master thesis - reward-based crowdfunding on kickstarter (mila valcheva and julia bondareva)
TRANSCRIPT
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Executive Summary
The purpose of this thesis is to improve understanding of the novel phenomenon of reward-based
crowdfunding. We investigate how creators can exploit the full potential of their creative idea on
the Kickstarter platform. In order to do that, this paper combines existing theories within the
fields of entrepreneurship, startups and marketing communication, and applies them to the
phenomenon of reward-based crowdfunding. Moreover, this paper includes a crowdfunding
expert’s point of view on the phenomenon in Denmark. Interviews with eight Danish creators of
Kickstarter projects are analyzed in order to gain insights into the campaign process that these
creators undergo from the birth of their idea until the end of their campaign. Out of these eight
cases, four are in the process of collecting funds (at the time of the interviews), and four are
successfully funded.
The main findings suggest that in order to exploit the full potential of a creative idea on KS,
creators must adopt a startup mindset in the ‘Pre-planning’ phase of their campaign. Moreover, it
has been discovered that creators possess four obligatory entrepreneurial characteristics that
serve as the basis for bringing a creative idea on Kickstarter. Furthermore, the research reveals
that ‘uncertainty’ characterizes the ‘Pre-planning’ phase, and is being replaced by ‘learning’ in
the ‘Execution’ phase of a Kickstarter campaign.
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Acknowledgements
First, we would like to thank our supervisor, Tore Kristensen, for his excellent guidance and help
during this project.
We are very grateful to all the project creators we met during the process of writing this thesis
and thank them for the interesting discussions about crowdfunding on Kickstarter and their own
projects in particular. The valuable inside information they provided inspired us and greatly
affected the direction of this paper. We want to thank Michael Flarup for his meticulous
presentation of THERMODO, Nicolas Aagaard for his interview regarding PLUK and for the
prototype products he gave us, Troels Fonsboel for the fascinating discussions regarding his
WALLZ project and also gifting products to us, Chris Gojal Krogsgaard for her extensive help
with interviews, presentation and email correspondence regarding the BAKE ON project as well
as the gifted products, Jess Christian Fleischer for sharing with us the success story of SON OF
A TAILOR, Jens Juhanson - the Online Coordinator for ME MOVER, for also sharing the
success story of that project, Marcus Vagnby for discussing the VIA 3-IN-1 project, and Nikolaj
Bak for the interview regarding SITPACK. Lastly, we want to thank Casper Arbøll, a Danish
crowdfunding expert and founder of ‘HeartReacher’, for an interesting and inspiring discussion
on crowdfunding and the campaign process.
Finally, we would like to thank our family and friends for their continuous support and patience
during the writing process.
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary .......................................................................................................................1
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................2
Table of Contents ...........................................................................................................................3
Glossary ..........................................................................................................................................6
Tables and Figures .........................................................................................................................7
1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................8
MOTIVATION ........................................................................................................................8
NON-LINEAR APPROACH ....................................................................................................10
ERROR OF THE THIRD KIND (E3) .........................................................................................10
PROBLEM FORMULATION ...................................................................................................11
RESEARCH QUESTION .........................................................................................................11
2. Literature review ..............................................................................................................13
3. Theoretical Framework ...................................................................................................17
PART 1: Entrepreneurship ................................................................................................18
CREATOR AS AN ENTREPRENEUR ............................................................................18
PART 2: Startup ..................................................................................................................21
DEFINING A STARTUP ..............................................................................................21
CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT APPROACH ...................................................................24
PART 3: Marketing Communication ................................................................................25
CAMPAIGN DEVELOPMENT ......................................................................................25
ONLINE COMMUNICATION.......................................................................................26
4. Method ...............................................................................................................................28
INTERPRETIVIST APPROACH ...............................................................................................28
OBJECTIVITY OF INTERVIEW KNOWLEDGE ........................................................................29
RELIABILITY .......................................................................................................................29
VALIDITY ............................................................................................................................31
GENERALIZABILITY ...........................................................................................................32
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5. Data Collection ..................................................................................................................33
SECONDARY DATA ..............................................................................................................33
PRIMARY DATA ...................................................................................................................33
Interviews ................................................................................................................34
Interview structure...................................................................................................37
CODING OF THE QUALITATIVE DATA..................................................................................38
6. Analysis I ...........................................................................................................................39
CROWDFUNDING ON KICKSTARTER ...................................................................................39
CREATORS’ CHARACTERISTICS ..........................................................................................43
DISCUSSION PART I .............................................................................................................59
7. Analysis II ..........................................................................................................................62
Campaign process ..............................................................................................................62
PHASE 1: Pre-planning......................................................................................................62
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT ..................................................................................................63
VALUE PROPOSITIONS ........................................................................................................70
CAMPAIGN LAUNCH PREPARATION ...................................................................................77
DISCUSSION PART II ...........................................................................................................82
PHASE 2: Execution phase ................................................................................................85
CUSTOMER DISCOVERY .....................................................................................................86
COMMUNICATION ..............................................................................................................92
DISCUSSION PART III ........................................................................................................101
8. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................110
FURTHER RESEARCH ........................................................................................................113
Bibliography ...................................................................................................................114
Appendices
APPENDIX 1: ‘THERMODO’ PRESENTATION TRANSCRIPTION
APPENDIX 2: ‘PLUK’ INTERVIEW ABSTRACT
APPENDIX 3: ‘ME-MOVER’ INTERVIEW ABSTRACT
APPENDIX 4: ‘WALLZ’ INTERVIEW ABSTRACT
APPENDIX 5: ‘VIA’ INTERVIEW ABSTRACT
APPENDIX 6: ‘BAKE ON’ INTERVIEW ABSTRACT
APPENDIX 7: ‘SON OF A TAILOR’ INTERVIEW ABSTRACT
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APPENDIX 8: ‘SITPACK’ INTERVIEW ABSTRACT
APPENDIX 9: CASPER ARBØLL INTERVIEW ABSTRACT
APPENDIX 10: ‘BAKE ON’ FOLLOW UP INTERVIEW ABSTRACT
APPENDIX 11: ‘WALLZ’ FOLLOW UP INTERVIEW ABSTRACT
APPENDIX 12: ‘CAPITAL C’ MOVIE ABSTRACT
APPENDIX 13: PANEL AFTER ‘CAPITAL C’
APPENDIX 14: KS VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
APPENDIX 15: CODES AND CATEGORIES
APPENDIX 16: STRUCTURE OF CODES AND CATEGORIES
APPENDIX 17: INFORMATION ON THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COMPANIES
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Glossary
The abbreviations used throughout this master thesis are listed below.
Abbreviation Description
CF Crowdfunding
DDI Design-Driven Innovation
DK Denmark
DKK Danish Krone
EUR EURO
GBP British Pound
KS Kickstarter
ROI Return on Investment
SME Small and Medium-sized Enterprises
UK United Kingdom
USD United States Dollar
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Tables and Figures
The tables and figures used throughout this master thesis are listed below.
Table 1: Previous Research on Crowdfunding and Own Contribution
Table 2: Presentation of the Chosen Cases
Table 3: Theory Overview
Table 4: Creators’ Characteristics
Table 5: Ethos, Logos, Pathos in the KS Videos
Table 6: Overview of Execution Phase Findings
Figure 1: Campaign Process
Figure 2: Holistic View of Findings
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CHAPTER 1 Introduction
MOTIVATION
The idea of crowdfunding is not something new - Mozart, Beethoven and other 18th century
authors would go out to the audience and offer subscriptions for people to gain early access to a
new concerto or get their names on the first edition1. Even though crowdfunding has been in the
shadow for the past hundred years, the idea came back into the spotlight in 2008, when Obama
managed to raise 48% of the total USD 118.8 mio for his election campaign from donations less
than USD 2002. We direct our attention to one particular crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter
(from here on we refer to it as KS). Perry Chen, one of its founders, expressed a great amount of
joy about bringing back crowdfunding in some way by introducing the KS platform3.
KS is a global reward-based crowdfunding platform, founded by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler,
and Charles Adler in 2009 with headquarters in New York City (U.S). It is the biggest platform
supporting reward-based crowdfunding4, and came to Denmark in October 20145. The founders
of Kickstarter explain it as: “more than just a funding tool. It’s a community of millions of people
who love to share and support creative things.”6 The platform is a novel way of funding creative
projects through the direct support of online users, also referred to as backers. The funded
projects can be from any of the following categories: Art, Comics, Crafts, Dance, Design,
Fashion, Film & Video, Food, Games, Journalism, Music, Photography, Publishing, Technology,
and Theater7. Since the launch of the platform (2009), more than 7 million people have pledged
over $1 billion and funded more than 70,000 creative projects. Out of those 7 million, over 2
million are repeat backers8. So far, about 44% of Kickstarter projects have reached their funding
1 Chen, Perry. How to Change How Ideas Are Funded. Video Published on 24 Jun 2012. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHhq-NuG4ps 2 Source: http://www.emandp.com/post/single/political_crowdfunding_and_the_election_that_could 3 Chen, Perry. How to Change How Ideas Are Funded. Video Published on 24 Jun 2012.
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHhq-NuG4ps 4 Source: http://crowdfunding.about.com/od/Crowdfunding-definitions/fl/What-is-rewards-based-crowdfunding.htm
5 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-in-scandinavia-and-ireland
6 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/help/handbook/hello
7 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/rules
8 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats
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goals9, which is an optimistic success rate for the platform’s future. If a project is successfully
funded, Kickstarter applies a 5% fee to the collected funds. There are additional 3-5% payment
processing fees10. Empowered by Web 2.0, KS allows project creators (a person or a team
behind the idea) to receive monetary contributions from many users, referred to as backers, often
in exchange for future products or other rewards. Each Kickstarter project has a clear funding
goal and deadline set by its creator, and if backers like a project they pledge money for its
development. Projects can offer different rewards - “a creator's chance to share a piece of their
project with their backer community. Typically, these are one-of-a-kind experiences, limited
editions, or copies of the creative work being produced”11.
It is important to differentiate reward-based crowdfunding from equity-based crowdfunding, as
the latter focuses on the exchange of equity for investors’ money. Reward-based crowdfunding
is a novel approach that gives hope to people who cannot or choose not to follow the traditional
way of funding their idea. A crowdfunding platform, such as Kickstarter, enables project creators
to go directly to the crowd and convince people all over the world to like and support an idea that
cannot come alive without their help.
What makes Kickstarter attractive for research is not only that it is the dominant crowdfunding
platform, but also the way it helps project creators deliver innovative ideas in front of a larger
audience. Some of these ideas get overfunded by 1000%, some barely reach their goal in time,
and some get little to no support - the crowd is the judge (by crowd is meant people all over the
world that are at the same time potential backers). We set on a journey to discover how not only
we, as researchers, but also entrepreneurs and people in general can understand the
crowdfunding phenomenon and its potential. As a side note, it is important to mention that from
now on, we refer to reward-based crowdfunding simply as crowdfunding. The Kickstarter
platform (KS) is our point of departure and we will dive into its good qualities from the point of
view of one of its founders. Based on the data we collect, we identify and work with the concepts
we consider most relevant for our research problem.
9 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/kickstarter%20basics
10Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/help/fees
11 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/kickstarter%20basics
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We set to investigate reward-based crowdfunding from various theoretical perspectives in order
to explain the dynamics behind it. Despite the enormous potential for research, academic
literature on the phenomenon is scarce. We take the stand of explorers and hereby argue that
uncovering even a small part of the grey areas of the phenomenon can help tremendously other
researchers learn how the phenomenon is changing not only human lives, but also society as a
whole. This naturally requires us to adopt a non-linear approach to crowdfunding. Since we
construct the knowledge as we see the need for it without suppressing the context itself, we
acknowledge that the approach itself will be subjective and individual, but we consider it more
appropriate for this novel phenomenon, as we simply cannot deliver content in a linear way so
that it fits all creators on KS into one size format.
NON-LINEAR APPROACH
We apply a non-linear approach to learning, as we consider it very situational. Each of our 8
cases focuses on individuals who experience crowdfunding in a distinct social and psychological
way. Their experience is entirely unique, which is why we do not expect to find a ‘one size fits
all’ solution. At the same time, non-linear learning about crowdfunding can be explained through
the prism of the experiences of various creators on KS. We will direct our attention to the
patterns that emerge, and the deviations from them. The main area of investigation in this paper
is the Danish project creators on KS and their KS campaigns. A KS campaign refers strictly to
the activities involved in a project within a limited period of time, which is the funding period.
From now on when we talk about a Kickstarter campaign, we will also refer to it as a project.
ERROR OF THE THIRD KIND (E3)
Ian Mitroff (1998) argues about the importance of The Error of the Third Kind (E3) in the
business world, which is also known as solving the wrong problem precisely. Mitroff (1998)
argues that it is better to get an approximate solution to the right problem, rather than provide an
exact solution to the wrong problem. In order to tackle E3, problem solvers need to challenge
their own ideas and assumptions. The way project creators on KS perceive their own product and
present it in order to draw attention to it might not be the same as how the audience sees it. Often
little thought is given to this sort of misinterpretations. As will be seen in the ‘Discussion Parts I,
II and III’, it becomes necessary for project creators to further explain their idea and their
product’s use and functionality in private messages or in form of updates on their KS campaign
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page. Project creators have to not only attract as much attention as possible to their video and
campaign page, but also to do so without formulating their idea incorrectly and thus confuse a
large pool of their potential backers. In case of the latter, the author proposes that the only
solution is to frankly admit any mistakes to avoid compounded problems.
E3 can be applied to the case of project creators on KS, under the assumption that they think they
already know best how to design their product, how much time they expect to allocate for
communication with backers etc. While some of these assumptions can be correct, it is important
for these creators to challenge themselves with basic questions about the business they are in,
their mission, who their prime customers could be, how their product would be perceived by
others and other E3 issues.
PROBLEM FORMULATION
We believe that due to the novelty of KS in Denmark, Danish creators do not fully understand
how crowdfunding works. In order to uncover that, they actually need to perform an extensive
research on the subject and read tons of materials with recommendations, which is an endless
exercise. We therefore ask ourselves - is it not possible to actually provide a simpler answer to
what is really important in the crowdfunding process. We consider using the creators’ own
experience and learning in order to partially uncover an answer to our question. What we expect
to find here is that more often than not project creators would have gone further and performed
much better in their crowdfunding campaigns had they known more about crowdfunding itself.
This study will help project creators gain better understanding of crowdfunding on the KS
platform. Despite having the campaign guidelines provided by Kickstarter, and a huge database
of successfully funded projects to compare with, project creators might not fully understand the
dynamics behind crowdfunding due to its novelty, and therefore might not utilize the full
potential of the KS platform for the successful outcome of their campaigns.
RESEARCH QUESTION
We as researchers also need to avoid making the E3 when formulating our problem statement.
We approach the problem by exploring the phenomenon while keeping an open mind and
reflecting on the findings afterwards. Considering the scarce research on the topic, we will aim to
simply provide an approximate solution to the right problem:
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RQ: How can creators exploit the full potential of their creative idea on Kickstarter?
We formulate three sub-questions, which will help us answer the RQ:
1. Do creators possess entrepreneurial characteristics?
2. What goes into the pre-planning of a KS campaign?
3. What are the specificities of the campaign execution?
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CHAPTER 2 Literature Review
Our first step is to explore what has already been done by other researchers in relation to
crowdfunding. Due to the novelty of the phenomenon, previous academic contributions on the
subject are somewhat scarce. We have identified three significant academic papers relevant for
this master thesis - Belleflamme et al. (2014); Mollick (2014); and Kuppuswamy and Bayus
(2014). The first two papers contribute with findings related to the analytical understanding of
crowdfunding (Mollick 2014) and why project creators choose to either use reward-based or
equity-based crowdfunding (Belleflamme et al. 2014). The latter covers a number of important
findings on reward-based crowdfunding and the creators of the projects. Kuppuswamy and
Bayus (2014) take a different perspective on crowdfunding and focus on the dynamics of
backers’ support during the time of campaigning. Moreover, all three papers investigate cases or
data from KS, which is consistent with our research cases.
We start with the definition of crowdfunding, which both papers reflect on. Belleflamme et al.
(2014) assess the phenomenon from an entrepreneurial finance perspective, as an open call
event, mainly Internet-based, for acquisition of financial resources either as donation or in
exchange for some kind of reward to support initiative for particular purpose. Mollick (2014), on
the other hand, points that an attempt to formulate a definition would be limited, because general
and academic comprehension of crowdfunding is continuously evolving: “Crowdfunding draws
inspiration from concepts like micro-finance (Morduch, 1999) and crowdsourcing (Poetz and
Schreier, 2012), but represents its own unique category of fundraising, facilitated by a growing
number of internet sites devoted to the topic. As in any emergent field, the popular and academic
conceptions of crowdfunding are in a state of evolutionary flux that makes complete definitions
arbitrarily limiting” (Mollick 2014:2). Together with accentuating the interdisciplinary aspect of
the phenomenon, the author provides a broad definition in an entrepreneurial concept that gives
space for the flux of the concept - crowdfunding in this case is seen an activity by individuals
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and groups (for profit) to fund their ventures by turning to rather small monetary contributions
from quite a large number of individuals on the internet, without the typical financial middlemen.
It is worth noticing that both papers research crowdfunding in entrepreneurial context and
acknowledge its crucial role as a novel funding mechanism for new ventures that otherwise
would be unrealized, and simultaneously proceed beyond this point of view. Belleflamme et al.
(2014) propose two types of benefits for the creators: monetary and nonmonetary, where the
latter is classified as crucial and is about building a community around a crowdfunding project.
Mollick (2014) as well outlines the distinctiveness of the phenomenon, but in different settings.
He perceives it not only as a funding tool, but also as a specific path for user innovators to transit
into entrepreneurship. He provides an example of the fifty highest funded projects on Kickstarter
in 2012, out of which 45 have transformed into ongoing entrepreneurial firms. Moreover,
Mollick (ibid) outlines other purposes of crowdfunding, such as demonstrating demand for a
proposed product and marketing.
Kuppuswamy and Bayus (2014) investigated funded KS projects and showed that other backers’
funding decisions, what the authors call social information, play a key role in the success of a
project. In relation to the social information, the authors have found strong evidence consistent
with the goal-gradient hypothesis (Hull 1932; Kivertz et al. 2006 in Kuppuswamy and Bayus
2014:3). In simple terms, backers’ support for a project in general increases steadily as it
approaches its end goal. In addition, the authors have discovered that potential backers are not
influenced by the total number of backers supporting a project, but by how much of the funding
goal has been pledged. Another important point for this master thesis is the findings by
Kuppuswamy and Bayus (2014) that further backer support is positively related to project
updates, and that project creators tend to post updates during the first week and the last three
days of the campaign period. Creators are also inclined to use updates more aggressively as their
project gets closer to its goal, but the authors conclude that project updates at any point of the
campaign period are positively related to backers’ support.
Community creation is an important companion of crowdfunding, and in relation to this
Belleflamme et al. (2014) suggest that backers are not exclusively motivated by financial
benefits of receiving a product at a reduced price. They are also interested in the community
benefits, which are linked to the consumption experience and the feeling of being ‘privileged’ to
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be a part of a community for a crowdfunding project. In the absence of these non-monetary
benefits, crowdfunding would correspond to merely seeking money from a bank or a large
investor. Mollick (2014) portrays backers as both patrons and consumers, emphasizing that they
are in fact early consumers and in this regard enjoy such benefits as early access to the product,
reduced price, or other benefits.
Mollick (2014) concludes in his paper on a number of important and relevant insights that he has
found to influence crowdfunding campaigns. Firstly, creators of the campaigns should look for
ways to signal preparedness and utilize social network in order to gain connections to funders
and endorse a project’s quality. Secondly, setting appropriate and contemplated goals will allow
to deliver the product on time to the funders. And lastly, planning of these goals and the
campaigning process is crucial in determining the outcome of a campaign in terms of monetary
success or failure. e
Mollick (ibid) deems necessary to research how entrepreneurs signal quality, legitimacy, and
preparedness in the virtual setting of crowdfunding. This can be investigated in terms of existing
communication theories applicable in this virtual settings. Moreover, Belleflamme et al. (2014)
suggest a secondary function of crowdfunding apart from raising money, which has to do with
entrepreneurs’ information motivations. Under this perspective, crowdfunding can be used as a
promotion tool, as a method to assist mass customization or user-based innovation, and/or to gain
deeper understanding of consumers’ preferences. Thus, the firms can employ crowdfunding to
test, promote and market their products, or as a means for creation of new products or services
altogether. Moreover, Belleflamme et al. (2014) state the need to connect research on
crowdfunding platforms that intermediate between entrepreneurs and potential backers, creating
a two-sided market. It is furthermore suggested by Belleflamme et al. (ibid) to investigate
entrepreneurial learning from the crowd in crowdfunding dynamics.
In Table 1 we present a visual overview of the literature review by authors and add our own
contribution to the research on crowdfunding. In this paper we also build on some of the
perspectives from the three authors, and these have been marked in yellow.
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Authors Mollick (2014) Belleflamme et al. (2014) Kuppuswamy and Bayus
(2014) Own contribution
Crowdfunding
perspectives Micro-finance and
crowdsourcing (interdisciplinary)
Reward- and equity based
crowdfunding Dynamics of backers’ support Entrepreneurial
characteristics of the creators
Entrepreneurial context - funding of ventures
Entrepreneurial finance perspective Social information and goal gradient
Evaluation of the ‘Pre-planning’ and ‘Execution’
phases of a campaign
Innovators transit into
entrepreneurs Monetary and nonmonetary benefits
for creators Potential backers influenced by
% of funding goal reached
rather than total number of backers
Startup perspective
Demonstrates demand for a product
Backers enjoy community benefits Further backer support is related to project updates
Backers as patrons and early consumers
Crowdfunding as a promotion tool
Creators need to signal preparedness
Entrepreneurial learning from the crowd
Planning of goals and the campaign process is crucial
for the success
Table 1: Previous research on crowdfunding and own contribution; Source: own creation.
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CHAPTER 3 Theoretical Framework
We have clarified what we already know about the phenomenon from previous research (Chapter
2). A lot of good knowledge on entrepreneurship, startups and marketing communication already
exists but our study will combine it in a way that can explain new findings about crowdfunding,
which is the reason for doing our research. We want to discover how creators can exploit the full
potential of their creative idea on Kickstarter.
The theoretical discussion follows three parts - ‘Entrepreneurship’, ‘Startup’, and ‘Marketing
Communication’. The theories within are chosen on the basis of the data we collected, as Arthur
Conan Doyle states: “It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data” (in Smith et al.
2012:17). We combine and interconnect the chosen theories related to the three parts in order to
investigate and interpret different elements of the phenomenon. Firstly, we discuss application
of the concept of entrepreneur to the 8 creators and present distinct characteristics of these
creators. Consequently, the ‘Startup’ part focuses on application of a startup perspective to the
process of developing an idea into a KS campaign, incorporating the learning process from the
creators’ perspective. In the ‘Marketing Communication’ part, we will apply a communication
perspective to the process of crowdfunding. Below we present a visual overview of the
Theoretical Framework in Table 3.
THEORETI
CAL PARTS THEORETIC
AL THEMES CONCEPTS ANALYSIS ELEMENTS
Part I:
Entrepreneur
ship
Creator as an
entrepreneur Entrepreneur (Heebøll 2008; Shaw et al.
2005; McFadzean et al. 2005; Brem 2008) Creators’ Characteristics
Part II:
Startup Defining a
startup Startup (Ries 2011) Uncertainty (Ries 2011) MVP (Ries 2011) Proposal (Verganti 2009) Borderline (Verganti 2009) Early adopters (Ries 2011) Validated learning (Ries 2011)
Product development
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Feedback (Ries 2011; Mullins and Komisar
2009))
Customer discovery
Part II -//- Customer
development
approach
Customer discovery (Blank 2006) Customer discovery
Part III:
Marketing
Communicati
on
Campaign
development Value proposition (Osterwalder and Pigneur
2010) Advertising campaign (Pelsmacker et al.
2010) Unique and emotional selling propositions (Pelsmacker et al. 2010) Ethos, Logos, Pathos (Higgins and Walker
2012)
Value Propositions Campaign launch preparation
Part III -//- Online
communicatio
n
Online communication (Guldbrandsen and
Just 2011; Spencer and Giles 2001) Wired audiences (Spencer and Giles 2001)
Communication
Table 3: Theory Overview. Source: own creation
PART 1: Entrepreneurship
Part 1 is inspired by the works of John Heebøll (2008) - ‘Knowledge-based Entrepreneurship’,
McFadzean et al. (2005) - ‘Corporate entrepreneurship and innovation part 1: the missing link’,
Shaw et al. (2005) - ‘Corporate entrepreneurship part 2: a role- and process-based approach’,
Schumpeter et al. (2003) - ‘Entrepreneur’.
CREATOR AS AN ENTREPRENEUR
Novelty of crowdfunding as a phenomenon does not only open research opportunities, but also
urges us to regard it in non-conventional ways. We start with a theoretical discussion of the
intrinsic nature of the creator as an entrepreneur. In this master thesis we consider the individual
creator as the cornerstone of any crowdfunding activity on KS and believe that creator’s
characteristics are distinctive and resemble those of an entrepreneur. Brem (2008) argues that
there is a tendency in literature to emphasize the concept of entrepreneurship and pay little
attention to personality-driven or psychological characteristics of an entrepreneur. We expect to
discover certain similarities in the behaviour of creators and entrepreneurs, based on which we
will formulate characteristics of a creator. McFadzean et al. (2005) highlight the problem of
identifying an entrepreneur due to the lack of generally accepted standard definition of the
concept.
