Lessons
Class Introduction
07:56 2What is Crowdfunding?
32:23 3Is Crowdfunding Right for Me & My Project?
21:22 4How to Build & Manage a Team
12:23 5Choose a Crowdfunding Platform
11:44 6Create the Campaign Page
12:49 7Campaign Page Examples That Work
29:44 8Set the Campaign Timeline
08:18Determine the Perk Strategy
12:04 10Campaign Goal & Referral Strategy
11:31 11Produce a Campaign Video
02:23 12Campaign Videos That Work
46:59 13Pre-Campaign: Build Email List & Buzz
41:50 14Pre-Campaign: Social Media Strategy & PR
08:36 15Launch Your Campaign
07:57 16Live Campaign: PPC & Facebook Ads
12:08 17Live Campaign: Email Updates & Adjust Goals
18:32 18Post-Campaign: Workflow & Delivering Your Product
23:47 19Post Campaign: Obstacles & Backer Communication
07:01 20Your Crowdfunding Future
02:22Lesson Info
Class Introduction
Hi, guys. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to share with you about crowdfunding today, so to repeat a little of what he said, I am the founder and ceo of trident design try to design is a company based in columbus, ohio, and what we do is we help people with ideas for products turned them into riel things to take from idea to product, launch them powerfully into the marketplace, and one of the tools that we use commonly is crowdfunding in order to fund and accelerate products as they liked launch them. So this class today is the purpose of this class is to empower you with tools and information in order to set up and run a successful crowdfunding campaign. That's what we're up to and my vision is that you'll feel empowered, inspired to take action on whatever project that is. You're considering doing a crowdfunding campaign for and what this class is going to be perfect for people who are entrepreneurs or young professionals, or even just people who are curious about crowd funding bec...
ause they've been following this space for a while. And they see that there's a lot of buzz going on, and people are wondering, like what's behind some of these big successes and we're going to go into depth on a few areas in particular, like how to evaluate whether crowdfunding is right for your project so you may be wondering, is crowdfunding right for me? And we'll help you figure out the answer to that question how to set up a winning campaign so that it can, you know, work and how do you market that can be for you launch in order to set yourself up for success and howto actually run that campaign once it's up and running. And then lastly, after the campaign is over, what are your options? Because a lot of people, you know, focus all their energy and setting up and running that campaign when the campaign ends there. Like, now, what do I do? So we're gonna cover all those things over the next few hours before we get into that campaigns there. I want to first tell you a little more about my background and how I got into crowdfunding and learned what I know today. So to start off with, I began inventing products. When I was a teenager, I was inquire maintenance business, and I was setting up a wreath, tanks and the homes of wealthy people and doctor's offices and discovered that there were some needs that weren't being met, and I decided to start inventing my own solutions to problems, and ultimately I was successful and launching a practice algae scraper you see here in the middle of the screen, which is called the pro scraper, and based on the success that product, I was able to develop more and more products and eventually built up a company around myself called tried design where we not only worked on my own ideas but ultimately started helping other people's you could see a few examples of some of our products here we got the power squid, which is a power strip with a little extension courts coming off of it, that we've licensed to philips electronics sold millions of units the onion goggles, which are so you don't cry when you chop onions, which are available in virtually every gourmet store. And here we've got the carbon flyer, which is a carbon fibre airplane that you control with your phone and the quickie, which is, we'll tell you a little more about here in a minute, which is a little multi tool that you put on your key chain. And like I said, we also help other inventors with their products. So we you know, these are a couple examples of products the hot dog slicers, little wiener shaped hot dog slice here that you put a hot dog and you can cut into lots of little pieces. They sell these at wal mart next to the hot dog buns, and they've sold millions and millions of these guys, and we collect royalties on them. It's a super fun job. People come to us with all kinds of ideas, ranging from very simple, everyday items to very complex things. We worked on medical devices, orthopedic surgical devices. We've also worked on things like the hot dog slicer, and like I said, we do crowdfunding campaign, so people use us in a variety of ways, from just consulting on their campaign to give them advice up to including running the whole campaign soup to nuts from designing it to launch, doing all the marketing for it, launching in the marketplace and actually seeing it through to the end and then follow up. So we've been involved in about a dozen campaign so far in the last two years, and we've raised over a million dollars it's been an exciting ride, and the ride started with the quickie, so the quick he got one here is a little multi tool that's the size and shape of a key and it's got a bottle opener on it and a little serrated edge so that you can cut into male. Which was the original ideas like I wanted was