We interviewed Sanjay Dastoor who together with his friends raised almost half a million dollars on Kickstarter with Boosted Boards – one of the probably coolest Kickstarter projects ever.
Here we share some of the interview highlights with you. If you like it, let us know what you found most valuable, what you think is missing and what we could improve – we’re working hard to making a super-useful Kickstarter book for you.
All the questions are asked by Jason, all the answers are given by Sanjay.
What did you do to prepare for Kickstarter? What was the main thing before the launch?
We started meeting people and getting feedback on prototypes way over a year before we launched on Kickstarter. We would ride around Stanford campus and people ran up to us and say, “That’s so cool. What is that thing?”
Eventually, we setup a splash page on our website. It didn’t have any details of what we were doing. It just said, “Hey, enter your email address to get in our mailing list so you can learn more.” Whenever we met someone interested in our product, we would tell them to visit our website and sign up so they could learn when we were ready to launch. We built up a list of people who were really interested in our product.
We emailed all of them the night before the Kickstarter launch saying, “Hey, we’re going live tomorrow. Maybe you’re interested in buying one or donating and pledging for one. We have a few units that are at a reduced price for you guys.” It was our way to thank early supporters. We had a lot of those people ordering boards. Out of the $467K we hit the first $100K in about 24 hours because of the combination of press coverage and some of those early supporters pledging for boards.
What other things did you do to prepare for Kickstarter?
We talked to a lot of people who had done Kickstarter projects in the past and got as much advice as possible. They’re really helpful. And their advice was pretty consistent actually: Make sure that you communicate with your backers well.
It’s a different relationship that you have with people who back you on Kickstarter than people who will eventually buy your product at a store. It’s a much more personal relationship. They’re investing in you in a way in terms of trusting you in delivering what you’re building. You have to keep them updated with what’s going on. Lots of Kickstarter people would tell us that you’ll have to do a year’s worth of marketing during the one month campaign (tweet this). You got to be on top of talking to people in the press and responding to all incoming emails etc.
We were getting emails faster than we could read them. So, all we did for that month was just talk to people and answer questions. Be ready for that.
What was one surprising fact around your campaign?
A really interesting thing was that the video got shared by a lot of people who weren’t backing the project. They might not have been able to afford pledging, but they still wanted to support the project and share it with their friends. In our specific case we really saw a high ratio of Facebook sharing to backers. More than in other Kickstarter campaigns. I think a lot of that had to do with our product as well as our video.
You already mentioned the barrage of emails that came in. What other things do you guys do on a daily basis while the project is running to keep it going?
A lot of our success was based on people sharing our campaign through social media. So we tried to provide a lot of updates and photos. We actually shot a new video during the Kickstarter campaign and posted that too.
The new video was addressing some key questions people had while watching the first one. It was also more skate focused and less transportation focused. ESPN’s actually picking up the new video so it was super successful.
How did you guys go about testing price ahead of time?
First, we looked at how much it cost us to build the product. Then, we wanted to look at what people would compare it to. We looked at how much utility they got out of it to understand the value we would create for customers.
People told us after they owned a boosted board that they would have paid more for it than they initially did because they realized how useful it was. They initially thought it was a cool toy and then experienced how useful it was in their daily lives.
We learned little interesting things like that.
Is there any other advice you think is important for people out there who are trying to bring an idea into life?
The most important thing that I learned is to test all of your assumptions (tweet this). You’re really into your product/project, you pour a lot of effort into it but people don’t view it the same way you do. So, make sure you put it in front of other people and find out how the world feels about it – ask them a lot of questions.
See how they use it. Let them borrow it for a week and get it back and then see what you learned from that. Maybe they’ll confirm what you thought which is great. That’s data that supports, “I’m on the right track.” Or maybe they’ll tell you, “Hey, this is great but I definitely would not pay $100 for it.” Or maybe they’ll say, “Maybe if you make this little change here I would find it way more useful.”
Did you enjoy this interview? Then share it with your friends on twitter 🙂
And if you want, check out this TED Talk where Sanjay spoke about Boosted Boards:
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