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We are influenced by the view of Powell and Bimmerle (1980 in McFadzean et al. 2005)
regarding two sets of intrinsic attributes that initiate entrepreneurship - descriptors and
precipitating factors. Importance of examining an entrepreneur as an individual has furthermore
been stressed by Brem (2008), who notices a trend in literature to focus on the concept of
entrepreneurship rather on the entrepreneur. Therefore we choose to investigate characteristics of
the individual creators as entrepreneurs, which can be summarized and visualized in Table 4.
Set of attributes Element Variables
Descriptors Individual
characteristics
Entrepreneurial alertness, wide social network, and prior knowledge
of markets and consumer needs
Personal fitness Work hard and have an understanding family
Knowledge and
skills
Own abilities, partners
Precipitating
factors
Motivation Intense need for freedom, finds joy in creating, desire to see concrete
results, earning a living by doing what you love
Table 4: Creators’ Characteristics. Source: own creation.
The first set of attributes includes such elements as individual characteristics, personal fitness,
knowledge and skills, and each of these elements consist of one or several variables, which will
be discussed in more detail below.
Individual characteristics relevant to our 8 cases are entrepreneurial alertness, wide social
network, and prior knowledge of markets and consumer needs (Ardichvili and Cardozo 2000 in
Shaw et al. 2005; Heebøll 2008). These traits are fundamental for recognition of opportunities,
accommodating the emergence of new ideas, and exploitation of their value (Shaw et al. 2005).
When considering entrepreneurial alertness, we focus precisely on creators’ recognition of
opportunities, which arise when they identify a pain that they want to solve. We use Heebøll’s
definition of a problem, which precedes the birth of a good idea: “A problem is a need, a demand
or some pain put into words. Thus, the problem formulation is the art of turning the recognition
of a need into an exact and quantified account of what the pain is about” (Heebøll 2008:50). The
author emphasizes the importance of identifying the pain in a market, and that in itself is the
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most difficult and time-consuming part of the creative process. Therefore, only when creators
understand the nature of the problem, will they be able to solve it. In the analysis we will clearly
demonstrate how each creator has identified a pain, whether their own or a customer’s.
Personal fitness refers to the creator’s ability to work hard and have an understanding family
(Heebøll 2008). We expect to discover that campaigning on KS takes a lot of time and is hard
work. Therefore, not only should the creator be able to perform under conditions that require an
exceptional effort, but we also assume that he/she needs support from close family members to
be able to do that. Knowledge and skills include the following traits: own abilities, extent of
network, and partners. Many ventures are founded by a team. The benefits of having a partner is
that the entrepreneur’s access to networks increases, as well as the knowledge and skills
available with each new member (Heebøll 2008).
The second set of attributes, precipitating factors, focus on motivation as a necessary
characteristic (McFadzean et al. 2005 and Heebøll 2008). Heebøll (2008) proposes a list of
possible motivations of an entrepreneur, from which we deem important: ‘an intense need for
freedom’, ‘finds joy in creating’, and ‘desire to see concrete results’. We supplement the above
motivations with McFadzean et al. (2005), who state that entrepreneurs are driven by two set of
goals: financial and non-financial goals. According to the authors, evidence suggests that the
non-financial goals prevail with entrepreneurs. We believe that for the creators the most
important motivation would be passion to make the idea come true. We assume that most of the
creators would like to be able to earn a living by doing what they love.
21
PART 2: Startup
Part 2 is inspired by Eric Ries (2011) - ‘The Lean Startup’, Steven Blank (2006) - ‘The Four
Steps to the Epiphany. Successful Strategies for Products that Win’, Mullins and Komisar (2009)
- ‘Getting to Plan B. Breaking Through to a Better Business Model’, Roberto Verganti (2009) -
‘Design-Driven Innovation. Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What
Things Mean’,
DEFINING A STARTUP
The reason for looking at startup theories is that the process of designing, making a prototype,
preparing a campaign, contacting the media, and other elements discovered from the data closely
resembles the process that entrepreneurs go through from their idea to making a venture. In his
book ‘The Lean Startup’, Eric Ries (2011) regards startups as ‘human institutions’ operating in
the context of extreme uncertainty. Ries (ibid) reflects on this uncertainty by concluding on a
common characteristic of most startups - they do not know precisely who their customer is
(despite having some ideas about who they will be), they do not know how the product should
look like exactly (and how it will change due to feedback), and they use a ‘just do it’ approach.
In this regard, Ries (ibid) highlights the importance of finding the early adopters instead of the
average customer when dwelling in the ocean of uncertainty. Early adopters are the customers
“who feel the need for the product most acutely” (Ries 2011:62), and because of that they are
more forgiving of mistakes and more eager to provide feedback than average customers.
“Startups’ early contact with potential customers merely reveals what assumptions require the
most urgent testing” (Ries 2011:88). Creators get the chance to understand who these early
adopters (backers) are and to know them better during the campaign period. “The goal of such
early contact with customers is not to gain definitive answers. Instead, it is to clarify at a basic,
coarse level that we understand our potential customer and what problems they have. With that
understanding, we can craft a customer archetype, a brief document that seeks to humanize the
proposed target customer” (Ries 2011:89).
Ries (ibid) views products as experiments, which in turn enable learning necessary to build a
sustainable business in the long run. This learning is vital for startups, and we expect to find that
it will be much more valuable to the creators on KS than money, as it reshapes their future
22
actions. The author argues that the main focus of startups is to receive feedback on the idea as
soon as possible. Mullins and Komisar (2009) further complement the importance of quick
feedback by underlining how the speed of bringing a product to market is related to a better
chance of customers’ preferences still being the same as during the design phase of the product.
In order to generate feedback, it is important to find customers that will engage in this process.
On KS, the offered product is what Ries (2011) calls the minimum viable product (MVP), the
first product (batch one) which enables fast learning. The author notes that the MVP “lacks many
features that may prove essential later on … it is inadequate to build a prototype that is
evaluated solely for internal quality by engineers and designers. We also need to get it in front of
potential customers to gauge their reactions. We may even need to try selling them the
prototype” (Ries 2011:77). And this is exactly what crowdfunding does. KS provides creators
the opportunity to go and see for themselves whether their business idea has a potential for
growth, and therefore business decisions during (and after) a campaign can be based on first-
hand knowledge. Ries reflects on the traditional approaches of interaction design and design
thinking as being “highly experimental and iterative, using techniques such as rapid prototyping
and in-person customer observations to guide designers’ work. Yet because of the way design
agencies traditionally have been compensated, all this work culminates in a monolithic
deliverable to the client”, which means that suddenly “the rapid learning and experimentation
stops; the assumption is that the designers have learned all there is to know. For startups, this is
an unworkable model”. The author argues that “No amount of design can anticipate the many
complexities of bringing a product to life in the real world” (Ries 2011:90).
In contrast to the traditional approach of bringing an idea to market, we consider crowdfunding
as a novel approach, which directly involves potential customers. This idea is not new in the
academic circles, as we discovered that Roberto Verganti (2009) argues for tossing away the
traditional approach of bringing an idea to market by instead speaking of ‘proposals’ that
radically change the meaning attributed to products in an ever evolving business context. We
take as our point of departure the view that that project creators on KS bring their ideas in front
of an audience (on KS and outside of KS) by precisely making such a proposal in the form of
their KS campaign.
23
Roberto Verganti’s idea of ‘proposals’ (ibid) inspires us to think of this as a novel way of
companies pushing forward their vision to an audience, while operating near a thin ‘borderline’
of uncertainty whether these ideas could potentially become real through KS or not. And some
ideas that will never do, because they are too far from what customers are ready to accept or
want. We believe the same logic applies to crowdfunding when a creator presents the idea to an
audience of potential backers. The project creators operate in the land of consumers’ desires,
which is still mostly undiscovered. In order to reach people’s hearts, creators choose the novel
path of crowdfunding to live out their dreams, but “these proposals, however, are not dreams
without a foundation. They end up being what people were waiting for, once they see them”
(Verganti 2009:10). Furthermore, customers often seem to love these proposals much more than
traditionally developed products based on conventional market research of consumer needs.
Operating near the borderline is beneficial for startups. Verganti (ibid) explains this as an
opportunity to learn where the borderline actually was, in case of a creator failing to crowdfund
his/her project. By learning about the borderline, the creator can perform better with the next
project, and probably better than the competitors. Such type of ‘proven’ learning is referred to by
Ries (2011) as ‘validated learning’. He underlines that validated learning is important in order to
gain an understanding of the customers and is an essential competitive advantage for startups.
“Validated learning is the process of demonstrating empirically that a team has discovered
valuable truths about a startup’s present and future business prospects” (Ries 2011:38). Ries
(ibid) points out that getting to understand potential customers and their needs at a basic level is
a good starting point.
Inspired by Ries’ (ibid) reasoning of why startups fail, we can apply the same logic to investigate
important elements of pre-planning a crowdfunding campaign that if not executed correctly
would have a negative impact on the campaign’s execution. These can be summarized into the
following: lack of a good plan (lack of pre-planning in the case of Kickstarter projects), lack of a
solid strategy (lack of prepared stretch goals, updates, failsafe plan), lack of thorough market
research, and unwillingness to learn from customers’ feedback (acquired during a Kickstarter
campaign).
24
CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT APPROACH
In ‘Four Steps to Epiphany’, Steven Blank (2006) argues for a new entrepreneurial model that
shifts the focus away from the rather traditional ‘product development approach’ to a ‘customer
development approach’. Whereas the product development model is used by almost every
company when launching a new product, the same model is causing startups to fail miserably,
because it ignores the fundamental truth about startups - the greatest risk in startups is not so
much the product development but the lack of customers and a proven financial model. We
appreciate the novelty of the customer development approach and find it especially valuable in
relation to crowdfunding. The mere concept of crowdfunding and the traditional product
development approach are mutually exclusive. In Blank’s point of view, the difference between
the new and the traditional approach is a matter of winners and losers.
We are only investigating the ‘Customer Discovery’ step (which is the first step from the model),
because we want to investigate whether the creators identify key visionary customers, their
needs, and whether the product solves their problem, and “you start development based on your
initial vision, using your visionary customers to test whether that vision has a market. And you
adjust your vision according to what you find out” (Blank 2006: 31). What we expect to discover
is that the main purpose of a KS campaign is to get access to potential customers, the backers.
We cannot investigate the other 3 steps of the ‘Customer Development Approach’, as they
happen after the Execution phase of a campaign. What happens with the campaigns after the KS
timer hits 0 (the campaign period is over) is not included in this paper.
25
PART 3: Marketing Communication
Pelsmacker et al. (2010) - ‘Marketing Communications. A European Perspective’, Guldbrandsen
and Just (2011) - ‘The Collaborative Paradigm: Towards an Invitational and Participatory
Concept of Online Communication’, Spencer and Giles (2001) - ‘The planning, implementation
and evaluation of an online marketing campaign’.
CAMPAIGN DEVELOPMENT
A KS campaign can be treated as a marketing/advertising campaign, because it follows similar
development path of pre-planning, launch, and end, and has to do with attracting backers in order
to reach its main objectives. Osterwalder and Pigneur (2010) stress the necessity to make a value
proposition to potential customers in order to attract them. A value proposition can be described
as a bundle of benefits offered by the company to serve the customers’ needs. In the context of
crowdfunding, it is important for the creators to make a clear value proposition to the potential
backers to make them support the idea.
We look into the advertising objectives of the 8 KS campaigns, which point to the reason ‘why’
creators communicate, what is their goal. The message strategy reveals ‘what’ is going to be
communicated to the consumers. The message is very important because it has to be convincing.
The customers should clearly understand why they need the product, why it is special, what are
its benefits, and what value it offers. Among other things, Pelsmacker et al. (2010) states the
need to think about media coverage of an advertising campaign, and we can apply the same
logics to a KS campaign - the creators need to spread the word about their campaign.
Simultaneously, the advertising message should not confuse consumers and therefore it can
promote a functional benefit (unique selling proposition, i.e. USP) or a non-functional benefit
(emotional selling proposition i.e. ESP). In crowdfunding the message is often communicated in
the video, which is in the beginning of every KS campaign page. We expect to find that project
creators indeed focus on either a functional or a non-functional benefit. Furthermore, special
skills are required for production of a campaign’s video, which means that the video is often
carried out by technical experts. We will investigate whether this is the case on KS.
26
In relation to the videos’ appeal, we will include Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals to ‘ethos’
(credibility), ‘logos’ (reason), and ‘pathos’ (emotion) (Higgins and Walker 2012). Ethos suggests
of the credibility of the creator clearly stated in the video, in other words anything that might
reveal his reputation and work experience. Logos means that a campaign’s video appeals to the
logic of the potential backers and clearly highlights the problems that the product solves and its
functionality features. Lastly, pathos of a video appeals to the backers’ emotions invoked while
watching the video, and is represented by sympathy, desires or fears. We expect to find that
pathos prevails in KS videos, which makes them more convincing.
ONLINE COMMUNICATION
It is important to clarify the sort of online communication that takes place on a crowdfunding
platform, such as KS. Guldbrandsen and Just (2011) mention five distinct features of online
communication that distinguish it from the more traditional mass and interpersonal
communication. First, it is observed to be negotiable and uncontrolled. Internet facilitates the
creators easy access to backers all over the world and allows them to constantly generate content,
which cannot be controlled by anyone at the moment of its production as well as at its reception.
At the same time this content is negotiable because it can be stored, edited, replicated, deleted
and restored by both creators and backers. Secondly, enabled by Internet, online communication
is not dependent on any temporal or spatial constraints and can develop rapidly at any time from
any user, based on the fact that all projects are international. The third feature is that
communication is hypertextual. The concept of hypertextuality refers to users’ ability to actively
read available links/references as a part of a complex and interconnected network of links and
nodes, among which users move at ease (Gaggi 1997 in Guldbrandsen and Just 2011). In relation
to that idea, users, in our case both creators and backers, can be passive or active information
seekers on KS (Spencer and Giles 2001). The next characteristic of communication is its hyper-
public nature, which facilitates participation on a much larger scale, integrating what used to be
private into the public sphere. Lastly, the authors describe it as a two-way mass communication,
where an individual user interacts directly with a few actors and at the same time indirectly with
the majority, and this view is furthermore supported by Spencer and Giles (2001). The above
features lead to what Guldbrandsen and Just (2011) call the collaborative paradigm.
27
We understand communication as a process, which has certain implications for crowdfunding.
We expect our data to demonstrate an ongoing interaction between creators and their backers, as
they share and exchange meanings through a collaborative, interrelated and creative flow of
communication. However, despite their willingness to participate, users (in this case backers) are
forced by KS to overcome one barrier of communication - they need to first back a project in
order to become part of and communicate with its community. Therefore, we argue that online
communication also differs in the context of crowdfunding on KS in the sense that this open
invitation to participate is conditioned by ‘an entry fee’ and is therefore not free. But there are
nodes outside of KS where communication about a project also takes place and that is also open
and uncontrolled.
Spencer and Giles (2001) advocate for the importance of ‘pushmi-pullyu’12, where successful
marketing depends on ‘pushing’ great online content that can be ‘pulled’ by the audience. Here
the authors pay specific attention to what they call ‘wired audiences’, which can be very
effective in ‘pulling’ the content. By wired audiences are meant specialists and opinion formers,
such as journalists, and in the case of KS opinion leaders like forum administrators, journal
editors, bloggers, other creators etc. According to Spencer and Giles (2001), it all comes down to
research, which is considered the key to planning, implementing and measuring of a campaign.
As we have previously discussed in ‘Part 2: Startup’, it is very difficult for startups to conduct
such research, because they do not know exactly who their customers are, but they have an idea
of who they might be. However, this perspective on startups does not eliminate the possibility of
conducting a limited market research on alternative solutions and potential customers.
12 From the film ‘Doctor Dolittle’, describes a two-headed creature that advances as long as they ‘push’ and ‘pull’ in one direction (Spencer and
Giles 2000:288).
28
CHAPTER 4 Method
INTERPRETIVIST APPROACH
We view the phenomenon from an interpretivist approach. We will focus on searching subjective
meanings and focus on the social side of crowdfunding, resulting in details of project creators’
subjective perspectives on crowdfunding as the cornerstone of our analysis. Reality in this case is
socially constructed and subjective, which will require us to look at the way creators as social
actors perceive the phenomenon and what they have learnt about crowdfunding through their
experience. Because research is value bound, we are also subjective and part of the phenomenon
(especially as being backers of two of the case projects). We will focus on small samples and in-
depth qualitative data from interviews. Our interview questions will in turn shift to a more
detailed view of creators’ personal experiences, resulting in different findings about them as
entrepreneurs and what motivates their actions.
In this exploratory empirical study, we seek new insights about the novel and evolving
phenomenon of crowdfunding with the use of multiple campaign cases on Kickstarter. In doing
so, we question what is happening during the crowdfunding process and assess the phenomenon
in a new light. Moreover, the advantage of the exploratory research according to Saunders et al.
(2009) lies in its flexible nature, which not only provides a deeper understanding of the
phenomenon, but also helps to progressively narrow the focus of the research. To better conceive
the complexities of the phenomenon, we build on previous research and investigate the substance
from project creators perspective, and supplement it with a crowdfunding expert’s point of view.
Validity of the results will be discussed in Research Reflections (Subchapter 4.2).
29
OBJECTIVITY OF INTERVIEW KNOWLEDGE
It is important to address the epistemological question whether knowledge produced through our
interviews can be objective. Qualitative research distinguishes between different meanings and
uses of objectivity. Objectivity can be viewed as freedom from bias, which implies that we
produce reliable knowledge not distorted by personal bias and prejudice. Another use of
objectivity is being reflexive about our own contributions to the production of knowledge,
acknowledging that we can only make informed judgements based on our prejudices in order to
understand the phenomenon. We focus on objectivity in terms of allowing ‘the object to object’
borrowing the idea from Latour (1997). We attain a degree of objectivity because the objects (in
this case the human beings - interviewees) reveal themselves by countering (objecting) our
preconceived ideas. This is also the reason why it proved a challenge to strictly follow the
prepared in advance interview questions during the interviews. Instead, we seeked and
encouraged rare and extreme statements, allowing interviewees the maximum protesting and
capacity to surprise and exceed what we as researchers had to say. Thus semi-structured
interview technique allowed us to uncover themes and concepts unknown to us during the course
of the interviews. The world is always greater than our limited representations of it, which we
constantly remind of during our data interpretation in the analysis.
RELIABILITY
Reliability refers to the ability of our data collection technique and analysis to result in consistent
findings, or similar information revealed by other researchers. One concern is whether our
interview subjects might change their answers with different interviewers. Because we were not
aiming to obtain feelings and emotions of the interviewees, but mostly information regarding
their KS experience, we evaluated that it would be suitable to use English instead of
interviewees’ native language. We believe that the timing of the conducted interviews when the
campaign is still ongoing does influence interviewees’ answers, which is demonstrated in the two
follow-up interviews in two cases - ‘Wallz’ and ‘Bake On’. We attribute such difference to the
fact that the interviewees’ knowledge of the phenomenon grew with their experience during the
process. In other words, they knew more and could give more detailed accounts of the
phenomenon with each day (‘Wallz’ and ‘Bake On’). This is not to say that their answers
changed considerably, but rather that their answers were based on different details from their
30
experience. At the same time, we are convinced that the interviewees, whose campaigns were
already successfully funded months ago (‘Thermodo’, ‘Me-Mover’, ‘PLUK’, and ‘Son of a
Tailor’), provide similar answers as the creators of the ongoing campaigns (‘Wallz’, ‘VIA’, ‘
Bake On’ and ‘Sitpack’), even though interviewees, creators of the successfully funded
campaigns, would always be able to reflect on their experience in a retrospective way and have a
clearer grasp of the whole picture. At the same time, we acknowledge that interviewees, creators
of the ongoing campaigns, are not able to reflect fully on their experience until their campaign is
over.
However, as Saunders (2009) points out, our findings from the semi-structured interviews are
“not necessarily intended to be repeatable since they reflect reality at the time they were
collected, in a situation which might be subject to change” (Marshall and Rossman 1999 in
Saunders 2009:328). Because crowdfunding is a dynamic process that is constantly changing,
and KS as a digital platform undergoes changes as well, we argue that reconstruction of our
interviews by other researchers might lead to different results than the current and also different
interpretations.
Another aspect is the interviewer reliability, related to imposing our own beliefs and frame of
reference through the questions we ask, as well as our interpretation of the responses. Our
leading questions may influence interviewees’ answers, if these questions are not part of an
interviewing technique. Weiss provides a different angle on the subject (1994:13) and
emphasizes the importance of grasping the storyline as it evolves during the interview, and thus
not following the structured questions, because “the fixed question-open-response approach
would have succeeded in getting a headline but would have missed the story”, and we are
interested in the story. We conduct semi-structured interviews, which allows us to have a partial
control of the interview setting and flow, but simultaneously leaves enough space to manoeuvre
between the known areas and the dark spaces of their experience. We are particularly interested
in the latter, because we are convinced that discovering and acknowledging what we don’t know
contributes to how convincing our findings are.
While coding the same interviews, different researchers are likely to produce non-identical codes
(Subchapter 5.3 Coding of the Qualitative Data). Too strong emphasis on reliability might hinder
our creativity and variability with fixed and predetermined structures. Instead, these are more
31
likely to follow when we are allowed to implement our own interview style and follow our own
promising hunches to contribute to the overall production of knowledge in the matter
(Brinkmann and Kvale 2015).
When deciding how many creators to contact and what method to use for the analysis of the
interviews transcripts, we considered Brinkmann and Kvale’s (2015) ‘the 1000-page question’.
Inspired by that idea, we thought about the method of analysis before we collected the data. We
decided to interpret the analysis ‘as we go’, while pushing forward some of the pre planned
analysis parts as the interview situation evolved. This in turn made our final analysis a lot easier
to manage as it was already based on solid ground. The authors argue that the ideal interview is
already analyzed by the time the sound recorder is turned off and this is exactly what we aimed
at. We chose just enough interviewees for the research to be reliable, but also just enough to be
able to process it in a coherent and meaningful way.
VALIDITY
To validate is to check, to question, and to theorize the interview findings. Validation is
embedded in all stages of the production of knowledge, which leads to transparency of the
research procedure and convincing results (Brinkmann and Kvale, 2015). Concerning the
validity of interview answers, we consider the possibility of our interviewees not relaying the
whole truth about facts and experiences, but we consider their statements expressing the truth of
their view of themselves. In order to validate what they said, we often asked the same questions
in different parts of the interview, and if some of them changed their statements, we would ask
them to clarify their answers. In the case of Me-Mover, since the project creator (Jonas Eliasson)
was unavailable for an interview, we provide the point of view of one of his employees - Jens
Juhanson. This might raise certain validity concerns regarding his answers distorting the truth
about what really occurred based on his personal experience and his interest in presenting the
best image of the company and his employer. However, Jens joined the company a few months
before the campaign, and as an employee he was also an important part of the journey of Me-
Mover and provided valuable help and knowhow in bringing it to life during the campaign,
therefore we will consider his answers convincing and relevant.
32
Validity refers to our ability as researchers to gain access to the interviewee’s knowledge and
experience. We conducted the interviews by carefully clarifying our questions, probing the
responses’ meaning, and discussing the topics from various angles. However, Saunders (2009)
points out that qualitative research using semi-structured interviews “will not be able to be used
to make statistical generalisations about the entire population...where this is based on a small
and unrepresentative number of cases. This is often the situation when adopting a case study
strategy” (Yin 2003 in Saunders 2009:327). This view is further supported by Weiss (1994), but
we must admit that through customization of each interview and our attempt to uncover the full
story, meanings and feelings of the creators, we are very much aware of the specificities of each
single case. Therefore, with the help of the triangulation method (Saunders 2009), we are able to
cross-check the data and avoid the above-mentioned issues.
GENERALIZABILITY
The next question we need to consider is whether these results can be generalized to other
subjects, contexts and situations or are they of a local interest only. From a humanistic and
behaviorism point of view, every situation and every individual person are unique (Brinkmann
and Kvale, 2015), however certain common characteristics and repetitive patterns of behaviour
emerged from the analysis. We can generalize based on certain entrepreneurial characteristics
that the KS project creators are likely to possess. Moreover, we can generalize on the campaign
process itself, as there are certain elements that need to be considered in a certain timeframe. We
believe that our findings from this interview study and can be used as a basis for other similar
cases within the context of crowdfunding.
Because we are dealing with human beings and human affairs situated in local contexts
(Flyvbjerg 2006 in Brinkmann and Kvale 2015), we argue that the context-dependent knowledge
we produce is more valuable than searching for general and universal truths. Furthermore, we are
able to generalize by choosing an extreme or critical case - ‘WALLZ’, a ‘black swan’ based on
which we can logically deduce what is valid for all other cases and falsify any taken-for-granted
assumptions (preplanning of a campaign is critical for its successful funding).
33
CHAPTER 5 Data Collection
In this exploratory empirical study, we aim to build on previous evidence about the nature of
crowdfunding from three perspectives - entrepreneurship, startups and communication. We use
both primary and secondary data. The collected data is both qualitative and quantitative, with
main focus on the qualitative data. The data will be described in more details below. Next, we
describe how the data is being collected and coded. An interview structure is then presented
before we introduce a small experiment conducted as part of one interview.
SECONDARY DATA
Our goal is to understand what actually happens during the crowdfunding of a campaign on the
KS platform. During our initial research online, we discover two youtube video presentations
with one of the founders of KS - Perry Chen, who explains the vision behind KS, what the
platform stands for and what it wants to achieve. We also find more information on what to look
out for when making a crowdfunding campaign from various articles online. Moreover, we learn
about KS’s planned launch in Denmark on 21st of October 2014, which gives us the idea to
include ongoing campaigns to our research. We expect that access to such will be vital to
experiencing first-hand the intricacies of the campaign process from day 1 and also enable us to
draw a more detailed picture of the changes occurring during the process, particularly in between
the first and any follow up interviews we get access to.
