Remember the good ol’ days when inventing a product for a third grade assignment seemed so easy and totally tangible? Yeah, us neither.
But these wild inventor dreams are now becoming reality with entrepreneurship sites like Kickstarter, a website where anyone can pitch his or her project to the world and have it funded by the masses. It’s essentially a giant piggy bank for kind strangers who want to see dreams come to life.
The dream for Cody and Ross Crooks began their freshman year after seeing some people longboarding on campus.
“One night in the dorms, Ross was laying in bed and I was at my desk, and he said, ‘I think I have an idea for our company. Let’s make a longboard backpack,’” Cody says. “And it’s been going on ever since.”
Cody, his twin brother Ross, and Roderick Deerr, all IU alumni, came together after realizing a proper backpack for longboards, skateboards, and snowboards didn’t exist.
This led them to their Kickstarter project, Concrete Native, and a sleek longboard bag with a whole lot of good vibes. The project had 35 days to make its goal of $10,000.
Concrete Native surpassed its goal, making $12,000 in 33 days.
“We probably spent two months taking photos and getting the profile page set up, coming up with rewards for pledges, shooting the video, editing the video,” Roderick says. “During that time, Cody and Ross were trying to get us publicized and get the word out for about a month.”
Kickstarter, founded in 2009, has since funded more than 48,000 projects, bringing the world one step closer together.
The creative process of each project is completely in the developer’s hands, but it must have a clear end and fit into one of Kickstarter’s categories.
Funding is all or nothing and disappears if the goal isn’t met.
With the support of generous donators, Concrete Native is skating off into the future.
“We have unlimited ideas in our brains, and we would like to show everyone what we’ve got,” Ross says.
Kickstarter do’s
Look at other’s successes
Cody says you can see a pattern of which Kickstarters are more successful than others based on the design of their page. Keep it classy, people.
Take your time
Like any good Instagram-filtered quote says, “Time is patience.” Ross says in order to give your customer the perfect product you have to take your time and do your research.
Something every day
Ross says to find the line between being annoying and persistent. If you lose a friend or two, they didn’t matter much anyway. Haters to the left.
Kickstarter don’ts
Get discouraged
Roderick says if you’re nearing the end of your goal completion date, don’t fret. Pressure people to donate, and save the hair pulling for later.
Rush the product
“Everyone gets excited about their idea, and you just want to put it out there as soon as possible. Take the time, do the research, and it will be great and you will succeed,” Ross says.
Waste time
Make sure you know how much money you need. Think about developing, prototyping, sampling, and materials. Procrastination isn’t your friend.
