Lutetium
Hello everyone, it's that time again! Welcome to the Hack Chat, and welcome to Josh Lifton. He's CEO of Crowd Supply and we'll be talking all about crowdfunding and mentoring today.
Hi Josh - can you start us off with a quick introduction?
Hello!
Hello @Joshua Lifton :-)
Well, I've been running Crowd Supply for about six years now.
Before that, I spent some time at Puppet as a software engineer turned manager.
ouch
Before that I did a lot of independent contracting / start up work in the hardware and software space in NYC.
And before that, I got my doctorate from the MIT Media Lab studying distributed sensor networks with Joe Paradiso.
That's the short version, anyway.
What made you start with Crowd Supply?
I wanted to get back to hardware.
Of course, there was a logical fallacy there.
haha, of course
It's hard to work on your own projects if you build a platform to help everyone else run theirs. :)
but then everyone else can work on theirs easier
Yeah, and I get to vicariously enjoy them.
Actually, it's been awesome being exposed to so many cool projects and having the chance to give some input on them.
That's probably the best part of my job - the constant exposure to new projects.
how did you get to the idea of combining a crowdfunding site with fulfilment and shopping system?
That, and the kombucha keg at the office.
For reference, here's Josh's many-year project: https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-steno-project/stenosaurus
We basically just looked at all the problems engineers and product designers were having and decided to take as much off their plate as possible.
Fulfillment was a no-brainer. Turns out that ongoing sales and distribution is also difficult for a lot of people.
Designing and building a product takes a different set of skills and personality traits than keeping it in production and shipping it to customers.
Is it more like a kick-starters or a Tindie?
The opening talk at last year's Supercon explains this well.
Do you have a link handy?
It's not really either and co-exists with those.
Actuallym, forget it, someone will post it here
I don't have a link. Someone does!
Looks interesting
What about the buyers and backers? Are you helping them to learn to use these products? Is that something you do, or do you try to get the designers to teach and support the users?
Neither Tindie nor Kickstarter are really built for product development in the way Crowd Supply is.
Cool
We're limited by our capacity, so we mostly rely on backers and creators supporting each other. We facilitate as much as possible.
One way we're doing that is with our new Field Reports initiative.
A field report is basically a repot from a backer about how they are using a project.
It shows off what can be done with a product.
Cool!
Hi, Patrick!
If it take even a good hardware hacker time to locate the same basic information, then multiply that time by many users/adapters. Duplicated effort is one of the largest wastes of human time currently. Everyone doing the same lookups,due diligence, and going over the basics.
You should ask backers for Field Reports. :)
Hi Josh! :) Would I do so in a project update?
Why should someone launch on crowd supply over kickstarter/indiegogo/etc? What % of product sales do you guys take?
@Patrick Van Oosterwijck yep, exactly.
@RichardCollins true, but that's also how a lot of education happens.
@Joshua Lifton that talk did you mean the one by Bill Gross?
Can't find the Supercon talk video, btw - still looking...
@de∫hipu yeah, Bill Gross.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-66i7vM00vo
https://hackaday.com/2018/11/27/bill-gross-on-why-your-startup-will-succeed/
Bill Gross On Why Your Startup Will Succeed
Bill Gross is one of the great heros when it comes to technology incubators. Twenty years ago, he founded Idealab, a business whose business plan is to create more businesses. This started out with just a handful of companies in 1996, and has since gone on to found 150 companies, that have collectively raised three and a half billion dollars.
Dang, beat me to it
@jolthoff there are a lot of reasons to choose Crowd Supply. Fundamentally, we speciallize in bringing new open source electronics to market, whereas other platforms are about raising money for an arbitrary thing.
The upshot is that we have a much higher success rate and average raise, and we take a lot of the pain away - fulfillment, customer support, distribution, ongoing sales, etc.
How is that specialty reflected in the platform?
@Joshua Lifton Can you do just a batch run and not turn it to presales / sales after the campain ? (i.e. just do 1 single batch and that's it)
@Johny Radio can you clarify?
@Sylvain Munaut no, we try to keep a product in production for as long as it will sell.
Hoping you could clarify your comment :)
That's actually where we make most of our revenue - in-stock sales of products that launched on Crowd Supply.
What about visibility? Kickstarter is the big name, and thus a lot more visible-- how does crowd supply help with getting over that hurdle-- advertising?