Additionally, we collect available campaign data from some of our 8 cases. Additional data on
crowdfunding is based on the ‘Capital C’ movie, which was crowdfunded on KS, and is about
crowdfunding.
PRIMARY DATA
The primary data in this thesis consists of 7 interviews with project creators on Kickstarter: 3
successfully funded projects (‘Me-Mover’, ‘Son of a Tailor’, ‘PLUK’) and 4 ongoing projects
(‘Wallz’, ‘Bake On’, ‘VIA’, ‘Sitpack’), 2 follow-up interviews (‘Wallz’, ‘Bake On’), 1
presentation of a successfully funded campaign (‘Thermodo’), and 1 interview with a
34
crowdfunding expert (Casper Arbøll).
Interviews
Our sampling technique is in line with Weiss’ (1994) categorization of potential respondents. We
identify two relevant groups for potential interviews. The first group’s representative is an expert
in the field of crowdfunding and also the founder of a consultancy firm on crowdfunding in
Denmark - Casper Arbøll. The second group consists of people directly affected by the
phenomenon we want to investigate, and who can provide inside information about the campaign
process based on their experience, namely the creators of KS campaigns. We assume that these
two groups can provide a broader panel of knowledgeable informants. We expect that each
respondent views the topic from a different perspective, thus contributing with new aspects of
the phenomenon.
As a first step to acquiring specific information on crowdfunding in Denmark, we conduct an
extensive online search of the upcoming crowdfunding events in Copenhagen. As a result, we
attend a ‘Meetup’13 on Sep. 24th, 2014, organized by members of the Danish Crowdfunding
Association and supported by the Danish Chamber of Commerce14. This is a public presentation
specifically on the subject of reward-based crowdfunding, featuring one of the successfully
funded campaigns on Kickstarter - Thermodo, by the Danish company Robocat, whose product
is a temperature measuring device for smartphones. This presentation acts as an inspiration and
as base for the following interviews, because it provides details on all three stages of a
crowdfunding campaign on KS: before, during and after. It lasts approximately two hours and is
very thorough, its purpose being to finalize and perfect the full story of the journey of Thermodo
in one final recorded version.
After uncovering some of the basics of reward-based crowdfunding and details from the
campaign process from a project creator’s point of view, we next focus our attention on face-to-
face interviews with other Danish project creators. Our first consideration is easy geographical
access to the project creators, which is why we focus only on KS projects from Denmark. The
projects are selected on the basis of several variables: campaign status (ongoing, successfully or
unsuccessfully funded campaigns), industry type, and product price range. Application of such
13
Source: http://www.meetup.com/Copenhagen-Crowdfunding-Meetup/events/206349322/ 14
Source: http://www.meetup.com/Copenhagen-Crowdfunding-Meetup/members/?op=leaders
35
variables allows us to also eliminate the possibility of having near duplicates (Weiss, 1994), and
instead focus on gaining new insights into the phenomenon from each case. Establishment of
such variables enables us to identify and analyze both similarities and differences among the
projects relevant in answering the research problem.
We email 17 selected interview candidates, following up with a phone call. We start by
contacting a total of 7 creators of successfully funded Danish projects, 3 of which agree to an
interview. It is important to mention that our decision to include also ongoing KS projects into
our sampling is entirely due to KS coming to Denmark. The sample of ongoing campaigns
coincides with the initial hype of this new phenomenon in Denmark, to which we attribute the
positive answers from 4 out of 7 contacted project creators despite them being very busy during
their campaigns. We also attempt to reach out to 3 project creators of unsuccessfully funded
projects, but none of them replied. We conduct a total of 7 interviews from creators of both
ongoing and successfully funded projects. All interviews are conducted throughout the period of
three months - September, October and November 2014. Table 2 represents an overview of the
actual interviews and the selection variables. The reason we do not apply KS project categories is
because it does not give any valuable information due to the fact that most of the cases fit the
same design category, therefore we divide them by industries instead.
Name Company
referred to on KS
KS Product’s
Name KS Product description
Industry type Successfully funded
(SF) or Ongoing
(ON)
Product Unit
Price on KS
(USD)
Michael Flarup
(creator,
interviewee)
Willi Wu (creator)
Robocat THERMODO Electrical
thermometer for a
mobile device
Technology SF 19
Nicolas Aagaard
(creator,
interviewee)
Kåre Frandsen (creator)
FACO CPH PLUK Hanging fruit basket Product design SF 35
Jens Juhanson (on-line
coordinator,
interviewee)
Me-Mover ME-MOVER Step driven vehicle Transport SF 899
36
Jonas Eliasson
(creator)
Troels Fonsbø (creator,
interviewee)
Troels Fonsbø WALLZ A set of colourful
cubes for creating
wall art
Home decor ON 22
Marcus Vagnby (creator,
interviewee)
Karina Mencke
Vagnby (creator)
ShapingYourDa
y VIA 3-IN-1
LAMP A lamp with three
changeable light
shades
Product design ON 134
Chris Gojal
Krogsgaard (creator,
interviewee)
Gojal
Krogsgaard BAKE ON TEA TOWELS
Screen printed
baking tea towels
with step-by-step
recipes
Product
design/home decor ON 18
Jess Fleischer (creator,
interviewee)
Andreas Langhorn (creator)
Jess Christian
Fleischer SON OF A
TAILOR Premium
handcrafted T-shirts
tailored in
customer’s size
Apparel SF 57
Nikolaj Bak (creator,
interviewee)
Jonas Lind
Bendixen (creator)
Mono+Mono SITPACK Foldable seat on a
stick that fits in a
Furniture ON 20
Table 2: Presentation of the chosen cases. Source: own creation.
It must be noted that the creators of the successfully funded projects had to set up a company
abroad in order to run their campaign on KS, because KS was not in Denmark. The remaining 4
projects are based in Copenhagen, Denmark, launched their campaign after the arrival of KS to
Denmark, and were still ongoing at the time of the interviews.
The recorded interviews are transcribed partially, which allows us to ‘cut away’ any small talk,
side topics and sensitive information out of ethical considerations. At the same time, we are
aware that by doing so we put our interpreter lenses on, however we still believe that this method
provides similar results to the analytical process researchers undergo when analyzing full
transcripts. We supplement the creators’ interviews with a crowdfunding expert’s point of view
to gain additional insights on the aspects of the phenomenon in DK.
37
Interview structure
We aim at loosening the borders of the traditional semi-structured interview. The conducted
interviews do not strictly follow the order in which we preplanned to ask our questions, because
the interviewees quite often gave thorough explanations that already pre-answered some of our
later questions. At times we had to ask again by rephrasing some questions in order to confirm
that we understood the response correctly, and to ensure that the questions were understood by
the interviewees.
Firstly, we focus our attention on finding out how the creator got the idea to design and produce
their own product. By asking such a question, we simultaneously gain information on the
creator’s background, which will allow us to make a creator’s profile in the analysis. Secondly,
we inquire on their reason for crowdfunding the project. The next step is to gain insights into
their pre-planning process and their considerations for the needs of the customer. We also ask the
creator to describe their customer/user and their needs. Another question is on whether they have
protected their product from being imitated, due to crowdfunding being an open process where
information becomes publicly available. Subsequently, we inquire into any professional help
they have received in planning and preparing of the KS campaign, and particularly the campaign
video. This question is important in regards to the creative execution of the campaign page.
Furthermore, we complement that area by also focusing on storytelling in the campaign, which
includes not only the video, but also the updates and taking the backers along the project’s
journey. Another important question is on tipping off the media before and during the campaign,
with supplementary questions of blogger contacts and social media, which follow naturally
during the interview. We also ask the creators why they limit their funding period to about 30
days, depending on the particular case. We aim to find out whether their decisions have been
influenced by KS guidelines and rules, and indirectly discover what sort of comparison they did
with other projects in their preparation. In regards to the ‘Execution’ phase of the campaign, we
ask how much time they spent on campaigning, or in other words communicating with the
backers and posting updates. Lastly, if the campaign has finished successfully, we ask on the
interest for their project after the end of the KS campaign - this includes potential investors and
distributors, media etc. If the campaign is still ongoing, we inquire of the creator’s plans for the
future.
38
CODING OF THE QUALITATIVE DATA
Based on suggestions from Harding (2013 in Brinkmann and Kvale 2015), our first step is to
read the transcripts and identify initial categories, write codes alongside the transcripts, review
the codes and categories, and then look for larger themes and findings in each category. An
important critique of coding (MacLure 2013 in Brinkmann and Kvale 2015) is that it reinforces
certain epistemology, reducing multiple meanings of long interview statements to what can be
captured into a few simple categories, which betrays the indescribable nature of reality. We are
aware that certain meanings can be lost or omitted based on what we as researchers deem
important to be coded. This points to us being biased by our own perceptions of the content. The
coding is both concept-driven, derived in advance by using existing theories, and data-driven -
arising ad hoc during the analysis from the interviewees’ own idioms.
Coding of the qualitative data is centered on data from the 8 chosen cases - 7 face to face
interviews and 1 ‘live’ presentation. We do not include data from the interview with a
crowdfunding expert in the coding, but it will act as a supplementary data in the analysis. The
goal is to find repetitive patterns and consistencies, while staying alert for any deviations. The
summarized version of the coding system can be viewed in Appendix 15 and in full details in
Appendix 16.
39
CHAPTER 6 Analysis I
In Analysis I we first view crowdfunding on Kickstarter from the perspective of one of its
founders, Perry Chen, and this would provide the reader with a more general outlook on the
specificities of this platform. We will do so by implementing secondary data from two Youtube
presentations with Perry Chen, as well as secondary data from the platform. Next, we move to a
more specific view on crowdfunding by drawing the attention to 8 cases. We will examine these
project creators’ characteristics in order to answer the first sub-question: ‘Do creators possess
entrepreneurial characteristics?’
CROWDFUNDING ON KICKSTARTER
What better way to explain crowdfunding on KS than take the words of one of its founders for it:
“When we started Kickstarter our goal wasn’t to start another company. It was to create a way
for artists, musicians, filmmakers, chefs, craftspeople, designers, adventurers, and other creative
people to fund and build community around their ideas. A belief in the immeasurable importance
of art and creativity is core to who we are as a company. Our mission is to help bring creative
projects to life. We exist so that other people’s ideas can exist. We've remained independent and
founder-led so that we can pursue this mission fully”15.
Perry Chen explains that KS is a “fundraising platform for creative projects”16, where people
put their creative ideas and ask the audience, the community, creators’ fans and friends, to help
fund the project. Funding on KS is not investment, because nobody gets a stake, and it is neither
a donation. Perry Chen explains that usually people tend to shy away from the word donate, but
the transaction happening between a creator and a backer lies somewhere in between patronage
and commerce. It is a trade - backers receive goods or services in exchange for their money, but
this kind of trade is associated with risk since it is based on the promise of the creators.
15 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/not-just-another-company 16 Chen, Perry. How to Change How Ideas Are Funded. Video Published on 24 Jun 2012. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHhq-NuG4ps
40
Funding on Kickstarter is based on all-or-nothing rule, which means that project creators get to
keep the pledged amount only if the project reaches its goal within a limited funding period,
current average being 30 days. The all-or-nothing rule has certain advantages. First, “It's less
risk for everyone”17. This means that backers get to keep all their money if the project fails to
reach its goal, and at the same time this protects the creators from the difficulty of keeping only
part of the funds while still having to complete the project. Second, the all-or-nothing rule
motivates people to spread the word if they want to see the idea come to life. And lastly, “It
works.” Kickstarter points out: “Of the projects that have reached 20% of their funding goal,
81% were successfully funded. Of the projects that have reached 60% of their funding goal, 98%
were successfully funded. Projects either make their goal or find little support. There's little in-
between”.18Kickstarter also points out three rules19 that must be followed: “Projects must create
something to share with others.” This rule points to the necessity for projects to have a general
plan of what they will accomplish and how they will do it. “Projects must be honest and clearly
presented.” The second rules emphasizes the importance of trust for the creation of community
around the projects. Whenever projects aim to manufacture something, Kickstarter requires that
project creators show prototypes so that the project can build trust and present facts without
misleading the backers. Thirdly, “Projects can’t fundraise for charity, offer financial incentives,
or involve prohibited items.” Kickstarter refers financial incentives in the sense of equity or
repayment and offers a list of prohibited items20, some of which are political fundraising, resale,
contests, coupons, and gambling. Unless limited for backers only, anyone can read comments
and updates within each KS campaign page, see a list of backers, where they are from, and how
many other projects they have backed. One important limitation is that only backers are allowed
to comment on the campaign page, which gives communication a quality of being exclusive,
such that creators can directly talk to their ‘paying’ customers, rather than everyone else. During
the campaign period, creators have at their disposal project video stats provided by KS for
tracking and monitoring all the numbers of their project.
And there has been a significant growth of the KS market during the past two years. The number
of backers has increased from 2,2 mio (2012) to 3 mio (2013) and 3,3 (2014). The total amount
17 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/kickstarter%20basics 18
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/kickstarter%20basics 19
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/rules 20
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/rules/prohibited
41
pledged has increased from USD 320 mio (2012) to USD 480 (2013) and more than USD 500
mio (2014). At the same time the number of successfully funded projects has increased from
18,109 projects (2012) to 19,911 projects (2013) and 22,252 projects (2014). It is clear that the
market has a lot of potential and is constantly growing.
In the section ‘Creator Handbook’, KS explains the importance of updates: “Throughout the life
of your project, you’ll be communicating with backers and keeping them updated on your
progress. That’s where project updates come in. They’re your project’s blog, and how backers
can follow along with you from start to finish. Being part of this journey is one of the best things
about Kickstarter!”21. Three kinds of updates are further pointed out. ‘Updates that build
momentum’ are about informing the backers about new developments and funding milestones.
‘Updates that share the process’ is about keeping backers in the loop after the project is
successfully funded. ‘Updates that celebrate success’ after the project is successfully funded
become part of a fully customized spotlight page - “a central hub for news, updates, links to
your finished work, and anything else you want people to know”.
Perry Chen also talks22 about the meaning of donating small amounts, like the average $25
pledge: “What small amounts allow us to do is to be really disruptive”. The traditional approach
is to look for an investment, and when we are talking about investing relatively large amounts of
money, it is a very high bar and the question is whether this will return the money, or whether
this risk is worth the reward. Since KS is not about investment but about small amounts, when
looking at projects backers simply have to decide whether they like the person and their passion.
KS is trying to facilitate a low-cost and low-friction way of people helping each other to make an
idea come to life. One year later, in 2013 the average pledge fluctuates around USD 7023.
Perry Chen also give the 99% example, which illustrates the high bar of investment versus the
low bar of affinity. This 99% is “what I believe the amount of ideas that are not conceived to
generate revenue. The overall majority of ideas are not conceived to generate revenue. Now
many are contorted to generate revenue because they must. And it’s not always bad. But ideas by
21
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/help/handbook/updates 22 Chen, Perry. How to Change How Ideas Are Funded. Video Published on 24 Jun 2012. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHhq-NuG4ps 23
Chen, Perry and Isaacson, Walter. Kickstarter and the Economics of Creativity (Full Session). Video Published on 29 Jun 2013. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R7mTFHEs1k
42
nature do not necessarily have a revenue generation part of them as they come out of your brain.
And so we’re trying to really not just serve the 1%, because musicians and filmmakers they are
often in business and they like making money off their art, but also there’s a lot of ideas that we
have, so to say, for the most part have, you know, no desire and relatively little hope of
generating revenue and they also need sources of funding.”
Raising, for example, four times more money than the funding goal, according to Perry Chen
“talks again to whether this is charity or something different, and why I think this kind of
underlines that it’s something different. Because people didn’t stop giving her money, that means
that they were receiving value from participating”. Perry Chen explains that KS is about pure
creativity, which can be found in many categories, not just art or film. The founders of KS
realized that “creativity in itself is a niche. People who come to the site, they are not like ‘I just
wanna look at film, or ‘I just wanna look at music’. They wanna see creativity, they wanna see
passionate people, they’re not just interested in categories and things in tiny little boxes”. Perry
Chen also reflects on the traditional model of working on a concept, building it, and then
releasing it on the market, hoping that the world embraces it. “And I think a lot is lost there… I
think you’re working a lot in the dark, you’re working a lot in a vacuum, and as you all know as
creative people it’s very hard to work in a vacuum, feedback is really important.”24 And it’s
important to get that feedback and support before the release of the product.
In June 2013, a year later in a different session with Walter Isaacson (president and CEO of the
US based Aspen Institute - an educational and policy studies organization25), Perry Chen adds to
his former explanation of what happens on KS that it is not simply an idea or a project that is
being put out there, but a proposal to people. What makes crowdfunding on KS fundamentally
different is the web and the speed with which information is able to move through, what Perry
Chen calls a social graph, a network of people on the web. According to the founder, KS started
as a funding platform, but has evolved into something larger than that, namely creating
communities around each project. Many project creators do not realise this inevitable feature of
24
Chen, Perry and Isaacson, Walter. Kickstarter and the Economics of Creativity (Full Session). Video Published on 29 Jun 2013. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R7mTFHEs1k 25
The Aspen Institute: http://www.aspeninstitute.org/what-we-do
43
KS in the beginning26, thus it seems that the creators are unable to plan in advance the necessary
activities needed to sustain and nourish their project’s community.
CREATORS’ CHARACTERISTICS
We want to investigate the individual creators, but at the same time we are curious how many of
them actually resemble entrepreneurs. Anyone can launch a campaign on KS, but not every
creator is an entrepreneur. Moreover, when we examine creators’ characteristics, we will
approach creators of a specific project as a team and therefore one entity, even if there are
several people in the team. Based on all collected data from the 8 cases and combining theory
from Powell and Bimmerle (1980 in McFadzean et al. 2005), Brem (2008), and Heebøll (2008),
we study characteristics of the creators focusing on the four elements from Table 4 (Chapter 3) -
‘individual characteristics’, ‘personal fitness’, ‘knowledge and skills’, and ‘motivation’.
However, rather than examining each element one by one, we believe that we can make better
sense of the data if we combine some of these elements, especially due to them being closely
related. We remind that these entrepreneurial characteristics are fundamental for recognition of
opportunities, accommodating the emergence of new ideas, and exploitation of their value (Shaw
et al. 2005).
In order to make it easier to recognize the 8 cases we refer to, we use the first names of the
members of the teams. We have previously outlined along with their project’s name and
description in Table 2 in Chapter 5 (Data Collection). We need to remind the reader that when
we refer to the case of Me-Mover, we talk about the project creator (Jonas Eliasson) from the
point of view of one of his employees - Jens Juhanson, and the implications of this have been
considered in the ‘Validity’ subchapter (Chapter 4).
26
Chen, Perry and Isaacson, Walter. Kickstarter and the Economics of Creativity (Full Session). Video Published on 29 Jun 2013. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R7mTFHEs1k
44
Set of attributes Element Variables
Descriptors Individual
characteristics
Entrepreneurial alertness, wide social network, and prior knowledge
of markets and consumer needs
Personal fitness Work hard and have an understanding family
Knowledge and
skills
Own abilities, partners
Precipitating
factors
Motivation Intense need for freedom, finds joy in creating, desire to see concrete
results, earning a living by doing what you love
Table 4: Creator characteristics. Source: own creation.
The creators’ characteristics start with the first variable from individual characteristics -
‘entrepreneurial alertness’ of the creators, which we relate to their ability to recognize an
opportunity for a creative idea.
Michael and his team recognized an opportunity for a new product (Thermodo) as a consequence
of a negative review on one of their previous products. This ‘1 star’ customer review, as the
Robocat’s team found out, was caused by the customer’s misunderstanding about the purpose of
the app - that it could actually measure real-life temperature [it could not, ed.]. The team of
perfectionists, as they call themselves, challenged themselves to “solve this guy’s issue”. They
knew that they “wanted to build a little thermometer… and we also knew that we wanted to
make a platform that other people could develop on if they wanted” (Appendix 1). Nicolas’
partner, Kåre, was already selling the metal version of the space-saving storage fruit basket
(Pluk), but they saw an opportunity for designing a plastic version, which would be three times
smaller, lighter in weight and thus a cheaper version of the metal one. They wanted to create
something “more affordable, and less expensive to ship” that is “cheaper in production”, which
would also make it cheaper for the customers (Appendix 2). Jonas solved his pain of having to
use public transport for a short distance, which was too time-consuming and inefficient, and that
gave birth to the idea of inventing a new transport vehicle (Me-Mover): “he [Jonas, ed.] thought
there should be an alternative for that, which is also fun. Because we all know bicycles are there
but he [Jonas, ed.] wanted something new” (Appendix 3). Troels wanted to solve his own
45
problem as well - not being able to find cool things for the walls in his apartment. The available
wall decorations were “either too boring or I didn’t think they match the cool furnitures”, so he
decided to create his own wall design that people “could do whatever they want [with them, ed.]
instead of like keeping it steady picture all the time”. Moreover, Troels wanted to create a design
central, “where you can download new designs… upload pictures, or designs you made yourself,
and get inspiration and ideas for new things” (Wallz) (Appendix 4). Marcus and Karina’s idea
for a new product (VIA 3-in-1 lamp) was based on a previous product, which is also a do-it-
yourself kit lamp. They “wanted to make something that was still very small in packaging …
something, where you didn’t see it as a kit lamp”, but also “something that actually can change
the light setting”, which would solve people’s problem of getting bored with the same lamp.
Their creative idea was born as a part of their regular work process, “as usual we do product
design” (Appendix 5). Chris’ idea for Bake On tea towels started as a project about redesigning a
recipe when she was at a design school in London. During the assignment she discovered how to
optimize her baking process and “designed a collection of tea towels that has recipes printed on
them… and you have a spot for each and every single ingredient - it makes it easy for everybody
and anybody to follow the steps” (Appendix 6). Jess found it difficult to find the perfect T-shirt:
“when I went to a shop to buy T-shirts I alway felt it was a bit difficult, because you found a T-
shirt you would like, and then you tried it on and found out that the shape didn’t fit you that
well”. That gave him an idea to create a premium handcrafted T-shirt that is perfectly tailored
according to a customer’s unique measurements (Son of a Tailor) (Appendix 7). Nikolaj’s
partner, Jonas, got the idea for a compact foldable seat (Sitpack) after realizing his own pain at a
concert after “having standed for hours and hours your knees start to hurt and your back as well,
and the most common solution today is weird foldable camping chairs or inflatable chairs of
some kind. And what’s really bad about them is that they put you very low, very near to the
ground, so you cannot see anything”. They wanted to create something that people would
“accept to carry around, and also something that would put you in a sitting position where you
can talk to your friends or you can see a concert”. So they started working on their vision by
putting it together from “the inner tubes from toilet paper rolls… and the outer shells are from
beer can”. (Appendix 8).
Next, we combine the variables ‘wide social network’ and ‘prior knowledge of markets and
consumer needs’ with ‘own abilities’ and ‘partners’ (Table 4). We unite them because they are
46
derived from the creators’ backgrounds, and we cannot separately examine creators’ social
network without also mentioning their partners as part of that network. Moreover, their own
abilities are closely related to their prior knowledge, to which the partners also contribute greatly.
In terms of knowledge and skills, Michael founded (and still owns) ‘Pixelresort’, worked as a
graphic designer at ‘Retouch ApS’, and in the IT support at Roskilde university.27 In 2008 Willi
founded his own company, ‘Icelantern’28, at which he is still working, and prior to that he was a
mentor at Startup Weekend Copenhagen. Earlier he worked as an application developer at
‘Polyteknisk IT’, software IT architect at ‘IBM Denmark’, IT consultant at ‘Previ Partners’ and
web application developer at ‘Balthazar’. Michael (the lead designer) and Willi Wu (the lead
developer) co-founded ‘Robocat’, a Danish software studio, in 2009 (Appendix 17). Since then
they have built quite a few weather apps and have accumulated a large customer base, as well as
many loyal fans. To illustrate, their previous weather app - ‘Thermo’, has about 4.5 mio users.
They have also won the ‘Danish App Award’ for the design of the ‘101 Airborne’ game
campaign. Their experience at ‘Robocat’ comes with access to a wide range of other partners,
distributors, retailers etc. With their KS product, which combines both software and hardware,
they moved into the unknown waters of the hardware industry. Michael mentions the benefits of
their existing loyal fans and customer base when running their KS campaign, which provide
insights into customer needs. Michael and Willi got another partner for development of the KS
product - Marcus, who is an electrical engineer. In relation to the KS product, they collaborate
with Danish engineers, and various other partners in Denmark and China (Appendices 1, 15).
Nicolas owned ‘Siljan ApS’, worked as business development manager at ‘Trollbeads United
States Inc.’, as a project manager at ‘Forlagshuset ApS’, and in customer service at
‘Trollbeads’29. Moreover, he has a bachelor degree in economics from Copenhagen Business
School and studied at European Film College. Nicolas’ partner worked at ‘Engelbrechts A/S’,
which is a company that cooperates with designers and other specialists to develop and market
27
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelflarup 28
Source:
https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=7198477&authType=name&authToken=GDus&trk=Skyline_click_NBM&sl=NBM%3B37189570%3
A1422736954835%3B0%3B9396212%3B 29 Source:
https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=104650427&authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=4uQJ&locale=en_US&trk=tyah2&trkInfo=idx%3A1-1-1%2CtarId%3A1422739003526%2Ctas%3Anicolas+aagaard
47
furniture30. Both studied at Danmarks Designskole31. Nicolas founded ‘FACO CPH’ in 2011
(Appendix 17) together with his partner, Kåre Frandsen, who had developed and was already
selling the metal version of the hanging fruit basket. This provides sufficient knowledge of both
the market and their customer base. Apart from that, they work with partners in China and
Poland. Regarding the KS campaign, Kåre’s brother is a filmmaker who helped with making the
video (Appendices 2, 15).
