Will Ford is one of the world's top crowdfunding experts. As President and Co-Founder of LaunchBoom, the leading crowdfunding agency for hardware startups, he has helped thousands of inventors and entrepreneurs leverage platforms like Kickstarter or Indiegogo to establish and scale their product empires. Today, he explains why a successful crowdfunding campaign can lead to significantly higher post-campaign investments and increased sales across multiple channels to inform inventors, startups, and small manufacturers. Will also details best practices for raising funds and optimizing crowdfunding efforts, emphasizing the importance of planning, storytelling, and social proof.

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Key Takeaways in This Episode:

• Don’t give away too much equity too early in your entrepreneurial journey!

• Although it's great to have more money at the start, if you give away early equity, you will erode a lot of your future potential earnings

• Convertible debt is a great pathway for raising money for your future valuation.

• You can take a prototype and pre-sell it to thousands of people worldwide through a crowdfunding platform.

• Raise growth capital after you complete your crowdfunding campaign.

• You will raise far more money if you bootstrap for as long as possible before crowdfunding, and you will give out far less equity.

• Buyers always want the coolest new products on the market as early as possible. This is why crowdfunding platforms are so powerful for inventors.

• You can turn backers who support your campaigns on Kickstarter and Indiegogo into investors after the campaign is over.

• Dr. Squatch is an example of a hundred-thousand-dollar crowdfunding campaign.

• Prelaunch, test, and then validate the return on ad spend.

MAKO Design + Invent: www.makodesign.com

Kevin Mako: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevmako

Producer: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. We also help our clients with...

David Brown, one of our talented industrial designers at MAKO Design, is a true expert in hardware product video renderings. With a rich background in industrial design and design engineering, David has honed his product design skills to an exceptionally refined degree. Today, he's excited to share his expertise with inventors, startups, and small manufacturers. Imagine being able to visualize your product idea in stunning detail before it even exists – like a trailer for a new captivating horror movie. That's the magic of 3D CAD video renderings, and David is here to demystify the process. He'll take you through the creation process of video renderings and how they can be a game-changer at every stage of your product's journey. From the initial spark of inventing to the thrill of making your first sale, David will reveal how these renderings can bring your vision to life for investors or potential consumers and set you on the path to success.

Click this link for This Episode's Full Info Page: https://www.makodesign.com/podcast/232-video-product-renderings-for-your-invention/

Key Takeaways in This Episode:

• Using video renderings is like bringing Hollywood to your product design!

• Video rendering is essentially taking 3D CAD designs and making a video with that series of images and data.

• It is like setting up a virtual camera that provides a full-scope view of the product in the setting where you would naturally find it.

• You must also take into account the environment and lighting!

• You can create things with video renderings that cannot be done in real life; this is one of its primary advantages.

• Exploded view renderings show how the product comes apart and all of its pieces.

• You can use these tools to explain a lot about a product and inform potential consumers.

• Product demos and tutorials are other uses for video renderings.

• How can you direct your designers to build a great hardware product rendering video for what you need?

• The core requirement for making the video is creating a storyboard and ordering the elements to effectively tell the story.

• Video renderings are standard these days for a great product, but you also need to develop a prototype!

• There is post-processing of the video as well to refine the story being told and how it is presented.

MAKO Design + Invent: www.makodesign.com

Kevin Mako: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevmako

Producer: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design,

Hamdy Albana is the founder of Push Analytics, a sustainable growth-centred marketing agency focused on leveraging data to propel brands from inception to millions in sales. Additionally, bolstered by a robust education in electrical engineering at NYU, he possesses a wealth of knowledge salient to hardware startup business owners. Today, Hamdy will share the benefits and nuances of selling products directly on one's own website as opposed to through online marketplaces like Amazon with today's inventors, startups, and small manufacturers. He will also highlight the two most critical aspects of launching a new social media marketing campaign to attract potential customers to your site and divulge best practices for optimizing return on ad spend, enabling you to swiftly and successfully scale your new product business.

Click this link for This Episode's Full Info Page: https://www.makodesign.com/podcast/231-selling-your-invention-on-your-own-website-starting-from-zero/

Key Takeaways in This Episode:

• How to scale your brand from securing your first few sales to millions of dollars in revenue using your own website to sell directly to end customers.

• Squarespace, Shopify, and other popular website building and hosting platforms are great options for building your D2C site.

• The biggest advantage of selling through your own website is that you own all of the customer contact and relationship info.

• Social media ads are great for getting new prospective customers to your custom website.

• Interest is the key part to identify when pinpointing your target audience.

• The second most important part of your campaign is your content. It provides different types of messaging that explain your product’s value proposition.

• Look for clear signs by analyzing the metrics on each type of ad to know if you’re moving in the right direction.

• Use your ad dollars in the early stages to learn what is working and not working to ensure you are continually improving.

• 50 orders is a notable learning point! You can feed the customer info into Meta's system, and the algorithm will help you find new customers.

• Scale, troubleshoot, repeat! This strategy will allow for continuous growth.

• Start with $50 per day in ad spend and increase the amount after your first few orders come in.

• Focus on a large geography rather than a small region to let the algorithm find where the most efficient and aligned sales are for you.

MAKO Design + Invent: www.makodesign.com

Kevin Mako: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevmako

Producer: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house