a product off the ground and we’d rather make the commitment on ourselves to get full funding rather than partial funding from a site like Indiegogo.
Sal: Why did you decide to go with crowdfunding in general?
Jared: We did a lot of the funding ourselves. I think we put roughly $10-12k into it before we considered crowdfunding. Bill had been attached to the idea of using Kickstarter because he had funded so many projects personally and he felt very strongly about the maker movement. From my experience with young startups, it’s a very viral way to get a product known in the community and it’s a way to earn your stripes within the retail environment, so I wanted to be successful on Kickstarter for no other reason than to show the world that we could be! That enough people would be excited about our product to support us in the early stages.
Sal: That’s a really good point! And that the demand was there.
Jared: This is interesting, so a colleague of mine that I worked with sent me a note after we went to market with the Kickstarter campaign, and after reading his note it made me think a lot. He said, why should we fund your campaign? Kickstarter is for people who need money to start their projects.
I had to think about it because it really touched on what a lot of people thought about Kickstarters that the website has projects from “needy people.” There are a lot of people on Kickstarter who have the money to fund the product and production themselves, but Kickstarter gives them an avenue to prove out the concept to themselves and make sure that it’s worth spending the money on the project. A lot of projects that don’t get funded are because A) There was not enough of an audience and B) The concept is not attractive enough.
For us, it was about proving the demand to ourselves in the process. There are people who have a legitimate belief who might not fully understand the Kickstarter platform and what it’s there for.
Sal: Those are all really good points and other guests that I’ve had on talk about the education marketing that goes into running a project, explaining to people what rewards are, why you guys are doing this, what people get out of it, and when it’s going to be shipped out.
Jared: We didn’t understand the rewards in the beginning to be honest with you. We had to change some of the rewards because they were non-compliant with Kickstarter standards. There was one reward level where I think we were giving out 20 BudStraps for a certain donation level and Kickstarter made us take it down. There was a corporate one where we had it so you could purchase 1,000 custom BudStraps for a set amount and after we had sold one, Kickstarter made us take it down. We had to be in touch with the company that purchased it and ask them to re-submit their contribution at a different tier. Really, understand Kickstarter’s rules before you go into it.
Sal: Good point, good point. When you did have everything set up and you finally pressed launch, during that first week I noticed that you guys got a lot of traction. It was about half of your goal. Where did that come from? Was that pre-planning?
How did you get so much traction so quickly?
Jared: It was a mix. We knew we had to be hot off the bat and a colleague of mine who is the founder of an audio company called Vers audio started with a Kickstarter, raised $200k and this is the company that is now in Apple stores. Dave said that you have to be hot initially. When we went to market, our goal was to get known in a big way early on. We hired a PR firm for 30 days to work on our Kickstarter campaign with us. We got tweets ready, wrote a press release, figured out what target demographics we wanted to reach out to in the media community, etc.
Sal: I also see that there is one point where you go from $5k to $10k relatively quickly after the first week. How did you get to that next $10k point?
Jared: If you go onto our website, Budstraps, you’ll see a list of all of our media mentions. We got featured on a lot of television shows and they sent our PR agency links to the video segments discussing our product. This is not something that you have to pay for. If you get a good PR agency, they will do this for you. They want the exposure too. We found that we got a lot of great feedback from this, including tweets from Josh of the television show Scandal and he tweeted it to his 100,000 followers.
We brought the product to Good Housekeeping and Rachel tweeted out to her followers that she thought it was a great alternative to dropping your earbuds. So, by tapping into social media and people who were influential, I think we got a lot of press and discussion.
Sal: That’s awesome. You guys have really been selling it and that’s what I tell other creators. You need to push it and realize that not everyone is going to find your product via Kickstarter. You also have to do some of the sales work.
Jared: Can I add one thing to that? One thing we heard from a lot of people who had considerably overachieved their goals was that there was one post that sent them over the edge. If there was one idea that I could counsel people on, it would be don’t stop! You never know when that concept is going to be picked up by some member of the press or some retail outlet, and all of a sudden it’s going to go viral. Seriously, you got 30 days – keep pushing it. We probably reached our low point about 15 days in when we had reached our goal and we were kind of coasting. We could have done more to push it, but we put a lot of steam into those first two weeks. By the time we were in week 3, we were kind of tired out. Plan to be on for 30 days, even if you are planning everything out before the campaign or in your first two weeks.
Sal: Congrats on all the social media mentions and television. It’s awesome. You guys are going out and selling it. That’s exactly what you have to do. Do you have any other social media tips?