always using my key to get into packages and mail, and it didn't work that well, but it was better than nothing. And so I was like, why doesn't someone just make a sharp key and that's what the origin of the quick he was? And then we put a screwdriver on little scoring tip, just the super handy thing, and you can carry it on the air on an airplane that was one of the key things that we wanted it to be able to do was to fly with it so it won't cut you but would cut into packaging. And so having had this idea, it was like in my head for a long time, but I never actually went out and tried to commercialize it. And then meanwhile, what was happening in the world at large was crowdfunding was taking off, and so we have this company helping people launch products, and we're watching the crowdfunding scene with great interest because we're like one of these people know that we don't know because we've been doing this for a long time and crowdfunding seem to be breaking the rules or changing the rules, and so we're like what we should really. You know, give it a shot because people are asking us about it in his professionals in the space then we should know about it be able to answer the questions so let's pick something simple and give it a shot and see what happens. And so we chose the quickie, which the idea had been around for a while, but we hadn't actually pushed forward because it seemed like such a little idea that, you know, it didn't really hadn't risen to the top of ideas we're going to pursue. So we put up a campaign for the quickie, and we set a goal of five thousand dollars, which was enough to buy the molds to get the product on the market, and we thought, you know, we had our internal secret goal, we're like maybe we'll raise twenty thousand dollars, you know? So that would have been an amazing result. Forest raise twenty thousand dollars on this simple little guy, and we put it up and there was doing fine. We've gotten to, like, five thousand dollars in, like, three days. We were like, wow, we're going toe crush our goal. And then on saturday, after launch it, like launched on a tuesday, and then on saturday, I wake up and somebody said, like, ten thousand dollars and look what happened and then ex search going higher and higher and higher and I realized what we got into the newsletter at indy gogo and by the end of the day I was at forty five thousand dollars and we were like this's insane and it just kept going and going and going until ultimately raised two hundred twenty one thousand dollars in the original campaign and so we did like five thousand five hundred percent of our goal which at that point were like this crowdfunding thing is pretty interesting like let's focus on this as a business like we really need to spend some more time here and it really opened our eyes up towards possible here is a new way to launch products and I get into like the breakthroughs the various ways in which this is a huge game changer for launching products and how it's dramatically impacted my world of being an inventor and getting products out of the market and I was so excited about this proxy acts like a little surprise for you guys underneath your chairs you'll find a little envelopes and you lean over and pick up the little envelope beneath your chair and there's a quickie for you and for you quickly for you and you and yes, you can fly with it and it's just a handy little thing and uh I hope you enjoy it and as you go into your future every time you use your quickie which of the dozens of products that brought to market is the one I used the most. Almost every day. I end up using it to get into something or another. And I hope you'll think of me. And remember this day, barkley.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Dyan deNapoli
Really helpful class for anyone planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign! Christopher was a great presenter (very comfortable and relaxed), and he clearly knew the topic extremely well. His presentation was very thorough and well thought out. One thing I would've like to have seen is more questions taken from the virtual audience. There were quite a few on the thread, but the moderator only passed along a few of them to Christopher to answer. Another thing that would have been very helpful is advice about creating successful crowdfunding campaigns that are for projects or experiences or ideas, rather than for physical products (which this class was focused on). Maybe Christopher can do a short crowdfunding part II class?? But I still give this class an A+!
Elizabeth Best
This was very helpful. I feel like it answered so many of my questions. It made me realize what a huge commitment crowdfunding is! As an entrepreneur I can see how this video saves trident a lot of time on calls and emails explaining what needs to be done. Great idea! I am amazed at how much technology is involved and online or social media marketing. I better develop a stronger team with millennials who know how to make it happen. Thank you.
a Creativelive Student
I was fortunate to be part of the live audience for this course. It was truly amazing! Chris does a great job of providing tactical and strategic insight behind crowdfunding campaigns. One of my favorite tools was the spreadsheet he has developed to determine crowdfunding goals. I also think Chris is a very humble, knowledgeable guy who genuinely wants you to succeed in your crowdfunding efforts. I highly recommend this course of anyone who is serious about crowdfunding.
Student Work
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