Jonas, the creator of ‘Me-Mover’, is an architect, inventor and entrepreneur with many products
and startups behind him32. He has worked as an architect, as a design consultant, and as a mentor
at Startupbootcamp. He has founded a number of companies within the industries of high-tech
and cloud solutions. The ‘Me-Mover’ company was founded in 2014 (Appendix 17) by Jonas
and his partners Jacob Thilo (engineer) and Morten Svensson (workshop manager), who were
hand building the ‘Me-Mover’ prototypes33. He has educational background as VR specialist, in
project sales, and a master degree in architecture from Chalmers University of Technology and
Arkitektskolen in Aarhus. He is also a certified life and business coach from ‘Manning Inspire’.34
He has received the ‘Best Presenter Award’ at Nordic Venture Summit (2005), and was
Cleantech Finalist at ‘Cleantech Open Denmark’ (2001). Me-Mover was a finalist in ‘Red
Herring European top 100’ of the ‘100 most important startups in Europe’, and was nominated
by the INDEX awards 2013. Jonas was in contact with a gaming company whose KS campaign
failed. Jens specifies: “we got the guy into our company and we had a discussion meeting with
this guy, and he told us what he learnt and what he would do differently next time”. This
valuable knowledge of a previous KS campaign helped them to prepare better for their own
(Appendices 3, 15).
Troels has been working as a dealer in ‘Casino Copenhagen’ for the past 15 years.35 He founded
‘Wallz’ in February 2010 (Appendix 17) and had a webshop selling the cubes prior to KS, while
having his full-time job at the casino at night. His partner in London is the salesperson for
30 Source: http://www.engelbrechts.dk/da/om-engelbrechts 31 Danish Design School (in Danish: Danmarks Designskole), now renamed to ‘The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of
Architecture, Design and Conservation’, source: https://kadk.dk/en/kadk 32 Source: http://me-mover.com/the-team/ 33 Source: http://me-mover.com/the-team/ 34 Source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jope1 35 Source: https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=215953515
48
‘Wallz’. Troels met an accountant manager from ‘Deloitte’ at Creative Business Cup, while
being engaged in entrepreneurship-related activities. His brother helped him with the video for
KS, and his cousin works at ‘Wallz’ as an intern. Troels admits that he likes art and being
creative, rather than the business and administration side of the company. He prefers spending
his time making special designs. Troels’ personally owned company was selling the KS product
before the KS launch, which points to some knowledge of the Danish market and customer needs
(Appendices 4, 15).
Marcus and his wife Karina are both product designers and have experience as entrepreneurs.
They founded ‘Mencke & Vagnby’ in 1989. Apart from that, Marcus was a part owner and
designer at ‘SpecialEdt ApS’. He studied at Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole (Art Academy’s
Architectural School) and Danmarks Designskole36. The duo created ‘Shaping Your Day’ in
2012 (Appendix 17). During the KS campaign they work with a factory in Hong Kong, which is
going to ship the KS product. VIA is not the first lamp they have designed, so they have solid
knowledge of the market (Appendices 5, 15).
Chris has a bachelor degree in graphic design, has her own venture for freelance graphic design,
and founded ‘Bake On’ in April 2013 (Appendix 17). Moreover, she worked as an assistant
teacher at a Danish kindergarten and during that time she tried to crowdfund her ‘Bake On’
project on IndieGoGo but her campaign was unsuccessful. She admits that she learned a lot from
that failure. She believes that the campaign failed for several reasons: the funding goal was too
high (twice as much compared to the current KS campaign), she did not do any PR for her
IndieGoGo campaign, and she reflects on not spending enough time on the campaign after
coming home from work. As a result, for her KS campaign she cut her initial collection of 15
towels to 10 in order to cut production costs and ask for less money. At the Danish kindergarten
Chris met a mother, who was a PR person, so they decided to make a trade off - free PR services
for the KS campaign in exchange for Chris designing a logo. Chris also went to the opening of
KS in Denmark, where she showed the towels and the KS representatives really believed in her
idea and gave her the moral boost to go for it. Chris had no knowledge of how to make and edit a
video for the campaign, nor did she know anyone who could help her with it, so she decided to
36 Source:
https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=11139815&authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=Gc1q&locale=en_US&srchid=3718957014227
40689391&srchindex=1&srchtotal=1&trk=vsrp_people_res_name&trkInfo=VSRPsearchId%3A371895701422740689391%2CVSRPtargetId%3A11139815%2CVSRPcmpt%3Aprimary
49
pay for it. Chris’ husband, Jesper Gojal Krogsgaard, works in the IT industry and has his own
company ‘Xanares.com’, which is a freelance web-agency doing everything in web-development
(Appendices 6, 15).
Jess has a master degree in engineering, manufacturing and management, and worked in a
number of large companies in positions that had to do with strategy and business development.
His occupations prior to ‘Son of a Tailor’ among other things concern strategy and business
development. Jess’ partner, Andreas, is a co-founder of ‘Star Athlete Music & Sound Design’,
which specializes in visual media content across all digital platforms. Jess founded ‘Son of
Tailor’ in October 2012 (Appendix 17). He started spending all his time on it in January 2013,
when he and his partner Andreas launched a beta webpage, which is the first launch of the
company. They hired a PR agent in the UK to help them with the KS campaign, for which she
brought her own network of contacts with journalists. The video for KS was made with the help
of Andreas and some friends, and he used the contacts of a former KS creator in order to
establish and manage a UK-based company in order to run the campaign (Appendices 7, 15).
Nikolaj has extensive experience, among other things, with online communication as event, staff
and brand manager from his previous occupations and studied a large number of courses that
deal with communication, management, innovation. At present, he is a partner, business
developer & marketing manager at ‘Takaokami’. Jonas has experience being an entrepreneur and
owns a company, ‘MJ Kompagniet ApS’, which is a brand management and distribution agency.
He also worked as a commercial assistant (concerned with partner searches, market analysis and
creating promotional events for Danish companies interested in the Chinese market). Jonas
studied business, language and culture; management; organization design; and economy. They
founded ‘Mono-Mono Design’ in January 2014 (Appendix 17). In March 2014 Jonas and Nikolaj
got a third partner, Theo, who is a student at DTU and has been creating all the technical
drawings for them, as well as perfecting all the internal components of the product. One of their
friends was a professional photographer who helped them with making the video for the
campaign. They also got help from another friend, who is a really good editor and edits videos
for a lot of big companies (Appendices 8, 15).
50
Lastly, we examine a list of motivations of an entrepreneur that includes ‘an intense need for
freedom’, ‘finds joy in creating’, ‘desire to see concrete results’ and ‘earning a living by doing
what you love’ (Heebøll 2008). Moreover, it has been underlined that the entrepreneurs are
driven by financial and non-financial goals, with prevalence of the latter. Personal fitness,
another characteristic, consists of two variables: ‘work hard’ and ‘have an understanding
family’. We believe that creators’ personal fitness is closely connected to what motivates them to
work hard in the first place, which is why the variables related to personal fitness and motivation
will be combined in order to explore creators’ motivation for crowdfunding their project on KS,
whether they are able to work hard under pressure, and the role their families play during the
campaign process.
THERMODO
Michael and his team wanted to raise funds in order to start the production of Thermodo and they
“felt that trying to sell this idea directly to the consumers was an appealing way of getting it
built”. They did not want VC or commercial funding for this product, “at least not in this part of
the process”, so they turned to crowdfunding instead:“so while you are still working with your
idea, you want to maintain financial independence and you can get that by selling directly to the
consumer”. This shows the creator’s intense need for freedom as an entrepreneur - he did not
want to go through the regular channels of commercial funding. The point of using KS was to
skip the middleman and connect directly with the backers on a personal level, because human
connection matters a lot to the creator. In terms of sharing the idea with friends and family,
Michael says that he did not receive actual feedback from them, but rather moral support: “I told
my mom and she would be like: “Yeah, sounds great. Fantastic idea!”. Moreover, Michael
shares that he went to Bali with his girlfriend (for vacation after she finished her master thesis) at
the time of the launch of the KS campaign, and instead of having a vacation he “set up a
workstation that I put in that wonderful place [Bali] that I did not get to enjoy at all”. This
illustrates not only the support from his girlfriend, who did not insist on him not working, but
also demonstrates the hard work that he put into this project. In relation to his determination and
hard work during the KS project, Michael also admits: “we had to make a company in the US
back then to actually do this”, and that they “worked for months and months of overcoming a lot
of obstacles... a lot of back and forth” with their partners in Denmark and China. Michael points
out that iterative hardware development is very tricky and takes a lot of time. He further points
51
out that KS is a lot of hard work: “running campaigns isn’t just something that happens in that
one month when you’re collecting money”. Michael finds joy in working on new ideas: “ever the
perfectionists that we are in Robocat, we wanted to see if we could solve this guy’s issue”. Since
the creator has his own company ‘Robocat’, he points out that “we treated the campaign as any
other digital product we’ve built in the past”. This shows that Michael indeed earns a living by
doing what he loves. We can safely assume that he would have brought the product out anyway
through the company just like Robocat’s other products - he wanted to see results, but he felt that
“trying to sell this idea directly to the consumers was an appealing way of getting it built”. This
attests to the creator’s desire to see concrete results through his crowdfunding campaign
(Appendices 1, 15).
PLUK
Nicolas and Kåre thought that producing the product themselves would pay off better than just
receiving royalty for the design, and they wanted the freedom to control both the design and the
product itself. Moreover, they wanted to test the viability of the plastic version, and used KS as a
marketing platform to spread the word and get possible offers for retailing of the product.
Nicolas says that he “wouldn’t go on Kickstarter because of the economic benefits” but
“because of the marketing potential”. Nicolas believes that the financial incentive is “a better
selling point than knowledge” to persuade creators to put their campaign on KS, however after
the campaign he points out:”With Kickstarter you kind of see dollar signs when you go in, but
then you see the potential when you come out”, and “you are gonna come out not richer, but you
are gonna come out more experienced”. Nicolas explains that the campaign broke even for them
- they didn’t get any money (despite being 200% overfunded), but he acknowledges that it has
been a “learning experience, and … made us stronger as designers as well, because it teaches
you… how it is actually to get something to put into production”. Because of this learning
process, they discovered that they find joy in creating and earn a living by doing what they love,
in their case - designing, and are therefore now considering to sell the design for PLUK and
focus on their core - design. Nicolas admits that they “don’t have time to produce, manufacture
and sell the product”. Nicolas and his partner were determined to make their KS campaign a
reality from the very beginning and they “had to fly to England, set up a company, set up a bank
account, and then come back”. Nicolas also admits that KS was more work than they initially
thought it was. We believe that Nicolas and Kåre had the desire to see concrete results, because
52
they were determined to produce and sell their product even in case their KS campaign would
fail - they already had the money prior to KS. According to Nicolas, what would have been
different would be the way the product was marketed. In the case of PLUK, support from friends
and family was expressed in Kåre’s brother (filmmaker) making the video for them, and Nicolas’
girlfriend being the one demonstrating how to assembly the basket and she was spreading the
word about the basket on social media37 (Appendices 2, 15).
ME-MOVER
In terms of financial motivation, the Me-Mover team were raising money on KS to be able to
take orders from China and they made “some money in that [KS, ed.] because our costs that we
put in there were pretty low, and of course we get something on each order”. In other words,
they wanted to make a living by doing what they love. Regarding non-financial motivation, Jess
says that “for us one of the big things was to find the first customers who really believe in this
product”, and that they also wanted “to get the word about this product around the Web, and
maybe even around the world”. Moreover, they were interested in building a customer base and
community around their project. The ‘Me-Mover’ team worked hard to prepare the KS
campaign. They got in touch with a creator of a different crowdfunding project that failed, and
“he told us what he learnt and what he would do differently next time”, and they had to set up a
US company to be able to put their project on KS. Additionally, Jess “personally looked through
the guidelines… read a book about it… did quite a lot of stuff”, and they were “postponing our
launch at Kickstarter for quite a several times. Because we weren’t satisfied with the result that
we had” and “it’s gonna take a long time because the more you prepare, I think, the better you
are gonna perform”. Because they had backers from all over the world, they had “to be there all
the time, day and night”, and they were often getting contacted by interested potential partners
(not so much investors). So the team worked hard on everything related to the KS campaign, and
Jess points out that “it was really important for us to get the funding, the 100,000 to survive and
to get this thing going”. Getting this money with the help of crowdfunding “gives you some kind
of freedom. With investors you are really tied to that kind of old-fashioned business relationship,
but with crowdfunding you are shaping actually everything”. We believe that Jonas and the team
had the desire to see concrete results in the sense that: “if we wouldn’t have had the funds raised,
37 Source: http://ink361.com/app/users/ig-212173874/patricialomholt/photos/ig-705125786314378336_212173874
53
we would have done it anyway”. Jess notes that apart being free from “that kind of old-fashioned
business relationship” when there are investors in the company, “you get really good touch with
your customers”, and “and getting the word about your product around, this is so important.
Even if you fail, you have done it... “. We interpret this as Jess being sure that even if a creator
fails to reach the monetary goal, he has still gained something from running a crowdfunding
campaign. Regarding creator’s joy in creating, the way Jess talks about Jonas and Me-Mover
assures us of the creator’s passion for building something new and fun, instead of settling for a
bicycle: “The first prototype he [Jonas, ed.] completed by himself. It’s looking really funny, it’s
full of metal”. Jess recalls Jonas’ friends and family supporting this project even before KS
launch: “Before we went to Kickstarter we didn’t have any orders. I think we had an order of 30,
which was I think Jonas’ friends and their friends and stuff like that” (Appendices 3, 15).
WALLZ
Troels was not very confident in his idea in the beginning, but encouraged himself to dedicate
“2014 for like go through with it, really work hard with this concept, this company [Wallz, ed.],
and then through this year if you don’t get enough feedback, if you don’t get enough people
saying ‘This is really cool’ then just slow it down”. Troels’ financial motivation for
crowdfunding his idea on KS is to collect money for a design central - a platform, where one can
download new designs, upload pictures or designs made by customers, a place to get inspiration
or ideas from. In other words, he wants to see concrete results, and he says that “it’s not a lot of
funding I’m asking for. It’s only like the minimum amount of money for the new order and for the
design central”. His non-financial motivation is to spread the word about his idea and see if
people like it: “the most part of the campaign is for awareness, it’s like explain the concepts,
show the brand, show your idea”. Troels worked hard to build the prototype of the product - it
took him about a year, and he did lots of tests back and forth with a factory in China - “it was
like from scratch - test materials, test shapes, test colours, and the most difficult part was the
adhesive”. After having accomplished the prototype, he just wanted to put it on KS, see what
happens and then take it from there: “I just put it on, I said OK, let’s make some money, and I
was sitting back and waiting. But nothing really happened and luckily Mila and Julia came
along from CBS with some questions for an interview and they said ‘Well you really can’t just sit
and relax, you have to work for it”. So Troels was not well prepared for the campaign “a lot of
people asked questions, I had to answer all the time, and it’s great fun but I’d wished I was more
54
prepared for this”, and therefore “had to work and work a lot” on the campaign while also
handling a full-time job at night, and spending time with his family: “I work nighttime at the
casino, and then in the daytime I’m with family, I’m working with this project. I wasn’t prepared
for this”, but he “worked, it paid off”. He is motivated to work so hard because he wants to
make a living by doing what he loves: “It’s been a really nice campaign... but I’m really looking
forward for this to end, and then to start working like a real company. Start making some
business model and do some orders for China. It’s going to be a lot of hard work afterwards”.
His dream is to have the product in retails, in shops, and also have a design office where he
would create art - he finds joy in creating: “I’m not really that into business and stuff, more like
a creative guy”. He emphasizes his passion for creating designs several times: “I started to
create my own wall designs”, “I really like doing special designs”, and “I’ll be the one doing
the special designs - the creative part”. Troels’ family and friends are very supportive with the
project - his brother helped him to make the video, his cousin is an intern at ‘Wallz’ helping with
spreading the word (cousin is educated in communication), and both brother and cousin keep an
eye on feedback on the Web: “on forums my brother and cousin read it [the negative
feedback]”, and Troels’ daughter “loves the project”, but campaigning is hard for his closest
family - “my wife is really tired of it… and she wants this project to be over soon…”. He even
got advice from“some of my colleagues [in the casino] who pledged” not to put so many
updates, because it feels like spam (we assume that the colleagues were trying to be helpful with
advice). Moreover, “an accountant manager… has been helping me a lot before with the
Creative Business Cup… so I had some sessions with him for free”. Even the Chinese factory is
“really nice, really helpful. I was really surprised that the Chinese factory would do all that
stuff. I thought they just thought about money and production… But they were really helpful”
(Appendices 4, 11, 13 and 15).
VIA
Marcus says that in terms of the financial goal of the KS campaign, “the funding is the least
interesting part, the other values are much bigger”. Therefore, the non-financial and more
important goals for Marcus are “the feedback… and also we wanted to be first-movers… on the
way how you take products to the market with the crowdfunding in between, or with the crowd in
between. You can actually make a better product”, and “in terms of getting these backers, you
get small ambassadors .. they are very important in this process, so when they get the product,
55
we’ve got some very good salespeople out there on the market”. So Marcus and Karina expected
concrete results from running the KS campaign - feedback and making a better product as a
result, backers acting as sales people, and the creators being first-movers on bringing the product
to the market through crowdfunding. They succeeded in the latter being featured in the morning
show ‘Go’Morgen Danmark’ that was about KS’ arrival in DK: “They were speaking about
Kickstarter… So I was in there speaking about my role and David, who just walked out here
[interview place, ed.], is kind of their gadget expert, so he was going to talk about Kickstarter
and then I was the example”. Another aspect of being ‘first-movers’ as described above is
freedom from being tied by the traditional approach of bringing a product to the market. This, in
fact, opens a lot of opportunities: “before we have tried a lot launching products kind of the
ordinary way, and this actually gives you another dimension… this is an amazing way for a
small company or for new idea to go another way, where it’s not the typical brands, and you
don’t have to be approved by the media, you don’t have to be in the right magazines and all that,
which takes years. But it’s actually a bit shorter way”. Marcus and Karina find joy in creating,
which is expressed in their wish to “make something that actually can change the light setting”.
However, this shorter way still requires hard work to make a working prototype“as usual we do
product design… So from the first sketches… it’s two years back now”. Not only that, but they
also didn’t receive any professional help regarding the campaign: “we did it all ourselves”, and
the campaigning itself is also hard work: “it takes a lot of effort - be on all the time and actually
answer … communicating, answering emails, or writing media”. Throughout this demanding
crowdfunding process Marcus and Karina support each other: “Karina and I, my partner in
crime, and partner in life”. Marcus is determined to see concrete results of the hard work and
launch the product anyway in case the KS campaign fails: “Then I will still launch the product.
Then I will go to the bank and get the money there. I will not crowdfund it for a second time”
(Appendices 5, 15).
BAKE ON
For Chris Kickstarter was never about the financial goal: “the Kickstarter was never to get a
profit to me”, and she admits that she is “not earning anything on it”. She focused on the non-
financial goals instead: “to get the production started”, her dream of having “a million people to
have my tea towels”, and “always wanted it to be about the community, about what they
[backers, ed.] wanted the towels to be”. Chris finds great joy in creating and is extremely
56
passionate about her project. Her desire to see concrete results is expressed in her strong
determination not to give up after her failed crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo, but quit her
job and launch a new campaign on KS, all for the sake of bringing her idea to life. As she puts it:
“If you are not passionate enough to do it, then you’re not passionate enough, you don’t deserve
the money… my husband and I live, breathe Bake On”. The fact that she chose to quit her job
and dedicate all her time to Bake On illustrates her desire for freedom of being an entrepreneur
and earning a living by doing what she loves. It took 3 years of hard work and “absolute
dedication to what you do” for Chris to have a working prototype of her tea towels. Chris and
her husband, Jesper, “paid for the video out of our own pocket, we’ve paid for different
production rounds to make sure that towels were nice and the printers were good etc … It’s been
my passion for 3 years”. Chris’ dedication to the project is not only expressed in her willingness
to invest her own money into the preparation of the campaign, but also in the fact that she “read
so much about crowdfunding”, and did all the other content for the campaign on her own. The
campaigning process itself is a time-consuming hard work - “campaigning … that’s all you do”.
She adds that “if you don’t work on your campaign, it doesn’t work”. Chris believes that “if I
have had my job still, I don’t know if would have been able to do it” and this is also the reason
why she is “kind of looking forward to the campaign being over, because I am absolutely
knocked up”. During the whole time of working on Bake On, her husband has been a great
support to her - not only did he register the campaign in his name (because of the formalities
Chris was unable to register it herself despite having a company and an account in DK), but he
also worked on the campaign with her and motivated her to work even harder: “whenever I want
to go to bed, it’s like 10:30 p.m. and I am tired and my husband is just: “No, you have to work,
you have to work”. And, I mean, he has a full-time job… and then he is gonna come home in the
evening and keep working on Bake On, I mean he cares about it as much as I do”. This makes
Chris feel guilty when she does anything else. Apart from Jesper’s support, Chris recalls one of
his friends being “very supportive this entire time”. Furthermore, Chris’ accountant is her
husband’s best friend, as she puts it: “keep it in the family”. And the reason why Chris works
this hard to make her dream come true is because she wants to earn a living by doing what she
loves. She wholehearted confesses that the backers on KS “have enabled me to do what I love”,
otherwise she “would not be able to do what I love” (Appendices 6, 10, 13, 15).
57
SON OF A TAILOR
Jess had strong faith in his idea, which he “had for a very long time, at least the last 10 to 15
years”. Reaching the funding goal on his KS campaign was very important for him, because he
“needed the money”, part of which he wanted to use for funding his website. He reveals that he
started spending all his time since January 2013 on the idea of creating the “perfect tailored T-
shirt”. He had no doubt that his campaign would go above the funding goal on KS, but in the
end, as he admits, the campaign broke even for him. However, rather than focusing solely on the
money, he outlines a number of non-financial benefits that he wanted to get from KS, for
example using the platform as a marketing tool “to create awareness”, “to get kind of a group
of customers, to … get me started for real and start doing the network effects”, and getting
media attention. Regarding the latter, Jess says that he was disappointed about not receiving
much media attention on his KS campaign. According to him, “funding is not your biggest
problem. That is marketing and branding”. He believes that failing a crowdfunding campaign
should not lead to giving up on the idea entirely, and that hard work is actually not wasted: “a lot
of Kickstarter projects, even if they fail, they are going to launch anyhow, because they have
everything pipelined”. Seeing that preparation is the key for success on KS, Jess was working
hard to make his idea become viable. He “spoke to a previous Danish Kickstarter founder, who
set it [campaign] up in UK, and I used all his contacts”, and setting up a company abroad did not
only cost money, but discovering what to do with taxes, shipping, import duties etc. took time as
well. In addition, he had to make a video, set the right prices, get media and social networks in
place before launch, “make everything look good in terms of the wording and the text and the
graphical material around it [campaign, ed.]” - “all that stuff took tons of time”. He notices that
“these kind of things tend to take much longer than you think. But we kind of had the set-up
ready”, because they launched “a beta web page, in April, 2013 [approximately 1 year before
the KS campaign, ed.]”. Jess’ desire to see concrete results was so high that he hired a PR
consultant to do PR in UK and “a student from CBS actually to do some of the Latin-speaking
countries”, whereas he himself “had some experience … doing PR in the Danish market”. Jess’
partner, Andreas, made the video for the KS, and the rest they did themselves. His need for
freedom and desire to earn a living by doing what he loves is also expressed in his determination
to quit his previous well-paid job in order to go through with his creative idea as an entrepreneur:
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“...before I became an entrepreneur, when I earned better money than I do today...”
(Appendices 7, 15).
SITPACK
Nikolaj and Jonas got the idea for the product 3 years ago, and they started working on it full-
time since January 2014 [9 months prior to the campaign launch, ed.]. The goals for
crowdfunding it on KS were both financial and non-financial. The financial part was about
reaching the funding goal, which Nikolaj admits to not even be the minimum money to start
production - “to start a production we need 750,000 DKK”, while their goal is only 450,000
DKK. The point of getting that money, as Nikolaj points out, is more because “it would actually
just prove our business”. Apart from testing the viability of their idea, they want to get people’s
awareness about the product and “get their ideas, and put into this product that we’re making”.
In other words, they wanted to improve the product itself based on backers’ feedback. The
creator clarifies: “I would say even though if you are an established business that can develop
your products internally and just pay off everything... The value that you get from having so
many users come up with ideas and involve themselves into the development, it’s worth way
more”. Reaching the funding goal would also enable them to “easier get a loan if we want that”,
but at the same time they admit that they “don’t know where this Kickstarter is going to take us”.