@Joshua Lifton I am thinking about launching a product on Crowd Supply. I have at least a few questions. What do you recommend as a minimum interest level (email signups, crowd supply follows, etc) before launch? How many units are recommended for a first production run? How many additional units should be purchased? What percentage of CrowdSupply sales is crowdfunding vs pre-order vs order?
does that mean you have to commit to crowdsupply to produce a product for a amount certain time?
*certain amount of time
@Johny Radio For one, they review your project before accepting it.
@jolthoff KS is a bigger name and has more traffic, but it's spread across many more projects. Per project, we do better, and it shows in the funds raised.
ooh ok didn't know that, thats kinda nice that its curated
@Joshua Lifton But if the product has to be made in batch of 100, who supports the cost of the unsold inventory ? (i.e. when you want to ship unit 101, you basically have to make a new batch of 100 and then what if nobody wants the 99 others ?)
@Johny Radio, @de∫hipu yes, we're highly selective. We end up rejecting about 90% of submissions.
Those we accept, we work very closely with.
@Sylvain Munaut that's always the risk of making hardware. :)
@Prof. Fartsparkle not just curated, there are strict requirements: https://www.crowdsupply.com/about#user-rights
@Sylvain Munaut we've developed a lot of tactics to handle the MOQ problem. It's usually solvable.
@Patrick Van Oosterwijck Well, not if you do it by batch and don't start the batch until it's fully sold :p
I have done a few kickstarter projects. I am interested in crowd supply they facilitate many of the aspects of the business I need the most help with (fulfullment, shipping, on-going sales). Fulfilling a kickstarter project is a big effort and can suck the life (and productivity) out of you.
@Patrick Van Oosterwijck it's kind of *the* hardware manufacturing problem.
@Tyler yep, that's why we're here.
@Tyler we recommend setting the goal to be enough to manufacture as few as financially feasible, which I realize is a bit circular.
Balancing price, COGS, MOQ, funding goal, and time is the art of hardware production.
By the way, here are some basic guidelines for when to submit a project: https://www.crowdsupply.com/guide/when-to-submit
do you also have contacts with the fabricators that proved to be most reliable?
Yes: https://www.crowdsupply.com/providers
Do you ever recommend products for designers to create? You must also see market trends and demand?
And we can make recommendations based on each situation.
@RichardCollins great question.
does crowdsupply help in any part of the manufacturing process?
@Joshua Lifton Interesting that you say also targeted at "ongoing sales". My first impression of the CrowdSupply website was that it is a Kickstarter like platform, not a place to come and shop (like a Tindie). ...until you figure that out. Perhaps some more attention needed to the presentation of the "Available" products Shop?
On this page: https://www.crowdsupply.com/launch, it states the pricing for custom is up to 15% of gross campaign sales-- does this include all the help with production/stocking/fulfillment?
We certainly nudge our creators in certain directions based on what we've seen, but we haven't yet commissioned anything.
@Joshua Lifton What kind of support can you provide wrt to compliance ? (things like CE / FCC)
@Joshua Lifton On your intake form, you ask for traction (email signups or something like that), how much traction are you looking for to get started? Or how much traction do successful projects have when they apply?
@Prof. Fartsparkle we generally stay out of manufacturing, but we've been known to take over manufacturing after the initial batch has been successfully produced.
@Sylvain Munaut we're not lawyers, but we can point to what other projects have successfully done.
Our product will be handmade by us, to order. Would that fit crowd supply?
@Digicool Things it's a careful balance between showing off new products and selling existing products.
But I'm sure we could do better.
oh ok interesting, did the creator sell the project to you or did you just take a larger cut after taking over manufacturing?
@Johny Radio that method could certainly work with CS. Depends more on the product than the process.
@Prof. Fartsparkle we enter an agreement where we basically front the capital and pay a per-unit fee to the creator.
@Johny Radio - here's a project where the creator does his own manufacturing: https://www.crowdsupply.com/unexpected-maker/tinypico
I think I might have missed a few questions - feel free to bubble them back to the top (bottom).
hehe, he bought a PnP machine specially for this :)
Could Hackaday.IO ask for/vote on certain core technologies to be created and available? Could there be a place to carry on a continuing discussion of cross-cutting technologies that many people would like to have?
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