Jared: One thing we found with social media is that pictures, even if they are not of your product, sell your post. So if you go out and troll the internet for cute fuzzy dog pictures and little kid pictures that you can post with something that is relevant to your product, you’ll get a lot more responses. We’ve read a lot of articles gearing us towards viral photos. Photos where people are looking into the camera, they are happy. Using circular objects, as opposed to rigid objects. Things that are war and fun, instead of staid and boring.
Sal: You also mentioned using Hootsuite as a tool to preschedule your media. I use Buffer, which is essentially the same thing. Facebook marketing is a hard animal to attack. Did you guys get any traction on Facebook?
Jared: We did some paid ads with Facebook and we got some traction. We probably spent around $1k on FB ads, but it was necessary almost 200 friends and family fans and 1,200 when we started the Kickstarter campaign. We had a pool of authentic fans before we went live with our project. We needed to build an audience to help us talk about the brand. Also, we needed people to support the project early-on.
The only time we really got true value out of it was when we were promoting some kind of sales promotion, like buy one get one free. Is it necessary? Probably not. You’re better off spending your money trying to get picked up by the media. Having a FB page that has 1,000 followers is helpful in the eyes of the media though, because they see that the product isn’t something that is a fly by night thing. People are supporting it and they are behind it. The media wants to see validity to your product.
Sal: Good point. I’ve heard mixed success stores with Facebook ads for a crowdfunding project. For some people, it can help, for others, PR is more important.
Jared: We used a scatter strategy. We tried everything.
Sal: I think that’s how you have to do it.
Jared: It’s critical, but expensive for a young company. But you have to do it if you want to be successful with a Kickstarter campaign.
Sal: I’d like to talk a little bit about your budget. When you are doing a Kickstarter, I think there is a misconception that you are going to raise $15k and then all that money is going into your bank account. But, you must ship out your rewards and plan for mistakes.
What tips do you have on the logistics, planning, and shipping aspects of a campaign?
Jared: Sure! Think through it. Think through the steps that you are going to have to complete to get your product in the hands of your consumers. You really should be thinking about how much it will cost to ship a product to Thailand. When you have 200 people you have to ship to internationally, you start to think more seriously. Make sure you’ve done your homework. Mistakes can take a big portion of your crowdfunding bucks if you don’t plan for it.
Production is something you don’t want to go into without having thought through. Get quotes from a US or Chinese factory early on. Do this early. You need to know your margin.
Sal: Did you source out of the US or China?
Jared: We tried to do it in the USA, but the costs were too high, so we did it out of China. Sites like Alibaba are making it easier to find production companies. One tip I would give Kickstarter manufacturers is to go onto Alibaba and see if there is a factory that is already making something that is similar to what you are hoping to make. See if they are interested in developing a piece of your product. Don’t give them everything – you are exposing yourself a lot if you do.
Sal: I think people underestimate the ability of people overseas to replicate products. Source parts from different plants. You should segment your IP.
Jared: On the topic of IP and patents, we weren’t sure what we needed to do as far as protecting our concept internationally. That’s the only thing we could do to protect our IP overseas. In the US, we did hire a patent attorney and have a very well-written provisional patent. You should have a provisional patent before going live with your Kickstarter project. They are only good if the product is not public.
Sal: There are so many things to think about when launching a campaign, even a business in general around a hardware startup. Marketing, PR, manufacturing, etc.
Jared: It’s very true. I would suggest that anyone that is curious about what they need to do to have a successful Kickstarter campaign should go to your site, CrowdCrux. It was one of our first and probably most important tools in getting our Kickstarter campaign launched. We got a lot of tips from your blog posts that helped us protect ourselves and also be successful in the early days of the Kickstarter campaign.
Sal: Wow thanks so much for saying that! There are a lot of awesome other blogs out there. Just spend 30 minutes to an hour researching. There are also people sharing their stories out there
Jared: Is there any way you could put together a list of reputable service providers in the industry?
Sal: I have in the past (see here), but for people listening, spend 30 minutes putting the company or person’s name into google and make sure they didn’t start in the industry yesterday. You can do a domain search to see how long that has been around. I’ll try to get more lists out there for people.
Jared: Is there some kind of forum people can go to where people are talking about different solutions and evaluating them? (Jared was being nice and letting me plug my sites haha).
Sal: People have been really nice leaving reviews of some companies on CrowdfundingForum and KickstarterForum. Reddit is also a good place. There is a subreddit for Kickstarter projects.
Jared: Thanks! I hope we can follow up when we have our first production order out.
Sal: That would be awesome! Where can we check you out once Budstraps are available for sale?
Jared: Just go to the Budstraps website and opt-in to the email to be notified when the product will be available online. We will have a special discount for everyone who signed up early.
Sal: Thanks for coming on the show! Look forward to keeping in touch.
Jared: Thanks!