In addition to crowdfunding their idea, Nikolaj says that they attended Creative Business Cup
2014 and have two investors interested in the project. This demonstrates that the creative duo
wants to see concrete results of their efforts. Nikolaj and Jonas worked hard to make a working
prototype of the product: “But also we’ve been working on finalizing the product, making it
ready for production, and there’s a lot of work just to talk to people, and writing contracts and
stuff like that…” The journey from toilet paper rolls to a patent not only once again demonstrates
the desire of seeing concrete results by working hard and protecting the idea from being imitated,
but also in the wish of Nikolaj and Jonas to earn a living by doing what they love. They went to a
meeting in New York with the KS HQ, among others, 3-4 weeks prior to the platform’s launch in
DK. KS liked their product from day 1, “because some of our friends pitched it to some guy just
because of word-of-mouth…”. Moreover, KS even made them an offer 6 days before the
platform’s arrival in DK: “ if you [Sitpack, ed.] can launch your product the same day that we
launch our site in Denmark we will really gladly help you get the word out there… they
[Kickstarter representatives, ed.] offered us to put us in their newsletter and put us out there on
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many different platforms”. The duo was working hard to prepare the whole campaign in these 6
days. Apart from that, in the process of searching information about crowdfunding on KS,
Nikolaj declares that “it’s a lot of time, too much time. There’s so much information out there
and I am struggling with that because I tend to do exhaustive searches no matter what I’m
working with… we read thousands and thousands of Kickstarter guidelines and there are so
many ideas out there”. Moreover, apart from working on the campaign, the duo simultaneously
worked on the product as well. This is demonstrated by the fact that they changed the product
name from ‘Mono Chair’ to ‘Rest’ and then to ‘Sitpack’, after collaboration with a digital agency
to create a new look for their campaign. During this turbulent time, friends’ support meant a lot
in terms of making their dream come true and finalizing the campaign on time: “one of our
friends is a professional photographer, a video photographer … So we shot the video on Sunday,
and then Monday we went to another one of our friends, who is a really good editor … and the
job was finished Monday night at 1 o’clock or 1 hour after Kickstarter launched” (Appendices 8,
15).
DISCUSSION PART I
The purpose of this chapter was to discover creators’ characteristics, certain patterns and
deviations from those. We established that these characteristics are fundamental for recognition
of opportunities, accommodating the emergence of new ideas, and further exploitation of their
value.
In Chapter 3 we outlined that entrepreneurial alertness revolves around the identification of a
pain to be resolved, and the ability to turn this recognition into an exact and quantified account
of what the pain is about. Being able to do that is the art of problem formulation, which leads to a
solution to the need (Heebøll 2008). In the context of KS, as inspired by Perry Chen, we instead
differentiate between creators who just want to start production of their idea, and creators who
want to make a profit out of it and are entrepreneurs. In terms of ‘entrepreneurial alertness’, all 8
creators saw an opportunity for their idea, and were all able to clearly formulate what they
wanted to create and which problem they would solve. 3 out of 8 creators identified and set to
solve other people’s pain, and 5 out of 8 creators identified their own ‘pain’ that they wanted to
resolve.
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In terms of the variables ‘wide social network’, ‘prior knowledge of markets and consumer
needs’, ‘own abilities’ and ‘partners’, we can conclude that in 7 out of 8 cases, each creator or
the team of creators has some business or educational skills, and/or experience that has to do
with business development. Furthermore, 7 out of 8 cases (apart from Troels) have experience
managing their own business prior to the KS. Only one creator, Troels, does not have a business
background and started his idea from scratch. What is common for all the creators is that they all
knew someone in their network, who was able to help them in one way or another with
materializing the idea. Moreover, all of the creators find joy in creating due to the mere fact that
they work hard on their creative idea on their own accord 7 out of 8 creators have a backup plan
to realize their idea in case they fail to reach their funding goal. This tells us about the creators’
motivation, and their commitment to the idea. Troels does not have a backup plan and expresses
the intention to slow things down in case the funding goal would not be reached. This might be
because he demonstrates uncertainty about the viability of his idea, and associates the possibility
of not reaching his funding goal with not enough people liking his idea. Moreover, we can see
that creators of 3 projects (Thermodo, Me-Mover and Wallz) were involved in entrepreneurial
activities prior to their KS campaigns.
In Chapter 3 we presented a number of motivations for entrepreneurs, and stated that the non-
financial goals prevail (McFadzean et al. 2005). We expected to discover certain similarities in
the behaviour of creators and entrepreneurs. Remarkably, we discovered that all four motivations
can be attributed to the 8 creators. What we uncovered is that ‘an intense need for freedom’
varies in its meaning depending on each case. Freedom, according to the 8 creators, is expressed
as independence from investors and middlemen, liberation from the traditional approach of
bringing a product to the market, freedom to control the design and the product, and freedom in
being an entrepreneur. In terms of financial and non-financial goals for the KS campaigns, we
discovered that 1 case (VIA 3-in-1) focused only on non-financial goals, while the other 7 had
both financial and non-financial goals. It was interesting to learn that none of the creators
considered money as their most important objective, but instead clearly expressed such goals as
finding the early adopters (to get started and to start doing network effects), getting customer
feedback (to make a better product), testing the viability of the idea, marketing (create
awareness, spread the word), building a customer base, building a community, and/or being a
‘first-mover’ in this new way of bringing a product to the market (crowdfunding). Therefore, we
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conclude that overall the non-financial goals prevail. This also makes it even more interesting to
investigate in detail the 8 campaigns’ pre-planning and execution phases, because there we
expect to be able to conclude whether the 8 creators also follow the behaviour of startups.
Another element of creators’ characteristics is their readiness and ability to work hard - in all 8
cases the creators described the process of developing their product and their KS campaign as
hard work. Furthermore, they all emphasized the importance of being well-prepared for the
campaign. We discovered that this preparation is project specific for each case. In 6 out of 8
cases the family and friends acted as important moral support to the creators, whereas we have
no data on this for the other 2 cases (PLUK and Son of a Tailor). Furthermore, in 1 case (Wallz)
such support from the family and friends was also mixed with Troels’ wife having a hard time
during the campaign. 1 case (Sitpack) chose to change its product name during the campaign,
which is unusual, as, f.ex. the video still featured the old name.
Based on the analysis we can conclude that all 8 creators possess different entrepreneurial
characteristics. Troels stands out as a deviant case, because he is the only one who lacks business
background, experience in managing own business, and he has the intention to slow things down
if his project fails to get funded. Therefore, it will be interesting to observe Troels’ deviant
behaviour in the next two parts of the analysis - ‘Pre-planning’ and ‘Execution’. Based on the
identified deviant case, we can conclude that there are four obligatory entrepreneurial
characteristics in order to bring a creative idea on KS, and those are entrepreneurial alertness,
wide social network, ability to work hard, and finding joy in creating. This answers our first sub-
question. Furthermore, whether these creators can truly evolve into entrepreneurs based on these
characteristics can only be determined in the ‘After’ phase of their KS campaign, where they can
choose to continue working with their creative idea in a startup context (if they were not already
a startup before the KS).
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CHAPTER 7 Analysis II
Campaign process
After uncovering general insights about crowdfunding on KS and entrepreneurial characteristics
of 8 project creators, we direct our attention to what happens with their creative ideas on KS. We
investigate the campaign process in terms of two phases - ‘Pre-planning’ (‘Idea birth’ until
‘Kickstarter campaign goes live’), characterized by uncertainty, and ‘Execution’ (‘Kickstarter
campaign goes live’ until ‘End of campaign period’), which incorporates learning. What happens
after ‘End of campaign period’ is not investigated in this paper, but is included in Figure 1 below
to illustrate the whole campaign process.
Figure 1: Campaign process. Source: own creation.
PHASE 1: Pre-planning
In Chapter 3 it was established that pre-planning is crucial for the entire campaign (Spencer and
Giles 2001) and consists of everything that a creator accomplishes in terms of work on his
creative idea before he hits the ‘go’ button on KS. This phase is individual and among other
things depends on the creator’s characteristics (Chapter 6). Furthermore, in Literature Review we
found that Mollick (2014) emphasized the need for creators to signalize preparedness for
campaigning, but it must be taken into account that creators operate in the context of extreme
uncertainty not knowing who their customers are, nor how their final product will look like. This
uncertainty affects the whole ‘Pre-planning’ phase and is released in the moment the creator
launches the campaign, when the uncertainty is replaced with learning about where the
borderline is (Verganti 2009), even if the 100% funding goal is not reached. We have identified
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three major pillars that signal preparedness of the creators: ‘product development’, ‘value
propositions’ and ‘campaign launch preparation’, which will be investigated in order to answer
the second sub-question: ‘What goes into the pre-planning of a good campaign?’ Moreover,
these three pillars incorporate the path of innovation, consisting of an idea, invention, and
commercialization of the invention (Ries 2011; Brem 2008). It must be mentioned that each
creator has incurred various costs in relation to their campaign. These costs are case-dependent
and will not be a part of the analysis.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
We investigate how the 8 project creators turn their ideas into minimum viable products (MVPs)
destined to be presented to potential customers and be modified according to the feedback
accumulated during the ‘Execution’ phase of the KS campaign (Ries 2011). We will now explore
how the creators embrace product development by investigating their market research and
potential customers considerations; design and prototype phases; and their considerations
regarding protection of the product. In respect to the latter, it must be noted that all 8 cases obtain
a design registration, which happens automatically when a new product is put on the Web.
THERMODO
Michael searched for existing solutions on the market and came to the conclusion that “there
were some clunky solutions out on the market, but nothing that had the simplicity that we
wanted…. we kind of needed something that was simpler, simple way of communicating device”,
so he decided to build a thermometer and a development platform. In terms of considerations
regarding who their customers would be, Michael says: “I think we all thought it was kind of like
a fun little thing that you had with you and you could take the temperature and that be it”.
Robocat has built quite a few weather apps over the years, and initially Michael did not expect
there would be a large market for ‘Thermodo’ and worried that “people might be a little tired of
listening to Robocat and weather in the same sentence”. Michael adds that “we had some
people, some very loyal fans that follow what we do”, so when the Robocat team sent emails to
them asking for their support: “we build weather apps. And now we want to build weather
hardware - you want to support us?”, this message was retweeted and spread on social media,
which indicates some initial interest in the idea. Nevertheless, the team’s fears and anxieties
about people not liking the product were groundless - the funding goal was reached within 7
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hours. Thermodo’s first prototype was solved with parts that Marcus (electrical engineer) had at
home. Michael points out that it wasn’t very pretty, but it worked. And then Michael himself
“got to design some hardware”. Danish Engineers helped with the design in CAD, a 3D model.
Then they went to small factory in Høje Taastrup, ‘Damvig Develop’, “and they do rapid
prototyping”. They got some 3D prints out and painted them. After that they did a number of
prototypes until they got the final one that they were happy with. Furthermore, Michael
confesses that they designed the product around the knowledge about “the sweet spot, where
people really want to invest - $25-30, around that”, so that they wouldn’t have to ask people for
a lot of money. Michael mentions their engineering partners and overseas production in relation
to the produced prototype: “ we’ve constantly been working with our partners, both in Denmark
and in China, in the game of ‘let’s iterate hardware over long distances’... We worked for
months and months of overcoming a lot of obstacles... a lot of back and forth... the iterative
development hardware is very very tricky. You change one thing, wait a few weeks for shipment
of new samples, which might then have other things that were wrong with it...”. The final
prototype was tricky to complete and took a long time, and ‘Thermodo’ got a patent for the
product38. Michael concludes that the open process [of crowdfunding on KS, ed.] is viable for
copycats, it’s easy for someone who likes the idea to integrate it in an existing product,
especially bigger companies (Appendices 1, 15).
PLUK
‘Pluk’ is the only product that Nicolas and Kåre produce and sell themselves, and because Kåre
had already been selling the metal version for 2 years, they knew that“a lot of people were
interested in it and they wanted to produce it so we decided to do it ourselves”. In the KS video,
Nicolas explains that the metal version “got 25.000 likes on fancy.com, but people thought that it
was too expensive and they wanted it in more colours. So now we want to give them just that”.
This shows that they performed market research on the product. In general, Nicolas thinks that
“you don’t need that much money to start up a product. You just need a little bit of know-how
and then you need to know some people that can actually help you do this”. They assumed the
plastic version would sell because it would be the cheaper version of the same product: “more
affordable, and less expensive to ship”. Nicolas is aware of the fact that KS customers are
38 Information on the patent: “Electrodynamic transducer with a slim form factor”, Denmark, patent application number 20090141925,
publication date June 4, 2009 (Source: http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090141925 ).
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different from average customers: “the Kickstarter customer is very gadget-oriented”, and
“Kickstarter demographic is first-movers”, and he was “going after KS customers”. He
considered the most successful KS products being either “new idea, or better versions of existing
concepts”, which is why he really believed people on KS would love ‘Pluk’: “It’s new, you
haven’t seen it before, and it’s functional… because there are a lot of beautiful things on
Kickstarter, that don’t do very well simply because they don’t have a function. So it had to do
something that you could actually use for something specific, not just be something…”.
Therefore Nicolas says that “we’ve been considering other products as well that I feel don’t fit
as well [as ‘PLUK’, ed.] to Kickstarter”. The reason for this is his belief in a balance between art
and functionality in a KS product: “If the idea becomes too artsy, and not practical enough, I
think it falls off a little bit... And I think this is exactly where it needed to be for a product on
Kickstarter”. Regarding protecting the product, Nicolas thinks that it doesn’t make sense for
them apply for a patent, because it is expensive, and the product is still easy to imitate despite the
patent, and it costs too much to legally pursue eventual imitators. If Pluk gets copied, they would
move on, or move their segment, or sell their version (Appendices 2, 15).
ME-MOVER
According to Jens, the ‘Me-Mover’ creator found existing transportation solutions on the market
being too inefficient, time-consuming or not fun. Later on, they also found that there are similar
products around the world that they weren’t even aware of - Jens was “looking around the Web
about our product, and someone told that it’s been in China for 10 years now… But we didn’t
know anything about that and we couldn’t find any backup for this argument. But there are some
similar things around the world that you don’t even know, that’s also very interesting to find
out”. Regarding the KS campaign, they “weren’t completely sure at the beginning if we’re
gonna even get the 100,000 USD, that was set our goal”. In terms of potential customers, the
‘Me-Mover’ team wanted to find the first customers “who really believe in this product”, and
build the community on KS. Jens points out that it is difficult to sell a such an expensive physical
product that you don’t have stocked and people have to wait for it for quite some time to receive.
Even though they knew there were people interested in ‘Me-Mover’,“we weren’t particularly
sure where they are and who they are, so this was like a testing tool. And the really good thing
about this is that you can reach everyone around the world”. Jens adds that before KS: “we
didn’t have any orders. I think we had an order of 30, which was I think Jonas’ friends and their
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friends and stuff like that”. These initial prototype sales indicate that there was interest in the
product. The creator completed the first prototype by himself, and Jens adds that “It’s looking
really funny, it’s full of metal. I don’t know exactly how long it took but we have it in the office”.
It was a long process until the final version of the product. They had filed a patent a year or two
before KS and got the patent during the campaign39, and they had a copywriter at the LA-based
PR agency that helped them during the campaign (Appendices 3, 15).
WALLZ
When Troels worked on the prototype cubes, he: “started to work with shapes, first of all, started
with...hexagon shapes and circles and triangles. And of course I finally found out that squares
are like the easiest one, it works just like pixel”. He did everything from scratch on his own -
tested different shapes, tested the materials, tested colours, and the most difficult part was
finding the right adhesive - he tested 20 different types before he found the right one. It took him
about a year from idea to prototype. He worked with a factory in China and they did a lot of
testing back and forth until they sent a test with the final cubes and then he placed an order,
mainly for the Combi Boxes. This decision was a direct result of market research: “both kids and
adults like it, but mostly kids - the test subjects I’ve been running with... so I thought let's keep
main focus on the children and order a lot of boxes for those”. Moreover, he “tested the Combi
Boxes in 10 different kindergartens just to see how it worked for kids, with their imagination and
creativity, the playground. They were really positive about it”. Despite the market research,
Troels was still unsure “if people like it”. He focused on the kids with the first order to China,
but “on Kickstarter it’s probably mainly for focus on the adults customers. It’s like 50-50, it’s
good for both parts”. Apart from wall decoration, he considered another use of his product: “the
designs are pinned on the walls, so it works also as an info board because of the thickness and
the material”. Making new designs is easy for him - he draws in hand in a computer program or
just plots on a picture and it changes the picture into pixels. Troels only protected the brand’s
name with trademark in the EU for 10 years, because “you can’t patent a square”. If someone
just changes a millimeter, then it’s a different product already. Troels is not worried about
copycats - in case the product is a huge success, then even if someone copies it, he says “at least
people know that Wallz was like the first, was the original idea” (Appendices 4, 15).
39 (1) Patent number: 8636293, “Human powered commuter vehicle”, filed: May 28, 2010, issued: January 28, 2014. (2) Patent number:
D695649, “Foldable bicycle”, filed: May 2, 2012, issued: December 17, 2013 (Source: https://patents.justia.com/assignee/me-mover-aps).
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VIA
Marcus and Karina approached this product “as usual… do product design”, because they have
previous experience selling their existing products that include lamps. Therefore they did not
have to perform an extensive market research, however they did investigate the history of light
and lamps in order to design their product to include these three shapes that repeat again and
again in lamp history, while also basing the ‘VIA’ lamp on a previous lamp design. In terms of
potential customers, they aim at a segment age 35 and up “due to the fact that it’s more a living
product, it’s not a personal accessory”. Marcus acknowledges that the ‘VIA’ lamp “is expensive
and it’s not the typical gadget”. They also considered the customer needs, as Marcus explains -
time is changing, the customers are changing, and they might need another kind of light setting:
“you got that plus that you can actually adapt the product to your need”. He points out some
other benefits of the new product - the fact that the lamp can change its shape prevents customers
from getting bored with it, and it’s also easy to clean. It took him around 2 years from the first
sketches to the actual product (Appendices 5, 15).
BAKE ON
In terms of market research, Chris has firsthand experience by running an IndieGoGo campaign,
which only got a third of the funding. It took Chris 3 years to get from an idea to a finished
product, and she points out it was a long and expensive process. Chris is very thorough in her
design process and has very specific design rules for all the towels: “When I designed the first
towel, I created very specific design rules that must be respected no matter what. The spacing is
therefore exactly the same between each ingredient within a group and between the largest
ingredient(s) and the frame”40. The product is screen printed: “You start by making a frame, so
you print one colour at a time. So I have two for each towel …I have two screens and 15 designs,
and can’t order less than 50 towels, because it’s too expensive for them to make it”. The first
prototypes were printed in New Zealand, but she chose to print the future towels in the UK and
not in China “because I value the quality and the working conditions of the people”. Moreover,
she “actually shot large” with her production considerations in order to be well prepared on KS
“if something happens”: “I counted 3 months in printing, and it doesn’t take 3 months. It takes 6
weeks”. Chris expresses notes of uncertainty present prior to the KS, when she “tried to
40 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/xanares/bake-on-tea-towels/posts/1080968
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approach people before with the tea towels. I tried to approach, I don’t know, House Doctor and
all kinds of places, and most of the time they wouldn’t even answer. And so you are gonna feel
crappy about your project”. Before KS, Chris was not selling the product, so she did not know
who her customer is. In terms of protecting her product, Chris is sure that someday people will
just copy ‘Bake On’ idea, produce it much cheaper and sell it much cheaper. She says she can
protect the design but she can’t protect the idea. She has accepted the fact that there will be
people who will copy her idea and produce it in China, India or Bangladesh, “and there is
nothing I can do about it” (Appendices 6, 15).
SON OF A TAILOR
Jess knew that T-shirts were traditionally available to customers only in the standard 5 sizes. He
could not find a more customized solution that would fit his personal body measurements, and he
“did a few market tests so I could see that it was not only my problem”. He decided that there
should be a market for this kind of product because: “There is a mega trend going on - I mean
modern men are becoming more and more vain. They get all sorts of tattoos, they go to gym all
the time, so my feeling was - for sure, they would like to have their T-shirts tailored as well”.
Moreover, Jess notes that for a KS product “novelty is important, that your product is also
novel”. He had the idea for ‘Son of a Tailor’ for 10-15 years, but started spending all his time on
the ‘Son of a Tailor’ T-shirt concept in January, 2013, and then in April they launched a beta
web page. This gave him the first traction in Denmark: ”I think at that time 90% of my customers
were from Denmark”. In the KS video he points out: “‘Son of a Tailor’ has successfully been
tested on our small home market in Denmark. Our customer feedback makes us humble and
proud and ready to take on a new endeavour and offer our T-shirts to an international audience”
(Appendix 14). He explained his customer archetype in details, as it is based on the demand he
discovered prior to the KS campaign. He discovered several groups of customers. The first one
he mentions is: “So it’s a guy in the 30-ies, he is having a well-paid job, and he is typically
within business or IT. He is normally into kind of style, lifestyle etc. And knows a lot about
brands and also fashion brands, but he is not deep into fashion. I would say like, he normally
doesn’t read fashion blogs etc., but, for instance, that would be the kind of guy that likes
expensive watches etc”. The second group he found is: “we have a large group of older men,
also up in the 50-ies as well, who are probably used to wearing tailored wear, who also have the
same problem with T-shirts. They have a bit of different need - they don’t like any brand, but on
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the other hand they are also very insensitive to price, and they will pay whatever… Normally, it’s
probably the kind of guy, who has a lot of money, and now just retiring, and it is easier for him
to order T-shirts this way”. The third group of customers consists of: “people, who are actually
deep into fashion, who like it from a fashion curiosity standpoint”. The fourth group embodies
“also some people within the fitness segment etc”. And lastly, there is a group of people who
“are oddly sized, basically, who are very skinny, very tall. But actually not people with large
sizes… That doesn’t seem to be the case… Some of our customers are extremely skinny, some -
extremely tall… It seems to be more of a problem”. Despite having paying customers already, he
decided to make a campaign on KS because: “I felt it was a good fit between the product and the
platform… I had to get kind of a group of customers, to kind of get me started for real and start
doing the network effects”. He had full confidence that his product would do well on KS and
would attract a lot of backers: “I kind of always thought that I would go above the goal”. Jess
explains that the idea for his product is not very advanced, and therefore: “There is not a lot I
can do to protect it … It has never really been a concern. When you speak to people, who have
founded a couple of startups, they only say it’s better to be open, because from being open you
get so much input, which improves your whole concept, than being close, because then you can’t
speak to anyone, and then you are just yourself, and then you never kind of iterate and improve
your product”. The brand name, however, is a registered trademark (Appendices 7, 15).
SITPACK
Nikolaj and Jonas searched for alternatives for a folding chair and discovered that “most
common solution today is weird foldable camping chairs or inflatable chair of some kind, and
what’s really bad about them is that they put you very low, very near to the ground, so you
cannot see anything… it’s more or less impossible to fold it [alternative chair, ed.] to its original
state”. They thought about what they carry around all the time with them at concerts, and
thought of something to drink, because that has the size, shape, and weight of what people accept
to carry around in their (big) pockets, small bags or rucksacks. So the idea for the design was to
put a chair into a can or a bottle, so that it resembles that shape and size. Jonas came up with the
idea, and they have been working on it for 3 years but started working full time on it from
January until October 2014, when the campaign went live. Another small company (2 guys) from
Copenhagen, helped them for about 6 months and made the first prototype for them, which was
the one before the 3D print. So they made the technical drawings, which made the 3D print
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prototypes possible. The creator points out that the benefit of 3D printing prototypes is that they
can rapidly make new ones, and the final product will be 3D injection molded. Afterwards they
started collaborating with a small company, which was “helping others with building their
prototypes”, proceeding into a new collaboration with “some people there [at SDU - University
of South Denmark, Technical Faculty, ed.] that are mainly researching in 3D printing”. This
collaboration also resulted in the first patent for the product, which Nikolaj points out was “such
a hard work”. There are 2 patents attached to the final version, and 1 design registration. They
wrote the patent themselves before the KS campaign41. It is aimed at the internal geometries of
the product, and it took Jonas about a month of hard work of about 10-15 hours a day. Their third
partner, Theo, a student from DTU, helps to create “all our technical drawings and in all matters
developing the product as it is right now. A lot of the internal components that I cannot show you
here are really really complex. And he’s been working… perfecting them”.
In terms of their potential customer group, Nikolaj hopes that his product can be used anywhere,
but he realizes that “you cannot create a product that’s supposed to hit everywhere and
everyone. So for me it’s really hard just to narrow it down on a target group”. During the
campaign Nikolaj admits that: “What we’re doing is, we made one product and we are creating
different stories to different market segments and different user segments. And what we’re
aiming at right now is primarily golfing, golf tournaments, golfers. Because it’s a super obvious
market, it’s a rich sport, and it has so many users, so many players, so many tournaments. And
we’ve gotten a lot of interest from different golfers and golf industries”. Apart from golfers,
Nikolaj also considers: “hunting, fishing, all that stuff… Also, concerts, which is where we
started, where the idea came from”. He also points out his desire from the beginning to partner
up with breweries “because it’s right down their alley to brand this product as a beer or a soda
for that matter”. But he is also aware that it is very difficult to get into that business (Appendices
8, 15).
VALUE PROPOSITIONS
As stated earlier, the focus of ‘Product development’ was to create a MVP that would be
presented to potential customers. The way in which the creators present these MVPs is in the
41
Patent information: “Transportabel siddeanordning”, Denmark 2057493, filed February 13, 2013 (Source:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikolajbak).
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form of KS projects that are considered to be exclusive online proposals - a novel way to put
forward a vision to an audience (Verganti 2009). The KS video is the heart of a creator’s
proposal, that carries the creator’s message. The video must attract backers’ attention and be
convincing with the help of a clear value proposition in terms of promoting a functional benefit
(unique selling proposition, i.e. USP), and/or a non-functional benefit (emotional selling
proposition i.e. ESP) (Pelsmacker et al. 2010). Due to the video’s central role in a KS campaign,
we will examine the value propositions in the 8 videos in a section of its own. We will
investigate whether the 8 videos contain USP or/and ESP and also evaluate how convincing the
messages are in the videos through the prism of ‘ethos’, ‘logos’, and ‘pathos’ (Higgins and
Walker 2012). We expect creators to establish their credibility, in the form of reputation, skills,
and/or work experience, as well as to personally show themselves in the videos (‘ethos’). We
expect to find that the video narrators appeal to the logic of the potential backers by highlighting
the problems that the product solves and its functionality features (‘logos’). Lastly, we expect the
video’s message to focus on invoking backers’ emotions (‘pathos’).
