We are now down to the wire! The last five days till launch. We will make an exciting announcement about our fundraising project on Wednesday, and on Friday our project goes live. Keep your eyes, ears, and computer monitors peeled!
Countdown Till Launch
Wow! Where does all the time go. I was thinking the other day, that it has now been a little over a year since I first considered fundraising to get this business off the ground, and specifically to consider using Kickstarter. We are in the home stretch! The video is being edited this week, Eric and I worked on a press release that we will be pushing out to the media on launch day (September 27th), the animation of the logo for the video is almost done, and we are also working hard at getting the project page up and ready to go. One important thing we got out of the way that almost would have bitten us in the butt is Amazon Payments. In order to process payments for a Kickstarter project, you need to setup a business account with Amazon Payments (like Paypal, but Amazon’s version). Kickstarter warns you that you need at least 7 days to get your account approved and ready for use. We had a few issues getting the account up and running, but thankfully we are now good to go.
Additionally we are continuing to build our network to get the word out as far and fast as we can.
Let the countdown begin:
Countdown to the launch of our Kickstarter Project!!
We are making more progress, and bringing our Kickstarter project a little bit closer to reality. This weekend we will be shooting our video. We are happy to welcome Alec Tuckman (experienced filmmaker) to our team. With his experience, and support I know we will have a great and entertaining video for all of you to watch.
As we build up to the final climax of our Kickstarter launch, I started to reflect a bit on what we’ve done up to this point, and realized how much work it truely is to get our project off the ground. We could have probably done a lot less work, put a lot less time in, and just “let it happen”, but my feeling is that we want to guarantee as much as possible a successful funding project, and I believe the more you put in to something, the more you will get out of it.
We do still have lots to do, but I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel…
More updates still to come.
We were planning on doing a project about a year ago, and at the time realized that perhaps that wasn’t the best way to go. Our reasons were sound at the time. Kickstarter requires that your “project” have a specific, limited goal. At first we thought we’d just ask people to help us raise money for a single piece of equipment to satisfy Kickstarter’s project requirements. We soon realized we need a lot more to get our business off the ground and then abandoned the idea.
After looking at traditional funding options (angel investors) we came full circle and realized that if we could just get the equipment for making chocolate and build molds, that would get us far enough to help raise the rest of our total needed funds. So, we decided that we’d ask for funds to purchase just that equipment, which in turn would also allow us to produce the rewards that we’d want to offer. So we will now be doing the Kickstarter project after all.
For those of you not too familiar with the website. Well, it’s what’s referred to as a “crowd-sourcing” website. Which basically means, you are asking for funding support from anyone for a project with a specific goal, like trying to record an album or create a comic book. The idea is that if your project is interesting and compelling enough, people will want to support you and contribute money. To encourage people to help, you offer “rewards” at different levels of contributions. For example: If you are trying to produce a comic book. Simple offering a copy of the comic book (pre-order) for so much money etc.
The catch with Kickstarter is it’s an all or nother scenario. Which means that if by the end of the project deadline, you don’t succeed at meeting your funding goal, you get nothing. Also people who offered to contribute to the project then give nothing.
We will be running the project for 30 days. We are allowed to run it up to 60 days, but from our research, most projects that fund successfully fund with a 30 day duration. I think that makes sense in a way. Any more than 30 days, and you run the risk of fatigue or people simply forget to contribute thinking they have plenty of time.
There is plenty of work still to do. We have to get our project video produced (a must for any project), and are still revising our rewards. Finally we are consolidating our contact network. I believe people (especially those who’s projects fail to raise the funds) that once you launch your project, you simply wait for the word of the internet to tune int and throw money at your project. Most projects that are successful, perhaps not surprisingly enough, get most of their supporters from their own connections and social networks.
Yes we will probably get some people that simply stumble onto our project and support it, simply because they like it. Obviously we’d love that and more, but can’t count on that as the entirety of our support framework.
Please don’t forget to sign up on our Kickstarter email list, and we will let you know when the project starts, share our progress, and announce cool, surprise rewards. When our project launches, you can click here to go right to our page.
Thanks, and wish us luck!
-Brian