18 Oct How to Start a Business with Kickstarter

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform that allows entrepreneurs to get enough funding to start their businesses. Kickstarter can be used to start a business, provided you meet certain criteria.

Some of the key things to consider when using Kickstarter to start a business are:

Do You Have a Viable Market Product?

The most important thing to know before you consider using Kickstarter to start a business is to identify whether your product is a market fit?

Meaning, do people even want to buy your product?

There are many times when entrepreneurs think they’ve got a great product, only to realize that it wasn’t something people actually needed. For instance, in a world where smartwatches are available in plenty and the fact that most people either buy a Samsung Galaxy, an Apple Watch or a Fitbit, what would make them crowdfund your smartwatch?

What unique, mind-blowing USP are you offering for someone to pay $100 for a smartwatch?

How do you compete against other brands in your respective market?

These and many more important questions need to be answered before you use Kickstarter to start your own business.

Conduct a Thorough Customer Research

Before you kickstart your business on Kickstarter, conduct thorough customer research and survey. And that doesn’t mean asking your friends and family – they are always going to give you a biased opinion. Reach out to different groups of people on channels like Reddit and Facebook.

You can also pay professional companies to get customer surveys and feedback on a certain product. Without adequate customer feedback, you’ll never be able to be confident in your product.

Make Sure You Understand How Kickstarter Works

Kickstarter isn’t as easy as going online and simply submitting a campaign.

Kickstarter has strict rules and eligibility criteria that you must meet before you can even submit a campaign.

And that’s not all.

You must have a functional website or landing page. You must have creative assets like videos and high-quality images.

Most importantly, you must have people who will be backing your funding goal.

You cannot succeed with a crowdfunding campaign if you don’t have people backing your project.

No people, no funding, no success!

Making Sure Your Product is Ready for Market

Kickstarter will thoroughly vet your project so if it’s not ready for market with a viable prototype, it will not be allowed to launch. The whole point of using a crowdfunding platform is to get the necessary funding to scale your product manufacturing process, thereby launching a business.

If your product is not yet ready and you still haven’t gone beyond the research, validation, or design process, you cannot launch a Kickstarter campaign.
Because when you’re launching a campaign, you have to deliver on the promised date. Missing your deadlines and your milestones would mean affecting your brand reputation and any future chances of success.

Understanding How Crowdfunding Works

Crowdfunding may sound like a “charity” but when you’re using crowdfunding for business or for profit, it’s a completely different ball game.

In crowdfunding for business, you’re essentially asking customers who don’t know you to spend money in buying your product.

They don’t know who you are.
They’ve never bought anything from you.
There are no reviews or endorsements of your product.

They are backing you simply because they like or believe in what they see on the page.

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So Should You Launch on Kickstarter or Indiegogo?

Crowdfunding for business is literally asking people to pre-order your product so you really have to make sure you’ve got everything right before you start launching.

To Conclude
Yes, you can use Kickstarter to start a business, but before you do, you must understand the core concept of crowdfunding, what it is, and how you can use it to start and run a sustainable business.