THERMODO
Michael explains that they “treated the campaign as any other digital product we’ve built in the
past” and “knew that the video was key”. Michael wrote the text for the video and narrated it
himself, because “it was more personal that way”. They also shot the video themselves because
“we had our own equipment … we made video before, so it was natural”. He outlines the
importance of making sure that “the video that you present carries the whole message”, because
the video is not only being shown on KS, but “it can be taken out of context, and you need to
make sure that it can stand on its own”. In regard to the content of the video, Michael reflects on
the fact that “crowdfunding isn’t just about the destination, but also about the journey, and when
you launch a campaign you’ve already made a lot of choices, you’ve already had your origin
story. Show your backers that journey in your video”.
The video starts with Michael presenting the team: “Hi. We are ‘Robocat’ - a small development
team from Denmark”, some of their previous products, and ‘Robocat’s’ “fondness for weather
apps”. In this way, creator’s credibility is being established in terms of skills (“love making
digital products”), work experience (“we’ve made a few [digital products, ed.] over the years”),
and reputation (“to this day we’ve had more than 2 mio. downloads, and hundreds of thousands
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of happy users around the globe using it [Thermo app., ed.] every day”). The narrator then tells
about the birth of the idea for ‘Thermodo’, and the prototyping process with “months of
iterations” until the working prototype. All of the described elements contribute to establishing
credibility of the team’s skills, experience and reputation, therefore the ‘ethos’ element is clearly
visible (consists of 15 lines of text). Next, the narrator promotes ‘Thermodo’s functional benefit:
“With this little electrical thermometer you can now record accurate temperature readings from
the palm of your hand”. Technical specificities of the product and instructions for use are further
described. Colour and material options are also presented to the viewers: “We are building
Thermodo in both black and white along with a premium anodized aluminium edition - just like
the iPhone”. Narrator points out that they are building a custom iOS app to ‘Thermodo’. It can
be concluded that the ‘logos’ is clearly visible in the message (consists of 13 lines of text).
Michael addresses the viewers directly: “we need your help”, and explains that “building
hardware is costly”, they have working prototypes of ‘Thermodo’ ready, but they need the funds
“to start producing your new thermometers”. This call for help plays on viewers’ emotions and
sympathy, which signals the use of ‘pathos’ in the message (consists of 4 lines of text)
(Appendices 1 and 14).
PLUK
Kåre’s brother is a filmmaker and helped with making the video. Nicolas and Kåre “wrote the
text for it [video, ed.], we knew what we wanted to show”. The main focus of the video is
“showcasing three different versions… telling the story for each product… tell the basic story”.
In order to avoid misunderstandings about the purpose of the product, they also explain the
functionality of the product, because “a lot of people see it and think it’s a lamp”. The video
starts with Nicolas presenting himself, his company, and the product: “Hi Kickstarters. My name
is Nicolas, and we at FACO have designed a fruit basket that turned out to be so much more”.
This establishes the credibility of the creator, therefore the message only briefly focuses on
‘ethos’ (consists of 1 line of text). Next, Nicolas talks about the story of the product and
mentions a web-page (fancy.com), where users wanted a cheaper version of the metal basket
with more colour options. An emotional benefit is clearly presented by pointing to exact users:
“now we want to give them [users on fancy.com, ed.] just that”. After presenting the metal
version, Nicolas introduces the two new versions of the metal basket - wood and plastic. The
functional benefit of the product is also clearly identified: “PLUK’ is a storage device… can
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hold almost anything that it’s size will allow. The elastic strings make it easy to access and
deposit items into and out of ‘PLUK” (consists of 13 lines of text). The ‘pathos’ of the message
is clear at the end of the video: “Your pledge will make it possible for us to produce this space-
saving design on a large scale. Thank you for taking the time to watch our Kickstarter”.The
narrator also plays on the emotions of the viewers by promising “whichever version of ‘PLUK’
you find most appealing - we are sure that you’ll love it” (consists of 4 lines of text) (Appendices
2 and 14).
ME-MOVER
The ‘Me-Mover’ team made the video themselves. The video starts with the creator, Jonas,
presenting himself: “Hi Kickstarters. I am Jonas Eliasson, the innovator of ‘Me-Mover”, which
is aimed to briefly establish credibility. Later on in the video, ethos is again emphasized in terms
of their skills, experience and hard work: “For 5 years the team and I have been working very
very hard to perfect the ‘Me-Mover’ - the design, the driving feel, the technology behind. We
have set up production, the tooling is ready, we’ve done the test run. Everything awaits for us to
place the first production order” (consists of 4 lines of text). The ‘logos’ of the message is
emphasized in terms of the functionality of the product, which appeals to the logic of the
viewers: “The ‘Me-Mover’ is a cross-over, a transporter and efficient fitness tool - a completely
new type of vehicle”. The functional benefit is clearly identified: “We use it for leisure, for
playing around, commuting to work, but most of all, it’s a fantastic way to get around, to move in
the city”. An emotional benefit is also suggested to the viewers: “Anyone can learn riding it in
10 minutes” (consists of 5 lines of text). Then Jonas emotionally involves the viewers by sharing
the ‘vision’ of the company: “our dream is to enable Scandinavian lifestyle for everyone by
making moving convenient and fit anywhere. That is what ‘Me-Mover’ is all about”. The pathos
of the message continues with “That’s where you come in. We need you as a supporter, a backer
or a customer to deliver the Me-Movers to the world and to make a dream come true” (consists
of 3 lines of text) (Appendices 3 and 14).
WALLZ
Troels and his brother made the KS video themselves. The creator “just wanted to keep it down
to the basic, just explain the concept and both with the kids and with the adults” (Appendix 4).
The video starts with Troels presenting himself: “Hi guys. My name is Troels, I am from
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Copenhagen, Denmark, and I am the founder of ‘Wallz”. The narrator builds on credibility even
more in the latter part of the video by mentioning his work with the factory and programmers:
“So, guys, the factory that helped me make these cubes are ready for a big-scale production. And
I found some programmers, who would like to make an online design central for everyone to
use” (consists of 3 lines of text). In terms of ‘logos’ of the message, Troels immediately
introduces the functional benefit of the product: “Wallz’ is best described as wall art made by
putting wall cubes together in a form of puzzle”. He describes the technical specificities of the
cubes and their use in the video. The problems that this particular product solves are also
underlined: “Because the ‘Wallz’ cubes are reusable, it’s very easy to move or change your
designs if you, for instance, at some point want to redesign your art”. Furthermore, “The back of
the cube is covered with a special adhesive that sticks on almost any wall type, is reusable and
does not damage the wall”. Emotional benefit is pointed out for a specific group of users:
“Wallz’ is also great for kids and their rooms, so I made 2 kinds of boxes, which I call ‘Combi 1’
and ‘Combi 2’ with already mixed colours and a handful of designs for usage or just as an
inspiration. With their imagination and creativity, kids can spend hours of fun with Wallz. And of
course, they end up with great selfmade art on the wall” (consists of 13 lines of text). In terms of
‘pathos’, the video finishes with Troels asking for the viewers’ help and support: “But,
unfortunately, none of them [the factory and the programmers, ed.] want to do it for free. So, all I
need now is your help and your support. Thank you very much for watching.” (Appendices 4 and
14).
VIA
Marcus and Karina did the video themselves and wanted to “tell about the product, and then try
to really get down to the ‘VIA’ story … tried to kind of focus on the main story”. Both say hello
to the viewers, but they do not talk about who they are and their company, and do not establish
credibility of their message. ‘Logos’ is strongly emphasized in the video. Marcus explains the
functional benefit of the product: “The idea for the ‘VIA’ concept was to combine 3 different
light settings in one lamp. By doing that you also get 3 distinctive shapes: the ‘V’, the ‘I’, and the
‘A’”. Marcus also points out to the viewers the option to choose and change between the
settings: “Whether it’s a pendant lamp or the table lamp”(consists of 8 lines). In terms of
‘pathos’, the video concludes with Marcus and Karina saying: “Thank you for checking out the
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‘VIA’ lamp. Now we need your help and support to realize the project. So, please, spread the
word, and buy our lamp. Thank you very much.” (consists of 2 lines) (Appendices 5 and 14).
BAKE ON
Chris decided to pay for the video, because she had “no idea how to do it” and thought that “it’s
better to pay for something and get it well done, especially something as important as the video.”
She used it first on Indiegogo and then reused it for the KS. The video starts with establishing
credibility of the creator: “Hi, I am Chris, and I am the creator of ‘Bake On’. While studying
graphics in London, I picked an assignment for which I had to redesign a recipe” (2 lines of
text). In terms of ‘logos’, Chris clearly states the problem that her product (the tea towel) solves:
“Usually I’d use recipes from a website, so I either would have to bring my laptop to the kitchen
and risk getting it dirty or print the recipe out. And that is if there’s ink in the printer”. The
functional benefit of the tea towel is that it makes the baking process easier: “having all the
ingredients prepped and ready, makes the process way easier… It tells you what you need, how
much, and when you need it”, the product features are outlined: “100% cotton and screen
printed in the UK with quality inks, so the colours will hold for many washes”. She also
underlines an emotional benefit for a specific group of users - the bakers: “I wanted my tea towel
to actually help the baker, not just list the ingredients and steps… The towels are great for every
baker, whatever their age or experience” (12 lines of text). The video ends with an emotional
appeal to the viewers’ sympathy, as Chris says: “Sadly, I can’t afford to launch the production
on my own, and that’s where you come in. I’ve been working on Bake On for almost 3 years now,
and I am really passionate about this project. So I need your help to move it forward. If you like
my idea, please share this video with your friends and family. Spread the word, and if you can,
please consider donating - every cent helps. Thank you so very much for your help and support.”
(5 lines of text) (Appendix 6 and 14).
SON OF A TAILOR
Jess’ partner and friends made the video, but for a price. The creator took extra care with the
video: “because I was selling a fashion product, the video should also look good”. Moreover, he
thought about storytelling in the video, and Andreas being a professional in making videos
helped a lot. They wanted “to tell that this product is about care and craftsmanship … we felt for
a fashion product, a brand that we wanted to establish … me just sitting here in the kitchen
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talking about T-shirts wouldn’t be the right thing” (Appendix 7). The video starts with an
emotional appeal to the viewers, explaining what the product really is about by evoking positive
emotions: “There is something special about the extreme simplicity of a plain well-fitted good
quality T-shirt” and “at ‘Son of a Tailor’ the T-shirt is our one passion”. The pathos of the
message is also indicated at the end of the video: “To take us on this journey, we need your help
to dedicate a full team of tailors and pattern makers. Let us together change how T-shirts are
made and worn. Let us honor the simple T-shirt. Let us put real care, craftsmanship and quality
into one of the most mass-produced items of the world. And let us together create a new
beginning for an old art - the perfect tailored T-shirt. Thank you for sharing our passion.” (18
lines of text). In terms of functionality of the product, both a functional benefit “the perfect
tailored T-shirt” and an emotional benefit “available to everyone across the world” are
emphasized. The USP explains the way the product solves customers’ problem with sizes: “We
simply ask you to type in your measurements and we’ll make a T-shirt that fits you perfectly… At
‘Son of a Tailor’, we hand tailor T-shirts for each individual customer. There are no small,
medium or large sizes.” Furthermore, the narrator makes an ESP by personally addressing a
specific user group: “an international audience of people, who care as much about the T-shirt,
as we do” (7 lines of text). The video establishes credibility of the creator in the middle part of
the message: “At the heart of ‘Son of a Tailor’ are Sten Martin and Jess Fleischer. Sten Martin
is one of the few tailors left in Copenhagen with decades of experience in bespoke tailoring, and
he is one of only a few male bespoke tailors, who is also passionate about creating T-shirts. Jess
is founder of the initiative. Needless to say - he is the T-shirt nerd. ‘Son of a Tailor’ has
successfully been tested on our small home market in Denmark” (5 lines of text) (Appendices 7,
14).
SITPACK
The creators shot the video twice, “Friday we shoot our first video for the campaign, and
Saturday we agree that it was crap - we couldn’t use it for anything. Sunday we shot the next
one”. Furthermore, they did not shoot the video themselves - they had help for free from one of
their friends who is a professional photographer, and another who is a really good editor: ”he
edits videos for a lot of big companies”. The message does not explain who the creator is, nor his
reputation, which means that establishing credibility was not the focus of the video. Though it is
mentioned:“We did that [creating the device, ed.] by combining engineering skills and thinking
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out of the box, and to work with some very complex geometrics and some really strong
materials”. This might indicate possibles skills and thus can act as ‘ethos’ (ethos: 2 lines of text).
The message starts by explaining the idea behind the product, and how ‘Sitpack’ solves potential
customers’ problem: “4 years ago I was waiting for 3 hours at a concert for the performance to
go on stage. 3 hours is quite a long time to wait, and it’s quite uncomfortable actually to be
standing up and waiting. I couldn’t figure out why there wasn’t a product out there that is
actually truly portable that you can put it in your pocket and bring with you to concerts and
anywhere else, where resting is truly needed, while you wait”. The functional benefit of
‘Sitpack’ is clearly identified: “the world’s smallest and most compact resting device out there”
(logos: 15 lines of text). The message appeal suddenly changes to ‘pathos’: “Creating ‘Rest’ [the
product name was changed to ‘Sitpack’ after the video, ed.] has been a really difficult task and
challenging task. And that’s why we need your support”. The creator clearly points out which
need the product solves: “the ‘Rest’ [‘Sitpack’, ed.] device is actually coming from a concrete
need - the need to rest when you’re actually in a situation when it’s most needed”. The video end
with an emotional appeal to the viewers for help and support: “Right now we have some really
awesome prototypes, but to take this product from prototype to production, and send it out to all
of you, we really need your support. We need 6 tons of steel for molding forms. Steel is really
really heavy and it’s also fairly expensive. And that’s why we need your help - every dollar
counts.” (pathos: 5 lines of text) (Appendices 8, 14).
CAMPAIGN LAUNCH PREPARATION
This element follows the previously discussed ‘product development’ and ‘value propositions’.
Due to the limited scope of this project, we are unable to give a detailed account of all aspects of
the campaign launch preparation. We will therefore focus on the elements that the creators
prioritized, and how they spread the word about their upcoming campaigns. We expect to find
that spreading the word starts prior to the campaign launch, proceeds throughout the campaign
process and involves all advertising and PR efforts.
THERMODO
Based on ‘Thermodo’s campaign’s preparation, Michael advises to “make sure that you’ve
planned at least some sort of narrative for the time when you need to execute on your project”.
He also recalls that the team worked hard on the campaign page’s submission “on an all-nighter
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on this project page, making sure that everything was just right”. Michael explains that “in
many ways it was a very international launch, so what actually happened was that we put out a
sort of press embargo on things… So we sent out a couple of our press contacts, and lied it’s a
secret and we pressed like you can’t tell anyone about it, but we’d like it if you can give us some
attention on the launch day“. When their KS project was approved by KS, they set a launch day
2-3 days later, “and then all hell broke loose”, because the media “completely exploded on the
way”. Michael confesses that they got an email: “let me just say it was Gizmodo who tipped us
off that Gadget have posted an actual piece on the thing before it was live. And they were like
hey, these guys broke your press embargo”. Moreover, Michael mentions that “we had some
people, some very loyal fans that follow what we do”, so the Thermodo team sent a lot of emails
to them: “Hey, we build weather apps. And now we want to build weather hardware - you want
to support us?”. This message was then spread further on social media by the fans (Appendix 1).
PLUK
In terms of preparation, the creator of ‘Pluk’ says: “I read somewhere how long a Kickstarter
video should be”, and that they “tried to market it [the product, ed.] during the campaign”.
However, Nicolas admits: “we spent some money on marketing and things like that to get the KS
boosted as well”. In order to spread the word and get his campaign boosted, Nicolas spent some
money on marketing and used a service that “sends a draft of an article out to a lot of different
journalists, but that was like a couple of hundred dollars and then they sent it out to all the email
addresses that they had” (Appendix 2).
ME-MOVER
The ‘Me-Mover’ team expected to have a lot of communication with the backers after the
launch, so they over-prepared: “we were gonna have one employee at night answering the
questions… you can prepare everything and have the timeline, we had this as well … we overdid
it maybe a bit”. Jens concludes that pre-planning should be “very thorough, it’s gonna take a
long time because the more you prepare, I think the better you are gonna perform”. However, he
points out that even if “you can prepare everything and have the timeline, we had this as well”,
it can be very difficult to follow it. He considers preparing as “one of the keys for success on
Kickstarter”. Jens points out that they had planned the press releases, but did not launch them
too early: “It was like a few days before we actually launch. But what we didn’t do was to create
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the awareness months before, that I’ve been thinking that we should have done. For example, a
month before in our communities that we have already, facebook for example, twitter, whatever
social media, our personal networks, start spreading the word, that we were gonna start doing
something like that. So it’s already, the buzz is around”. Furthermore, Jens mentions that they
contacted a PR agency, “who just looked through our text and stuff like that, but the budget was
extremely low for this thing” (Appendix 3).
WALLZ
The creator of ‘Wallz’ did not do extensive research on crowdfunding (“I didn’t read any
links”), but he points out that he saw a lot of other KS campaigns: “I only checked out the
successful ones… I only used reference from the other videos, the other campaigns”. Troels also
looked at KS guidelines: “I saw one video once, it was like a funny way of explaining what you
can do, but in that they also said “Just be natural, just do whatever you like”, but he did not
think about pre-planning “updates and stuff like that”. Even though KS staff offered to look at
his project and give him some comments (a 2 day process), he just said “No. Let’s go!” Troels’
partner in London sent emails to ‘Metroxpress’ (Danish press), and the creator himself wrote to
some news agencies, but only 2 responded. He therefore thinks that he didn’t make the right
announcements and didn’t create a lot of hype. 4 months before the KS campaign, Troels
contacted a blogger, who blogged about Combi Boxes in relation to a competition: “And there
was like 50 people saying “Oh, it’s a really great product, and we really enjoy this, and we’re
gonna buy all” (Appendix 4).
VIA
The creator of ‘VIA’ simply admits that “we didn’t have time” in terms of tipping off the media
prior to the launch, because they only had 14 days to prepare the campaign prior to KS coming to
Denmark: “we didn’t see actually the Kickstarter deadline before 14 days before… So the media
has been the last week. We were running a week behind schedule on media”. The VIA team also
did not prepare any updates in advance, but merely worked on them after their campaign’s
launch. Marcus adds optimistically that “the good thing about being the first on Kickstarter is
that almost everything gets an article. Then we have been mentioned, because there have not
been that many products… projects out there, so people mention all this”. He adds that “it’s
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quite important to go to TV, I mean we are in some of the bigger newspapers coming up, and
that would also help a lot. So that kind of… people just need a little bit of time” (Appendix 5).
BAKE ON
The creator of ‘Bake On’ “pretty much copy-pasted the entire text from IndieGoGo to
Kickstarter”. She considered it to be more authentic not to pre plan everything in advance: “it
feels less genuine, if you plan everything ahead”, she only knew what she wanted her stretch
goals to be. However, she did extensive research on crowdfunding prior to the campaign: “I love
my research… I have read so much about crowdfunding, and the mistakes… I read the
IndieGoGo guide, and the Kickstarter guide, and also a bunch of books”. Chris also contacted
bloggers: “we are gonna have a feature in the Scandinavian Standard … it’s actually a really
really cool blog”. ‘Bake On’ was also “featured in Copenhagen Post, we were on the front page
on their website”. She thinks of this media exposure as: “It’s just an ongoing thing, like trying to
reach out to as many people as possible” (Appendix 6).
SON OF A TAILOR
The ‘Son of a Tailor’ team did their research: “there are these blogs around Kickstarter. There
are tons of advice, and almost too much. I mean, you can die reading all that stuff”. Jess
considered preparation essential and tactical: “It’s not cheating, but having things ready before
you actually need them. It’s a tactic” Furthermore, Jess spent quite a lot of time on “getting
media in place before I launched and also getting social networks in place”. He thinks his
efforts were sufficient in that regard: “I think I did it very diligently. I couldn’t do better than I
did, so I was fully aware that I should spend a lot of time before I launch with media, so I think
two months before I hired a PR consultant, who was rather well connected in UK lifestyles”.
However, that PR consultant was not experienced in crowdfunding: “She has never pitched a
Kickstarter story before, so that was actually an advantage for her, but on the other hand she
didn’t really know the game of whom to contact and how”. Jess himself had experience doing PR
on the Danish market, and he hired a student from CBS to do some of the Latin-speaking
countries. Reflecting back on his media preparation, he adds that “we got connected to a lot of
journalists, but what they said in UK and US was that… There is a guy, a journalist from Times,
who told us: “I get 50 enquiries from Kickstarter founders to pitch a story for them. So now I just
say no to everybody”. It seems to be more and more the case in UK and US, where the concept is
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more mature - that the journalists don’t want to bother, and it’s old news now”. The creator
managed to get through to “Financial Times, the Sun, Highsnobiety and a few big big lifestyle
blogs”. He believes his efforts were not wasted, just some of them will pay off at a later time.
Basing his opinion on the difficult access to PR abroad, he concludes: “I don’t know if
Kickstarter ever provided magic for entrepreneurs. I think for some it does, but it gets more and
more rare that it does. It has less of a hype today than a year ago”. Because getting PR outside
of Denmark is tricky, he believes that “you actually need a lot of ambassadors before you
launch… ambassadors, who want to share your project and talk very positively about it. That’s
probably the most tricky part. And I think also where most founders fail - that is to kind of really
get their personal network flying, and really get it ready for beginning and also to find
journalists, who want to write the story” (Appendix 7).
SITPACK
The ‘Sitpack’ team managed to prepare the campaign in just 6 days prior to KS coming to
Denmark: “While doing that [shooting the video], we of course created the rest of the campaign,
like all the visuals and the whole text part, most of the material we had already because we’ve
been working on this for such a long time”. They did not have time to tip off the media or
contact any bloggers. Nikolaj recalls that preparation takes “a lot of time, too much time. There’s
so much information out there and I am struggling with that because I tend to do exhaustive
searches no matter what I’m working with”. The summer before the campaign the Sitpack team
attended Creative Business Cup and a PR agency fell in love with their idea: “they kind of
pitched to us if we want to be their faces outwards when the media needs some guys to talk about
entrepreneurship”. They also went to a meeting in New York, at Kickstarter HQ, where the KS
staff liked their product and offered to put it in the newsletter and many different platforms. The
product was in KS’ international newsletter at the time of KS’s launch in Denmark, which the
creators see as a huge PR bonus. Other than that, they didn’t have time to tip off the Danish
media prior to the campaign’s launch. They did not contact any bloggers, nor had time to spread
the word on social media. (Appendix 8).
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DISCUSSION PART II
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
6 cases performed a market research on existing solutions (‘Thermodo’, ‘Pluk’, ‘Me-Mover’,
‘Wallz’, ‘Son of a Tailor’, and ‘Sitpack’). 2 cases (‘Pluk’ and ‘Son of a Tailor’) had customers
prior to KS, which means they had tested the market. On this basis, we can conclude that they
had already tested their MVP prior to KS. All of the cases have a working prototype ready,
which qualifies them to be on KS (as we discussed earlier in ‘Crowdfunding on Kickstarter’).
The complexity and length of the design and prototype phases vary for each case, and only 3
cases have patents for their products (‘Thermodo’, ‘Me-Mover’ and ‘Sitpack’). The remaining 5
cases only have an automatic design registration and patents are not important for their specific
products. What can be learnt about protection of the intellectual property of our 8 cases is that
crowdfunding is an open process and as such is viable for copycats. Patents are very expensive
and it also costs too much to go after imitators. It is very easy to change a minor detail in the
product and then it becomes a different product already. You can protect the design and the
brand’s name but not the idea. This confirms Heebøll’s (2008) argument about the difference in
patent strategies between well-established businesses and new businesses, where new ventures
simply cannot compete on the same scale. In terms of customer considerations, 3 cases had not
tested the market prior to KS and did not know who their customers would be (‘Thermodo’,
‘Bake On’, ‘Me-Mover’). 2 cases performed market tests prior to KS (‘Wallz’ and ‘Sitpack’).
The creators of ‘VIA’ simply aimed at a specific customer segment, which could be attributed to
the fact that they are aiming at existing customer segment for their other products. Even though
‘Pluk’ had discovered customers prior to KS, they were going after the KS customers anyway,
because they are different (“very gadget oriented” and “first-movers”) from the ‘average’
customers.
VALUE PROPOSITIONS
It is important to mention that creators usually have a 2-3 minutes video (as recommended by
KS), which means they cannot relay the whole story. The video was shot by a professional in 4
cases (‘PLUK’, ‘Bake On’, ‘Son of a Tailor’, and ‘Sitpack’), whereas the rest of the videos were
shot by the creators themselves. We evaluate how convincing the message is in terms of ethos,
logos and pathos. 1 case treated the video as key (’Thermodo’), and knew that it should stand on
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its own whether seen on KS or off-site. From the table below it is visible that ‘Thermodo’ uses
‘ethos’ more than any other case, but there is also an equal emphasis on ‘ethos’ and ‘logos’ in the
message, which points to the video presenting the whole message. In terms of value propositions,
the message in 6 cases (‘Pluk’, ‘Me-Mover’, ‘Wallz’, ‘Bake-On’, ‘Wallz’, and ‘Son of a Tailor’)
contains both a USP and an ESP. The other 2 cases (‘VIA’ and ‘Sitpack’) focus only on
functional benefits, and not ESP. We expected to find that ‘pathos’ prevails in all cases. All cases
used ‘pathos’ in their message, but only 1 case (‘Son of a Tailor’) emphasized ‘pathos’ to an
extreme, while the rest of the cases focus on ‘logos’ instead (Table 5). In 7 cases (except
‘Thermodo’), establishing credibility of the creators was clearly not that important for the
message appeal. We can conclude that all videos deemed important to show and explain the
benefits of their product, or the value proposition (both functional and emotional), which means
that the creators tried to appeal to the logic of the viewers and convince them why they need this
product. Judging by the ‘pathos’ in the 8 videos, we can conclude that 5 cases asked for support
in order to start the production of their product, while 3 cases (‘Pluk’, ‘Son of a Tailor’, and
‘VIA’) wanted to either produce the product on a larger scale, to an international audience, or
simply to realize the project in terms of sales and spreading the word.
Case name Ethos (lines of
text)
Logos (lines of
text)
Pathos (lines of
text)
Total no. of lines
THERMODO 15 13 4 32
PLUK 1 13 4 18
ME-MOVER 4 5 3 12
WALLZ 3 13 2 18
VIA 0 8 2 10
BAKE ON 2 12 5 19
SON OF A
TAILOR
5 7 18 30
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SITPACK 2 15 5 22
Table 5: Ethos, logos and pathos in the KS videos. Source: own creation.
CAMPAIGN LAUNCH PREPARATION
The creators from the 8 cases behave differently in regards to preparation of the various
campaign elements (updates, communication topics, stretch goals etc), and we stated above that
we will only focus on the elements that the various creators prioritized. The collected data
indicates that in all 8 cases, creators first investigated the KS rules and regulations in order to
develop their campaigns, which means they have all done at least the minimum amount of
preparation prior to the campaign’s launch (Appendix 15). We can attribute this to the fact that
KS has to approve each project page prior to its launch.
Only 3 out of 8 cases did extensive research and read countless materials about crowdfunding
and how to make a campaign - ‘Me-Mover’, ‘Bake On’, and ‘Son of a Tailor’. In comparison, 3
other cases did very little research on how to run a campaign - ‘Pluk’, ‘Wallz’, and ‘Sitpack’.
Furthermore, 3 cases did special pre-planning of their narrative and other elements that they
would need during the execution - ‘Thermodo’, ‘Me-Mover’, and ‘Son of a Tailor’. On the other
hand, Troels did not really prepare much and had a ‘just do it’ approach, which is clearly deviant
behaviour. In terms of media and PR preparation, 2 cases (‘Thermodo’ and ‘Son of a Tailor’) did
exceptionally well compared to the rest. ‘Thermodo’ is the only case who put a ‘press embargo’
on their campaign, which the media broke prior to the campaign launch and as a result media
completely exploded after the launch. Furthermore, they emailed some of their very loyal fans,
who helped spread the word on social media, and used the full potential of media, news portals
and all network channels. The creator of ‘Son of a Tailor’ could not have done it better - he
managed to cover DK, Latin and UK markets in terms of media exposure. We expected to find
that all creators started spreading the word prior to their campaign’s launch. However, we
discovered that 2 cases did not do so - ‘VIA’ and ‘Sitpack’, because they did not have time.
Troels did not put an effort in spreading the word about his campaign prior to launch. Next, we
are eager to portray how the ‘Pre-planning’ phase will affect the ‘Execution’ phase of the
campaign process.
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The answer to the second sub-question ‘What goes into the pre-planning of a KS campaign?’ is
based on what we discover here to be the most important steps creators take in pre-planning their
campaign. All cases identified a pain, and therefore performed a market research on existing
solutions in order to resolve the pain. After researching the market, the design and prototype
phase begins, the length and complexity of which depends on the type of product. Our data
shows that the majority of the creators is not concerned with patents and protecting their idea.
All creators make working prototypes prior to KS, but some of these MVPs are perceived by the
creators as ‘final’. Next, all creators want to try and sell this MVP to potential customers.
Furthermore, most creators have some considerations regarding their potential customers, and
might even find test subjects for their prototype. Next, all creators present their MVP to an
audience on KS in the form of a convincing KS project. We discovered that a KS video is the
heart of creators’ proposal and contains creators’ message, aimed at convincing this audience to
pledge. The majority of creators presented a clear value proposition in their video by promoting
both functional and emotional benefits in their message. In order to be convincing, the majority
of creators focus on ‘logos’ by highlighting the problems that their product solves and its
functionality features. Moreover, all the messages contain an emotional appeal in order to gain
backers’ support. Most creators actually ask for backers’ help to launch the production of their
MVPs. Prior to the campaign’s launch all creators make at least the minimum amount of
preparation by investigating the KS rules and regulations. Troels does not do any extensive
reading on crowdfunding, he does not put enough effort into creating hype around his project,
and does not prepare in advance any narrative, updates, nor stretch goals.
PHASE 2: Execution
This phase covers the timespan from the moment the campaign goes ‘live’ until the end of the
funding period on KS, and on average is around 30 days (as per KS’ recommendations). Here we
will investigate our third sub-question: ‘What are the specificities of the campaign execution?’ In
the ‘Pre-planning’ phase it was mentioned that creators operate in the context of uncertainty that
is now being replaced by learning about the borderline, which separates ideas into those that can
become real through KS, and those that cannot because customers are not ready to want them or
accept them (Verganti 2009). We look at the KS campaigns as proposals that are creators’
dreams, but they also end up being what backers were waiting for once they see the campaign
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and its video. This learning during a KS campaign is much more valuable to creators than money
(Ries 2011), and stays with them even if the project does not get funded. In Chapter 6, ‘Creators’
Characteristics’, it has been confirmed that creators’ pursuit of non-financial goals on KS
prevails, and we expect to find that creators acquire ‘validated learning’ through the Execution
phase of their campaign (Ries 2011). The elements we will investigate here are ‘Customer
Discovery’ and ‘Communication’. We will go deeper into uncovering what sort of actions the
creators took before and after they reached their funding goal on KS.
CUSTOMER DISCOVERY
In Chapter 3 we demonstrated how significant it is to discover ‘early adopters’ not only to test
whether there is a market for a creators’ idea, but also because these customers are more eager to
provide feedback (Ries 2011; Mullins and Komisar 2009). On KS, as a rule, creators offer
rewards in exchange for backers’ support, and that reward in our 8 cases are prototypes. We will
now explore what the creators discover about their customers, and which sort of feedback the
latter provide.
THERMODO: 8,776 backers42
During the campaign the Thermodo team found out that “there was a much larger market for
Thermodo than we initially have thought”, and this market encompassed three continents and 77
countries with a total of 12,000 units of the product: “all of a sudden, when we got all this
exposure, a lot of people came out of the blue”. The team initially thought the product would be
“a fun little thing that you had with you and you could take the temperature and that be it”. In
terms of project video stats, number of times the video was played on KS and off-site is equal,
which might indicate that a lot of Thermodo’s backers came from outside the KS. Some of
Thermodo’s backers found so many additional uses for the product that the team decided to
actually increase focus on these backers on KS, interview them about the product, and share their
stories with the rest of the backers. Many new new ideas for integrating Thermodo in jobs,
hobbies and even research were presented: “there was a chef… who does ice structures, and he
transports them, and he wanted to measure the temperature in the vans that transport them to
make sure they arrive nicely”. An environmentalist “that taught school children about stuff”
42
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robocat/thermodo-the-tiny-thermometer-for-mobile-devices
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wanted to use this inexpensive equipment (Thermodo) so that children can play around with it.
Other new uses were discovered from “long-distance runners, who wanted to correlate and
track you know, data”, “people that would use the sleep-tracking app... for iPhone, where you
could put it on the pillow and see when you are in a deep sleep, and when you are not” wanted
to correlate the data from the room temperature to find the optimal temperature for best sleep.
Michael appreciated this amazing feedback from people who believe in the idea, especially at a
time of the project when they could take on feedback. Meanwhile, the Thermodo team decided to
change their entire production from plastic to aluminium: “it made a lot more sense if everything
is made from aluminium, and we can set up the streamlines of the process, and now when we are
building this many of them”. The premium version also became a bit more premium: “we added
a pretty costly and quite tricky process, which is called electro engraving. We engraved the logo
into the actual metal”. The regular ones got “this ominent grey paint” since they were upgraded
to metal (Appendices 1, 15).
PLUK: 341 backers43
Nicolas mentions that “people have a lot of opinions about your designs. We rarely take those
into consideration. It’s not that we don’t listen, it’s just that people have a very easy tendency to
see something and then not see all the angles”. He points out that he loves to communicate with
the backers, and if they find a new use for the product, for example in the shower, then “that’s
really something we consider.” But the two designers do not take seriously feedback on the
design or the production of PLUK. Nicolas adds: “Because during all the years of me being a
designer I have not had someone externally tell me something that I can actually use to change a
design. It’s simply because it’s more complicated than that. People see a very simple product
and they think that the process of creating it was very simple, but that’s rarely the case”. Nicolas
learns that “it’s end users, and end users are sometimes really a pain to sell to, because they are
critical - you have to ship it to their house, it’s small packages, it’s a lot of different shipping, it’s
a lot of handling… It’s a really big hassle”. Based on learning from the execution of his KS
campaign, the two creators “started considering selling it [the design, ed.] to someone … Our
core focus is to design. We don’t have time to produce, manufacture and sell the product... And
it’s a lot of work, it’s not that we can’t handle it, but it’s really a question of focus”. In terms of
43
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/193289139/pluk-the-hanging-fruit-basket
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product modifications as a result of backers’ feedback, Nicolas assures that they were done with
the product, they were not in a beta version of it, and they have never done an open design
product. Nicolas concludes that: “Have we not been done with the product, I think it would have
been an entirely different process” (Appendices 2, 15).
ME-MOVER: 366 backers44
They wanted to find the first customers who really believe in this product, which is what they
accomplished as well. Jens adds “we were really surprised we got a lot of backers, for example,
in Asia”. Gathering such information from KS also gave them “the idea that it’s gonna be a
really good product in Asia, when we enter the market there”. According to Jens, the team sold
250 units of Me-Mover on KS, and afterwards they had about 400 people signing up for pre-
order, out of which the team is not sure how many will really buy the product. In terms of
feedback, Jens says that “I don’t think we did any bigger modifications with the product during
or after the campaign. Because this was settled, this is a long process” and they were thus
unable to integrate the feedback on the product itself. Only feedback regarding the accessories
was implemented. The Me-Mover team had a special reward called ‘BECOME A ME-MOVER
AMBASSADOR’, Jens adds that the team got “36 people who are super interested about Me
Mover”. The team refers to each ambassador as “our long term partner in spreading the vision
of a more active and engaging urban lifestyle”. Furthermore, in their FAQ on KS, the team
explains that ambassadors will “be included in our ambassador forum, for in depth knowledge,
support, dialogue and experience sharing… For all the sales you generate, you will recieve a
10% commission”45. Regarding the ambassadors, Jens hopes that “when people really have the
physical product, this is gonna generate itself a lot of hype”. The product was finished “Because
this was settled, this is a long process”, and therefore there was no feedback on the product
itself, but they did some modifications to improve the product after KS “with the chain for
example” (Appendices 3, 15).
WALLZ: 904 backers46
44
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/107750026/new-compact-step-driven-vehicle-its-your-move 45 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/107750026/new-compact-step-driven-vehicle-its-your-move/description 46
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1521543395/wallz
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Troels discovered that 62% of the backers came from the KS platform, while 38% - from off-site
(Appendix 11). Troels also discovered backers, who helped him with spreading the word: “they
knew a lot of forums and stuff like that, especially those Pixel guys with that retro computer
game Mario… They really seem to love it. So they started spreading the news all over the place.
Yeah, especially one guy… Nigel Allen, he does a lot of comments. He’s been doing a lot of work
and he bought that big one - the Mega Box. So he’s been really helpful”. In terms of feedback,
the Wallz creator received a lot of new ideas from his backers, but he admits “a lot of ideas I
thought of myself”. Troels only received positive feedback on his product: “all of them start with
‘Love the process, love the idea”. The feedback itself could be categorized into shipping, mixing
combos, ideas for design, new pledges and ideas about the campaign. Most feedback was about
“can we mix up the Combi” boxes, as backers state their preferences when such reward option is
not available - “what most people want is, for instance, instead of 4 Combi boxes, they want 2
Combi boxes and 2 single colour boxes”. As a result of this feedback, a common backers’
problem emerged - they wanted to choose more than 1 reward (KS’ limitation is 1 reward per
backer). Troels quickly came up with at least a partial solution - he suggested to backers to get a
friend or a family member pledge for the other reward they want. The ‘Mega Box’ was a
backer’s idea for a reward, which was added very quickly. Another idea that was implemented
was to sort the cubes into 100 instead of 400 packs, based on which the creator “talked to the
Chinese factory asking them… and they said “Yeah, we can do that.” Troels gave this
information in an Update, and then some of his backers advised him: “You should put that in the
front page as well because a lot of people actually don’t actually go and watch the updates, they
just scroll down”, so he put it straight away, because he “always listen to my customers”
(Appendices 4, 11, 15).
VIA: 77 backers47
During the campaign Marcus discovered that “only one third of our backers are from
Kickstarter. And the other two thirds are from different media that we have been bagging with…
And that’s also how people find the product. Mainly people have found it through direct links”.
Among their backers, the VIA team discovered small ambassadors: “Actually, they feel that they
are part of the project. And they are very important in this process, so when they get the product,
47
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/729082533/via-3-in-1-lamp
90
we’ve got some very good salespeople out there on the market, which is obviously a very good
thing”. Marcus highlights also the fact that he is receiving “some very important feedback on
how actually to tell my story”, mainly on “how to explain it”. The creators conceive of their
product’s idea as quite simple, but from backers’ feedback they can see that “it is still an
exercise in getting the explanation right”. Furthermore, the creators changed the KS page a few
times in order to cope with misunderstandings about the product. Due to this feedback, the VIA
team has “learned about how people see our product in this process… we get feedback on
‘Could it be possible to both get the table and the pendel lamp as a set?”. They also get “very
valuable” feedback on the product and are able to “make the last minute adjustments in this
process. So that makes a lot of sense”. Minor adjustment to the product before production are
hereby possible. However, larger changes would bring them back a year and are therefore not
feasible (Appendices 5, 15).
BAKE ON: 356 backers48
Chris highlights the importance of getting backers on KS: “You may believe in your project, but
you won’t really believe in it, until somebody else does”. Based on project video stats, Chris
could see that “It has been viewed mostly on Kickstarter”, which might indicate that most of her
customers come from the KS platform. The Bake On creator considers the backers extremely
important: “Why else would I go to Kickstarter?... These people are helping me, they are
believing in me”. Chris is also appreciating her backers’ feedback: “It doesn’t make any sense to
ask for people’s help and then not listen to them“. She gives an example: “Some guy actually
suggested a carrot cake for the next stretch goal. And I was like OK - carrot cake it is!”. Her
campaign was meant from the beginning to implement backers’ feedback: “from 5 towels on,
people get to tell me, which recipes they’d want me to develop next, and then that would be put
up to a vote at the end of the campaign”. A few of her backers “asked about trying the recipes
out” before buying the product, and the creator did not ignore their request, she “retyped
everything last night, and people will be able to try the recipes out, if they want, so that way they
are sure that they like them”. Based on data, Chris learnt that the majority of her backers are
from the U.S. Based on data available to her on KS, Chris discovered three customer segments
during the campaign process: 1) people who “just like to have nice stuff in their kitchen” 2)
48
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/xanares/bake-on-tea-towels
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people who “are really bad at baking”, because the towels make baking ‘bulletproof’, and 3)
families with kids, because the towels “are really good for kids”. Chris sums up her feedback as
exciting and motivational: “Can’t wait to receive my towels”, “Super, super product. Keep
doing what you do”. Her backers were also “telling me I was a nice person, kind of taking it to
that personal level”, for example: “Receiving your updates make my day!” (Appendices 6, 10,
15).
SON OF A TAILOR: 199 backers49
When talking about his backers on KS, Jess concludes that backers are better than the average
customers: “our Kickstarters, and that is also what I said in the beginning, they are more
valuable than our average customers… normal customers are a bit shy of speaking directly to
you. These Kickstarter customers, they are not… He also concludes that backers “are more
forgiving”, which is not even the most important thing about them. Jess reflects on their other
qualities: “they have this kind of stuff wired in them, so they really support you in everything you
do, and you get a kind of personal relationship with them, more than you do with a standard
customer”. Furthermore, they are dispersed all over the world “at least mine are, which has also
come in handy as a startup because that enables me to kind of benchmark across countries… So
even though I only have 200 backers I think they came from 20 different countries or so”. The
creator also feels that he knows a lot of his backers, which also enabled him to “get more direct
feedback. And they are also more of ambassadors”. In terms of feedback, Jess recalls
suggestions about more colours, and mostly T-shirts ideas, which they were not capable of
executing: “it was not like that we got any ideas that kind of changed the game for us”. The team
also received feedback on the campaign itself: “well thought through”, because it was not
lacking any information on the product. Regarding the inability to implement feedback, Jess
explains that “we need to aspire to something higher with our brand, than what our customers
actually are. And that makes it sometimes difficult to take all your customers’ advice, because
while they mean it in the best way, you need to get… your own thoughts in this kind of product
are more important than customers’ thoughts”. He believes this is the case with lifestyle
products and fashion products, and adds “it might sound that we disregard the tastes of our
customers, and that’s not the case” (Appendices 7, 15).
49 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1098390240/son-of-a-tailor-the-perfect-tailored-t-shirt
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SITPACK: 2,749 backers50
The Sitpack team received a lot of useful feedback from backers. For example, backers asked for
a protective sleeve for the product, and the team is creating it. Nikolaj emphasizes another
important feedback: “some of their comments were “Hey, I cannot google you, why is that?”,
and that made the team to come up with a more generic name for their product. Nikolaj
concludes on the importance of backers: “I think that’s one of the really strong tools about using
crowdfunding. It’s not the money necessarily, it’s getting so many people’s awareness and get
their ideas, and put into this product that we’re making”. Having worked on the idea for this
product for 3 years, Nikolaj points out that before KS it has been only the 2 or 3 of them (the
team), which means “it’s limited how many ideas we can come up within a limited amount of
time”. However, now on KS “thousand and thousands of people are looking at it and
brainstorming, and trying to come up with new crazy stuff, it’s so cool and that’s really
something that you should embrace as super important”. Nikolaj concludes that being on KS
takes a lot of time and is hard work, but for such a short time (limited campaign period)“we
learn so much in the process, so it’s a good thing” (Appendices 8, 15).
COMMUNICATION
The second element of the ‘Execution phase’ is ‘Communication’. Creators on Kickstarter need
to convince potential backers to pledge, and they can do so by communicating with them. In that
regard, KS prescribes that “projects must be honest and clearly presented”51. We will now
investigate ‘Communication’ in terms of three elements: ‘updates and stretch goals’, ‘comments’
and ‘media and PR’. Updates and stretch goals are important because they indicate to backers,
that the project creator is engaged in the project, and actively shares his/her progress. Comments
on KS might lead to development of personalized relationship between creator and backers. We
will therefore investigate communication around each project in terms of number of updates and
comments,52 and how much effort the creators put into communication with the backers.
50 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rest/rest-the-worlds-most-compact-foldable-seat 51 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/rules 52 Number of comments is based on the comments section of a campaign page and does not include comments within updates or private
messages.
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THERMODO: 34 updates; 1,209 comments53
On KS the project reached the funding goal within 7 hours and suddenly expanded in scope and
complexity. The team realized they had to make stretch goals, “which I [Michael, ed.] think is a
really important part of the crowdfund psychology”, and that new manufacturing options were
available now that they had to produce 10 times more than initially planned. The team added a
total of 6 stretch goals, all of which got unlocked by the backers except the last two: “a couple of
new variations of Thermodo kind of arrived, as we hit the various stretch goals”. The creators
made 34 updates, where they included videos of field testing of the product, behind-the-scenes
videos, and current situation information. An example of a fun and tricky update would be when
the team “did some field testing on top of a volcano, which was really cool”. The Thermodo
team “tried to be as open and transparent as possible with these in-depth updates and behind-
the-scenes footage”. Therefore, they also shared a special footage from the factory in China. In
terms of funding progress, Michael illustrated that in the beginning “it’s crazy, everybody is
funding it, and you get that initial push of a lot of people, they are talking about your product,
press sites are covering it, they’ll trickle down to all the small press sites”. During the middle
period of the campaign, “it is your task to make sure that people still engage, they still think it’s
interesting, they still want to pledge, they want to pull in their backers, and you can do that with
many different tools at your disposal - stretch goals are one of them, updates - keeping them
updated on the progress, making sure that it’s interesting and fresh”. At the end of the campaign
period people hurry and buy the product before the campaign ends: “you will also see kind of
like a tiny little curve there… that’s because people are happy. It’s gonna end, I need
Thermodos! I have to own them!”
Michael concludes that “storytelling is everything in crowdfunding... It’s people, it’s not
businesses”, and that the idea is to gather money from the crowd, rather than give a corporate
speech: “You are not selling to a different company or a VC. You are just most likely selling your
idea to the average person. You need to talk directly to them and talk honestly, maybe even with
a dash of humour, and you will get very far”. While communicating with the backers, “every
day new questions were posted”. Michael concludes on campaign that “it’s not entirely unlike
running a political campaign”, because a lot of people tried to reach the team and messaged
53
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robocat/thermodo-the-tiny-thermometer-for-mobile-devices
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them on KS, sent emails and tweets, and even stopped them on the street to talk. Michael points
out that just on KS “during the campaign we received 12.830 messages”. The creators had to
“work hard just to stay on top of the communication, answering questions, and keeping updates
flowing”, because campaigning “requires an immense amount of focus… takes a long time, and
it takes a lot of energy out of the team”, in order to maximize the attention and resources.
Michael emphasizes “that human connection matters a lot. And keeping them [the backers, ed.]
in the loop, connecting with them and talking to the community, growing the community means a
lot”. About 9,000 backers of Thermodo “also kinda feel like they own a piece of the product now
and they demand… to be heard about, you know, what they feel the product should be or when
the product should be done”, which is tricky because they do not have all the information at
hand. Michael explains that when the team had to make a decision and then went back on that
decision, they had to worry about how the backers were going to perceive this rather than only
think in terms of what would be best for the product. So they had to explain why that change is a
good idea and convince the backers, rather than just doing the work: “there is a huge
communication burden in terms of bringing the backers on and along for the ride”. Michael
learnt that it is better to be a bit vague in the communication with the backers and also to be
honest about why they are vague, as he found that “there’s a lot of external factors that you
don’t control... you can’t give any exact deadlines and that’s ok”. The team fully harvested
social media benefits and press during the campaign, as Michael quotes one of his colleagues:
“Social media is an unparalleled marketing machine” (Appendices 1, 15).
PLUK: 9 updates; 62 comments54
The Pluk team made no stretch goals during their campaign. Most of the time during the
campaign Nicolas and Kåre spent “with practical things like answering e-mails”. Their backers
had a lot of questions about the product, “some things we didn’t have put up on it, and they
wanted to know about the colours and things like that. It was a lot of answering questions“.
Nicolas concludes that “Kickstarter is a bit more work than we thought it was”, but also it has
been a learning experience that “made us stronger as designers as well, because it teaches you
something about … how is it actually to get something to put into production”. In terms of
promotion of the product, the PLUK team: “were on blogs, talking about it. Then talking to our
54 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/193289139/pluk-the-hanging-fruit-basket
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friends on Facebook about it and things like that”. They also got “a lot of media exposure for
free”. The creator concludes that for him KS was a marketing tool (Appendices 2, 15).
ME-MOVER: 32 updates; 918 comments55
The ‘Me-Mover’ team was at first unsure whether they would reach their goal, but “we got the
goal very fast and then we only raised more and more and more, and the momentum was going
on for kinda long time”. The ‘Me-Mover’ team made 6 stretch goals, and all 6 got unlocked by
the backers. The team emphasized on marketing during their campaign: “from the half of the
campaign, collaboration with a Los Angeles based agency, and we had a person helping us with
the PR. So we were trying for a long time to approach it, wanted to get the crunch and things like
that, it didn’t work at the beginning. But then we got for example featured in an Asian
crowdfunding portal and immediately we got backers from there. This is a really big market and
if you get to there, you’re gonna get something [from the market, ed.] anyway”. According to
Jens, one of the biggest learning lessons from their KS campaign is that “you have to be there all
the time, day and night, because the problem with us was also that… we had a lot of people in
the United States, and it’s a completely different timezone, so you had to be there at night as
well, because you have to answer the questions in minutes I think or in hours. If you wait for
days it’s gonna be like really bad for you”. Furthermore, the team expected this massive
communication with the backers and spent the 32 days of their campaign mostly communicating.
Jens adds that “the community was also really important for us because we had to build it
anyway”. As mentioned in Customer Discovery, the team created an ambassador package, and
these people were spreading the word about Me-Mover. Jens is of the opinion that “this is the
perfect marketing unit that we got off Kickstarter for example. I don’t think there are many
companies using currently that kind of thing on Kickstarter. Creating like a very specific, I
would call it even B2B relationship with some of the ambassadors” (Appendices 3, 15).
WALLZ: 22 updates; 241 comments56 (KS ‘Staff picked’)
After our first interview with the creator of Wallz, he “had to do a lot of Updates, as you told me
to, making new videos. I would have liked to have these videos before I started the campaign, so
I could just put them in but how would I know that we would reach 150 and 250 (thousand
55
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/107750026/new-compact-step-driven-vehicle-its-your-move 56 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1521543395/wallz
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DKK). He added 2 stretch goals, and both got unlocked. He realized: “So actually I’m going to
sit the next 28 days in front of the computer (with a lot of homework), yes! Thanks! I would never
think about this, I would just… I think if you haven’t come here I would just leave the campaign,
maybe it works maybe it doesn’t work. But apparently that’s not the way”. His updates were
about “the promises of what the online central can actually do, and what you can do online. And
it’s a wide area that I can show - it’s design, it’s art, it’s like retro computer gaming, there are
so many forums that seem to be interested in this”. Communication really took off after he made
updates about his online central and what it can do, he found out from his backers that there are a
lot of forums interested in design, art and retro computer gaming etc. He gives his honest opinion
about all ideas that come up - his own and his backers’. While talking to the backers, Troels
discovered that it is hard to explain the concept of Wallz, even though he himself thinks that “it
is, at least it seems like a simple concept to grasp”, but people had a hard time understanding it,
and they had a lot of questions - whether the product ruins the wall, whether it can be reused,
about the designs, they are sceptic because they have never heard of it before. He did not expect
this kind of massive communication. Troels is really looking forward to the online design central
as it will keep the community in one place. People will be making designs and sharing them with
everybody. Reflecting on how Troels would have prepared for the campaign if he had to do
another campaign on KS, he says: “I would have prepared a lot more than I did now. I would
have known that you’re going to do updates, you’re going to need some stuff to keep people
coming in, joining, pledging and do that in advance because then you don’t have to spend time
on it … put out a strategy. That would have been nice”. Furthermore, he wonders “what if I
made professional video, and had some experience, asked some people before I started, had
some consultants and spent some money on how to make the perfect campaign, how much could
I make then”.
In terms of promoting the campaign, Troels “got an intern - it’s my cousin… he’s educated in
communication so he’s been doing a lot of those searching forever, spreading the word. And my
partner in London, he’s been doing the same, and I’ve been doing the same”. Troels and his
cousin “found out that this engineering.com made an article57 about it. And my cousin intern, he
started spreading that and it went from 1,200 hits to 2,600 hits in 5 hours or so”. The article
57
Source: http://www.engineering.com/3DPrinting/3DPrintingArticles/ArticleID/8774/Wallz--customizable-and-reconfigurable-designs-for-
your-wall.aspx
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gave them the first traction, as Troels thinks “a lot of people came from there… the thing about
the online design central they were really happy about that. And then investors started calling,
Dansk Supermarked called, a lot of young entrepreneurs who want to join the party called, sadly
I had to turn them all down”. Troels also had help with spreading the word from his backers:
“some people from the crowdfunding who said ‘We’re going to do this for you.’... they knew a
lot of forums and stuff like that, especially those Pixel guys with that retro computer game
Mario”. He also contacted bloggers. One blogger, with whom Troels had previously worked,
really loved his project and wanted to do some calendar presents, in return she would spread the
word about the product within her community. The project also got staff picked by KS, but he
found out a week and a half later that he had to put the stamp himself (Appendices 4, 11, 13, 15).
VIA: 5 updates; 18 comments58 (KS ‘Staff picked’)
The VIA team had no stretch goals on KS. In terms of making updates, Marcus states: “I am
gonna do an update on obviously what has been happening during the first week. I think updates
every day will be too much - if I was a backer, I would be annoyed. I think one, max twice a week
would be fine”. The creators spent “three hours a day, something like that” on their KS
campaign, mostly “communicating, answering emails, or writing media”. Marcus points out that
“it [communicating on KS] takes a lot of effort - be on all the time and actually answer”, and the
team wanted to also do something else. The team communicated with backers through private
messages, and on Kickstarter: “we get quite a lot on email, Facebook, and also you’ve got some
comments you can’t see. And there is actually an equal amount”. Based on their communication
with the backers, the team started changing the first part of the VIA story: “And that’s actually
also something that is going to be very good for us to take after the project. Because the better
the story, the more preciser story, the easier it is also when the campaign is done”. The VIA
team focused on media and PR during their KS campaign. Marcus participated in Go’Morgen
Danmark on national TV: “They were speaking about Kickstarter [KS coming to Denmark,
ed.]... and then I was the example”, and got featured in a few blogs: “But the good thing about
being the first on Kickstarter is that almost everything gets an article”. The project got also staff
picked by KS (Appendices 5, 15).
BAKE ON: 27 updates; 92 comments59 (KS ‘Staff picked’)
58
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/729082533/via-3-in-1-lamp
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After reaching the funding goal in 3 days, Chris put great care into writing “a Thank You-note to
every single person. I don’t copy-paste, I actually write it… And I spent 6 hours catching up with
that”. After personally thanking her backers, some of them replied: “a bunch of people wrote me
back. You, know “Oh, how really sweet of you”. Then she made stretch goals: “I didn’t expect it
would go so fast. I busted through 5 stretch goals or something the first day”, and she made a
total of 16 during the campaign (all got unlocked except one). Furthermore, the Bake On creator
had a survey, where she just asked people what they would like to have for the next stretch goals.
After getting 100% funded, Chris worked hard to achieve even more: “at a 100% I am not
happy. I want it to be 500% of my goal, because, you know, I love my project!”. She also made
updates, “on Instagram, my husband and I, whenever we reach a pretty big goal, like… we have
a dancing video. We have four of them now, the latest one was today… The backers see them -
they are part of the updates”. One of her backers “actually launched a campaign himself and
asked me [Chris, ed.] to review it. I was reading the campaign for him today and he was pulling
on me for inspiration”, which points to the creator connecting with backers on a personal level.
Chris confesses: “these people are changing my life… They are special”, because they have
enabled her to do what she loves. “They [people in the community] will stay with me my entire
life”. Communicating with backers is extremely important to Chris and it takes time: “The 30
days of the campaign - you are all in. You don’t do anything else” apart from campaigning. The
creator has “some really cool backers” and mentions “one girl, her name is Elizabeth, she is
commenting on pretty much everything… she is always there to say something. I actually sent
her a message… ‘Hey, I am giving you a free towel. You are such a fantastic backer. You
comment and have been so supportive”, after which Elizabeth answered “Hey, I miss you, when
you don’t write for a few days”. According to Chris, her backers “can feel it’s not just a
project... They can really feel I’m very passionate about BakeOn. They can tell, and a lot of them
kind of made it more personal. They’ve crossed that client - friend kind of line … There is a real
connection… And so many people are increasing their pledges”. Regarding the community, the
creator points out that “I’ve had two members of Kickstarter staff contribute to my campaign…
they are part of the community. They are not just staff”. Despite having a full-time job, Chris’
husband “cares about it [Bake On] as much as I do … I feel guilty when I do anything else”.
59 Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/xanares/bake-on-tea-towels
99
In terms of media and PR, “I’ve been asked to talk at a conference here, CPH DOX… a
conference about crowdfunding”, where she gets to tell the story of Bake On. Chris worked hard
on creating hype around her project: “we were featured in Copenhagen Post, we were on the
front page on their website… and in the newspaper… There is Scandinavian Standard going next
week. It’s just an ongoing thing, like trying to reach out to as many people as possible - that’s
what I’ve been doing for the past two days, like getting billion email addresses and just writing”.
The creator also got a bit of traction of social media: “there is the Facebook page. Not that many
people actually liked the page, but a bunch of them did… people send me Facebook messages on
the Bake On page”. She also got in contact with the KS staff when KS came to Denmark, and
she got some PR from the platform itself during her campaign: “staff picks, project of the day,
and, you know, newsletter” (Appendices 6, 10, 13, 15).
SON OF A TAILOR: 12 updates; 14 comments60
The project had no stretch goals. A lot of their updates mention funding progress, media
coverage, a Facebook contest due to getting 100 backers, and FAQ. Jess mentions that “In
everything we do in our communication we are very polite, we are very open”. He was
communicating via emails but also on KS, and in terms of connection with his backers, the
creator confesses: reflects on communication with the KS customers: “they think we have been
very good at communicating in a polite and personal way, and they value that a lot, actually”. In
terms of what kind of story the two creators wanted to tell, they tried to “brand ourselves as
being a lifestyle brand more, where you have all this tailoring and care, craftsmanship put into
the product”. In terms of media and PR, “We were presented in Berlingske, the biggest
newspaper here, and that gave us a nice push for the campaign”. The creators were also on “2
or 3 blogs, and a newspaper article. That was definitely the newspaper article that was most
efficient”. Jess thinks him and Kåre have been too weak on Facebook and social media in
general, and confesses: “I am personally not very good at social media. Andreas is a little bit
better, and that’s the point, where we are trying to seek help, actually”. He is also aware of the
fact that their customer group “are also not very active on Facebook and social media”. His
high media expectations were not met: “I thought I would get more media attention out of
running on Kickstarter than I did” (Appendices 7, 15).
60
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1098390240/son-of-a-tailor-the-perfect-tailored-t-shirt
100
SITPACK: 16 updates; 344 comments61 (KS ‘Staff picked’)
The Sitpack team made 2 stretch goals, and both got unlocked by the backers. We mentioned in
Customer Discovery, that some of the backers noticed that they could not find the product ‘Rest’
on Google and wrote that in their feedback. As a result, at some point during the campaign, the
creators changed the product name from ‘Rest’ to ‘Sitpack’, and “tried to do a soft shift,
informing all the backers, so we wrote a short story and said “This is why we do it, and this is
what we’re doing, we hope you like it”. They put that in an Update. They got a lot of questions,
in private messages, and answered them as good as they could. Many of the questions were
related to the same information they had put in the FAQ. Regarding communication with the
backers, Nikolaj admits: “Of course, we always think about storytelling, that’s super super
important. Especially these days where we’re trying to get the word out there and creating a
PR”. The team decided to implement all the feedback they get from backers into the story of the
product: “OK, you gave us so much feedback and this is where it took us”. For example, as soon
as the drawings for the protective sleeve (suggested by backers) are finished, the creators will
post an Update on KS.
In terms of media and PR, the team got contacted by the Danish Crowdfunding Association to
speak at a panel about their project: “So we are kind of being put in a position where we are
crowdfunding and entrepreneurship experts, which is absolutely not true but it’s a nice position
to be in and we’re getting there”. They have been contacting bloggers, news sites, TV stations
during the campaign. They haven’t really put much time in their own social media platforms, so
for example their Facebook has only about 200 likes. The same goes for Linkedin, Twitter,
Instagram etc. The creators did not have much time to build up the awareness around their social
platforms, because the KS campaign period is such a short timespan. During the campaign they
focus on going through others’ platforms, blogs etc. They also partnered up with a digital
agency, that “helped us create the new look of our campaign, and we brainstormed together with
them and really really fast came up with a new name - ‘Sitpack’... it is easy to search for”
(Appendices 8, 15).
61
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rest/rest-the-worlds-most-compact-foldable-seat
101
DISCUSSION PART III
We have previously argued that in the ‘Execution’ phase the context of uncertainty is replaced
by the creators’ learning about their customers and the product. Moreover, KS campaign is an
experiment that enables ‘validated learning’, which is an empirical demonstration of precious
truths about a startup’s present and future business possibilities (Ries 2011). We have
summarized these truths for the 8 cases in Table 6 below:
102
103
104
Table 6: Overview of Execution Phase Findings. Source: own creation.
105
We can conclude that all 8 creators validated their idea by reaching their funding goal on KS.
Furthermore, reaching the funding goal also implies that they were able to discover ‘early
adopters’ (Ries 2011), alternatively called ‘key visionary customers’ (Blank 2006). Casper
Arbøll, a Danish crowdfunding expert, elaborates on the idea validation through crowdfunding:
“It is really hard to market validate consumer products … in consumer products, what kind of
experts can you really ask to validate your concept? There are none. There are no opinion-
leaders, who can do that. But the crowd can, and that’s why crowdfunding becomes so powerful
in this sense” (Appendix 9).
In regard to how convincing the video is (‘Discussion Part II’), it has been demonstrated that
distribution of ‘ethos’, ‘logos’ and ‘pathos’ does not have a significant impact on reaching the
funding goal, whereas it seems that promoting USP and/or ESP has a positive impact. Casper
Arbøll agrees that it is necessary to “figure out the value proposition for the company, the USP,
unique selling point, so to say - what is it really you are selling” (Appendix 9).
We can conclude that all videos deemed important to show and explain the benefits of their
product, or the value proposition (both functional and emotional), which means that the creators
tried to appeal to the logic of the viewers and convince them why they need this product.
The first goal of contact with ‘early adopters’ is to clarify the creator’s understanding of his
potential customers at a basic level. In ‘Discussion Part II’ we discovered that 2 cases (‘PLUK’
and ‘Son of a Tailor’) had been selling their product prior to their KS campaign, and therefore
already knew who their customers were. Furthermore, the creator of ‘PLUK’ knew that KS
customers were different from the average customers, and the creator of ‘Son of a Tailor’
discovered specificities of the KS customers (compared to the average customers) during his
campaign - they are more forgiving, not shy of speaking directly to the creator, and also more
supportive. He, therefore, values them more than his average customers. The remaining 6 cases
learned different things about their customers during their KS campaigns: 3 cases (‘Thermodo’,
‘Me-Mover’ and ‘Wallz’) discovered a larger market for their product than they initially
expected. 1 case (‘Bake On’) discovered who the customers were. 2 cases (‘Me-Mover’ and
‘VIA’) found ambassadors who would act as their salespeople and spread the word about their
106
product. Lastly, the creator of ‘Wallz’ got in touch with a ‘wired audience’ (Spencer and Giles
2001) on KS that pulled the creator’s campaign content and helped him market the campaign
(Pixel guys and Nigel Allen). Furthermore, ‘PLUK’ regrets not putting the funding goal a bit
lower to make a better success story for the media by having a higher overfunding percentage,
while Troels did exactly that unintentionally.
The second goal of contact with early adopters is a quick generation of feedback (Ries 2011;
Mullins and Komisar 2009). The feedback can be categorized into the following themes: on the
product modifications (7 out of 8 cases), on the use of the product (2 cases), on how to tell the
story of the product (2 out of 8 cases). In 1 case (‘Bake-On’) the type of feedback was also
motivational, and in a different case (‘Sitpack’) feedback on the product name led to change of
the name itself. Despite all cases having a working prototype (Discussion Part II), 3 cases
(‘PLUK’, ‘Me-Mover’, and ‘Son of a Tailor’) were unable to implement feedback on the product
itself, because the creators perceive this MVP as a final product. This, however, does not exclude
the possibility that the creators will implement this new knowledge in the future prospects of
their startups (Ries 2011).
We have investigated the concept of ‘communication’ in terms of three elements: ‘updates and
stretch goals’, ‘comments’, and ‘media and PR’. That view is partially supported by
Kuppuswamy and Bayus’ (2014) conclusion on a positive relationship between further backers’
support and project updates. We discovered that the number of updates varies from case to case,
but 4 cases were more active (‘Thermodo’, ‘Me-Mover’, ‘Wallz’, and ‘Bake On’) and made 22 -
34 updates, whereas the rest of the cases (‘PLUK’, ‘VIA’, ‘Son of a Tailor’ and ‘Sitpack’) made
5-16 updates. Moreover, 3 cases (‘PLUK’, ‘VIA’, ‘Son of a Tailor’) out of these 4 cases did not
make any stretch goals. It seems that the number of updates and stretch goals might be related to
building community around each project . Creators in the 4 cases with 22-34 updates emphasize
their activities towards nourishing the community around their projects, where comments,
updates and stretch goals also help to resolve any misunderstandings that might occur during the
communication process. Stretch goals encourage funding progress by providing backers with
new perks that might get unlocked if a certain amount of money or number of backers are
reached. Furthermore, we discovered that 6 out of 8 creators developed personalized
relationships with their backers.
107
Here it must be noted that in the case of ‘Wallz’, at the time of the first interview on October 24
2014, when ‘Wallz’ was 37% funded (day 2 into the campaign), we advised Troels on how to
improve his campaign. He perceives this ‘experiment’ the following way: “I was sitting there for
a couple of days and waited for the pennies, until I was contacted by two students from CBS, who
were writing their master thesis on precisely Crowdfunding … I told them about my plan to just
sit and wait, and they wouldn’t go along with it! … therefore they gave me a lot of advices and
guided me in how to run a campaign. Their advices were worth gold! According to their advices
I should, among other things, promote the campaign in all groups that could be relevant for my
project on the social media, I should find bloggers that would write about the campaign, I should
contact the media, I should look at others’ campaigns to strengthen my own, I should be active in
my own campaign and answer questions and comments, I should be ready with updates and new
stretch goals etc.”62 Troels’ efforts resulted in his project being 1134% overfunded. This sudden
acceleration of Troels’ campaign progress confirms what Perry Chen says regarding the fact that
many project creators do not realise that communities evolve around each project and it is
necessary to sustain and nourish the project’s community (Chapter 6).
Specificities of online communication have been discussed earlier in Chapter 3, and we have
now discovered that these specificities in turn increase the amount of work during the campaign
period - all 8 creators received a lot of comments during the campaign and report that
campaigning is a lot of work, and that communication takes a lot of time. 5 out of 8 cases (apart
from ‘Bake On’, ‘Son of a Tailor’, and ‘Sitpack’) did not expect the amount of work required
while campaigning. Furthermore, part of that extra work is what ‘Thermodo’s creator calls the
‘burden of the backers’, which is as a communication burden imposed by the fact that a creator
needs to bring his backers along for the ride. In ‘Discussion Part II’ we concluded that
‘Thermodo’ and ‘Me-Mover’ made the most preparation prior to launching their campaigns,
which we expected to reflect on their ‘Execution’ phase. It seems that their preparation efforts
provided them with more time to concentrate on the communication with their backers, which is
also evident from the extremely high number of comments on KS compared to other cases.
Otherwise there is no evidence that preparation significant influence on the ‘Execution’ phase.
62 Source: http://www.crowdnews.dk/wallz-paa-kickstarter/ (translated from Danish).
108
In terms of media and PR, first we discovered that in 4 cases the KS video was shown outside
KS. This demonstrates the necessity of the video to be able to stand on its own when taken out of
KS context, and relates to the necessity of a clear message in the video, as discussed in
‘Discussion Part II’. Secondly, 5 creators clearly state that they continued to actively promote
their campaign in the ‘execution’ phase, whereas all 8 creators report free media exposure just
because they were being featured on KS. In the cases of the 4 ‘ongoing’ campaigns (at the time
of the interviews) this free media exposure is related to KS’ arrival in DK, and these 4 cases also
got ‘staff picked’ by KS. This contributes to promotion of the campaigns on the KS platform,
and is also considered as free PR. In ‘Discussion Part II’ it was concluded that ‘VIA’ and
‘Sitpack’ were the cases that did not have time to spread the word about their campaigns prior to
the launch. ‘VIA’s lack of media exposure prior to the launch and their reliance on free media
attention might have reflected on the total amount pledged compared to the other 7 projects
(‘VIA’ is least overfunded with 127%). Moreover, lack of media exposure prior to the campaign
might have also caused ‘VIA’ being the slowest case (compared to the other 7) to reach 100%
funding (on day 25 of the campaign) (Appendix 15). The case of ‘Sitpack’ was different, because
they got an opportunity to be mentioned in the KS newsletter about KS’ arrival in DK. In that
way the news of this project launch reached a tremendous number of potential backers and have,
apparently, countered the lacking media efforts in pre-launch. Relating free marketing benefits of
being on KS to the discussion of the creators’ non-financial goals for their campaigns (in
‘Creators’ Characteristics’), this might indicate a new use of KS as a marketing tool. This is
further confirmed by Casper Arbøll who perceives crowdfunding as “a marketing exercise, and
that’s what we are in. The wonderful thing is that it’s a crosspoint between marketing and
investing” (Appendix 9).
Here we answer the third sub-question: ‘What are the specificities of the campaign execution?’
All creators validate their idea by reaching their funding goal, which implies that they discover
‘early adopters’ on KS. Contact with ‘early adopters’ is meant to clarify the creator’s
understanding of his potential customers (two cases were selling their product prior to KS and
therefore are able to compare their average customer to the KS customer, concluding that the
latter are more forgiving, not shy to speak directly to the creator and more supportive. The
majority of creators received feedback mostly on product modifications. Some of the creators are
unable to implement this feedback due to them perceiving their MVP as a final product. All
109
creators worked hard and spent a lot of time on communicating with the backers, and most of the
creators did not expect this amount of work. In the case of 2 creators, we discover that higher
preparedness for the launch of their campaign enables creators to have more time for
communication with the backers, but the degree of preparation does not otherwise reflect on the
‘Execution’ phase. It seems that the number of updates and stretch goals in the Execution phase
might be related to increasing the number of comments by backers and thus to building
community around each project. Higher number of comments simply points to a higher volume
of communication and that creators put more time and effort into communicating with their
backers. Higher number of updates indicates that creators keep their backers engaged and in the
loop. Furthermore, we discover that the majority of creators develop personalized relationships
with their backers. In terms of media and PR, we discover that in 4 cases (insufficient data on the
other half of the cases) the KS video is shown both on KS and off-site, which proves the fact that
the video must carry the whole message and stand on its own and is therefore convincing in front
of any audience. Furthermore, the majority of creators continue to actively promote their
campaign in the ‘execution’ phase, whereas all creators report free marketing benefits from being
on KS, which might indicate a new use of the KS platform as a marketing tool.
Regarding the deviant case, Troels discovered a larger market for his product than he initially
expected, and got in touch with ‘wired audience’ on KS that pulled the creator’s campaign
content and helped him market the campaign, in comparison 2 other cases found ambassadors.
Troels put the funding goal too low unintentionally and made a better success story for the media
by being 1134% overfunded, which is the highest number of all cases. In regard to higher
preparedness prior to the launch, Troels expresses regrets of not preparing campaign elements in
advance so that he would not have to spend time on it while campaigning. Troels’ increased
communication efforts lead to an increased number of backers.
110
CHAPTER 8 Conclusion
Perry Chen, one of the founders of KS, realises that “creativity in itself is a niche. People who
come to the site, they are not like ‘I just wanna look at film, or ‘I just wanna look at music’. They
wanna see creativity, they wanna see passionate people, they’re not just interested in categories
and things in tiny little boxes”63. Funding on KS goes beyond the traditional commercialization
of products. It revolves around making a creative idea happen in the real life with the help of a
community of passionate backers. In other words, crowdfunding is a niche market of creative
ideas.
All 8 creators validated their ideas by successfully reaching their funding goals on KS. What is
more, they all overfunded their projects to different degrees. Overfunding already points to
something more than just donating money to a project - giving even more money to a project
means that backers are receiving value from participating in that project’s community (Perry
Chen, Chapter 6). Overfunding leads to stretch goals and updates, and grows a project in scope
and complexity. This also contributes to an increase in backers’ feedback, which enables even
more learning. All 8 creators entered KS with the goal of launching the production of their
product, but what is common for all of them, is that they got out with something much more
valuable than that - namely an improved understanding of the crowdfunding phenomenon, which
in itself is a learning process.
As stated earlier, a KS campaign is an experiment characterized by learning and a number of
activities, which are individual in each case and can be viewed in Table 6. In Figure 2 below we
provide a holistic view of this paper’s findings. We visually illustrate the connections among the
pillars that guide us towards answering the research question: ‘How can creators exploit the full
potential of their creative idea on Kickstarter?’ These pillars are entrepreneurial characteristics,
non-financial goals and the two stages (‘Pre-planning’ and ‘Execution’) of the campaign process.
In sub-question 1 we discover the four obligatory entrepreneurial characteristics that serve as the
63 Chen, Perry and Isaacson, Walter. Kickstarter and the Economics of Creativity (Full Session). Video Published on 29 Jun 2013. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R7mTFHEs1k
111
basis for bringing a creative idea on KS. In sub-question 2 we examined the most important steps
that creators take in pre-planning their KS campaign. These steps are market research, MVP,
customer considerations, value proposition, and compliance with KS guidelines. In sub-question
3 we approached the specificities of the execution of a KS campaign and discover idea
validation, communication, media and PR. We have discovered that ‘uncertainty’ characterises
the ‘Pre-planning’ phase, and is being replaced by ‘learning’ in the ‘Execution’ phase. The
creators embrace the startup mindset in the ‘Execution’ phase of the campaign.
Figure 2: Holistic view of findings. Source: own creation
112
The ‘Execution’ phase appears to be a lot more important for Troels than his pre-planning
efforts. Our experiment had an observable influence on the progress of the creator’s campaign.
Overfunding by 1134% indicates that it was not too late for him to strengthen his campaign.
Troels’ transformation demonstrates a shift in his mindset to one that closely resembles startups,
and that shift enabled him to exploit the available potential of the campaign. Therefore, we can
conclude that Troels was unable to exploit the full potential of his campaign on KS. Though, we
discovered that no amount of pre-planning can help the creators be ready for everything that will
happen after the launch, as reality is often much more complex than one can imagine.
By tracking Troels’ actions from the moment he got his creative idea until the end of the
campaign, we can clearly see that he entered KS as a creator, who just wanted to start the
production of his product. This illustrates Perry Chen’s example of the 99%, as Troels’ creative
idea by nature was not conceived to generate revenue in the beginning, but simply to solve a
problem. However, he quickly saw the revenue potential of his idea and joined the 1%.
On the basis of our analysis, we can provide a partial answer to the RQ - in order to exploit the
full potential of a creative idea on KS, creators must adopt a startup mindset in the ‘Pre-
planning’ phase of the campaign.
“But I’m still wondering what if I made professional video, and had some experience, asked
some people before I started, had some consultants and spent some money on how to make the
perfect campaign, how much could I make then”
(Troels, Appendix 11)
113
FURTHER RESEARCH
In order to gain a full answer to this RQ, further research is necessary. We make two suggestions
for further research that would build on the findings in this thesis, as we are aware that we have
barely scratched the surface of pre-planning and execution of a crowdfunding campaign. Firstly,
a thorough investigation of backers’ comments, especially in relation to the various updates
creators make on their campaign page, would provide a new angle to Customer Discovery.
Investigating the various backers’ feedback on each KS campaign page would provide new
insights into their needs, motivations, and allow for building a customer archetype for each case.
Secondly, implementing creators’ experiences from unsuccessfully funded projects on KS would
provide a third perspective on the phenomenon, quite different from that of ongoing and
successfully funded campaigns, the assumption being that their learning is enabled regardless of
whether their campaigns reach the funding goal.
114
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Time: 12:02
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