Virgin StartUp & Kickstarter

Joshua Renouf
Jul 22, 2017 · 8 min read

Like I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, my product went viral and I received a lot of online press. This organically grew my mailing list to around 30,000 people, therefore I knew there was a market out there for The Barisieur. Back in 2015 I felt like one cloud alone in the big blue sky. When it comes to designing and branding a product I feel confident; but when it comes to business and serious numbers — I’m not the one.

Explaining my design to the public

Therefore it was obvious that I needed help. I needed business advice. I needed a mentor. Enter Virgin StartUp.

They don’t call it the dream team for no reason. No matter how good your product or service is, if you surround yourself with people on the same wave-length, with the same passion and work ethic, it seems impossible. When making a decision about funding and who to approach, I remember weighing up my options between applying for the Princes Trust Vs applying for Virgin Start-Up. After a lot of research and deliberation, I applied to VSU due to its incredible brand, connections within the business, and maybe one day I felt I could potentially run into the man himself; Sir Richard Branson.

When finally getting through the application process and finalising a business plan, I was paired with an incredibly cool mentor called James. He was everything I looked up to with regards to a mentor, he was apart of 6 businesses and had set up a few design consultancies and knew a lot about brand, design strategy, UX and most importantly BUSINESS. Because these mentors are giving up their precious time in order to help young entrepreneurs like myself to succeed quickly, you meet anywhere thats convenient with them. My first encounter with James was in a Costa Coffee near Waterloo. Without wasting seconds, it seemed apparent that I was eager to empty my head with thoughts, James eager to fill his. I described everything that had been happening over the past few months with regards to The Barisieur- developers mucking me about and taking double as long (1 year) to make a working prototype. To Fox News covering the Barisieur in America on their morning show. To the amount of emails I was receiving asking to buy the Barisieur (one even pinged up on my laptop email whilst explaining to him). James could see my passion, he knew this would be fun. I explained to James that I was looking to launch on Kickstarter due to having access to an increasingly large mailing list, I can raise capital with pre-orders and I don’t need to get investment. All I needed was support, guidance and organisation. I need a team. James provided me with his talented team.

James and his team supported me pre and post Kickstarter. There were definitely a lot of up’s and downs but without their support it would of been incredibly difficult and un-enjoyable experience. We set a high target of £380,000 due to the product being an expensive piece to produce.

Like most people’s jobs, there is always good days and bad days. I feel like when the bad days crop up, Virgin Start up seem to have this special entrepreneurial sense that starts to tingle and come to the rescue. I remember the week before the end of the Barisieur’s campaign on Kickstarter and I had around £150,000 more to raise in order to meet our target or we’d get nothing. I woke up feeling pretty useless as I felt like I had tried everything in order to continue the buzz about the product and maintain the pre-orders/sales, not to mention it had been my life for around 2 years. I ended up having a little cry due to the fear of letting friends and family down, mixed with what seemed like an impossible target to hit along with feeling like there were little options left. My girlfriend took me off for a walk to try and pick me up and tell me everything was going to be OK. On the walk, my phone rang and the conversation went a little like this:

VSU:“Hey Josh, its Andy here form Virgin Start-up, how are you today?”

Me :“Hey Andy, yeah could be better to be honest…”

VSU: “Well it’s just a quick one. We have Richard Branson coming in on Monday to do a talk on Brexit and to meet some of the Virgin Start-Ups. I just wanted to know if you’d be interested in this?”

(In my head I was thinking “ Who is pranking me? Are you taking the p***? Is this a joke?)

Me: “Let me just check my diary to see if I can schedule Rich in, hold on two secs. (almost crying again).. Andy I’ll be there. Whatever time. I’ll be there 2 hours before”

VSU: “Great stuff!”

I put the phone down and nearly dropped to my knee’s —This was the pick-me-up I ordered. I think if someone asked me at that very point in time before I received that phone call— “if you could speak to anyone in the World right now to alleviate any of your worries and could potential help, who would it be” — I would answer none other than Richard Branson.

I feel like when you are at your lowest, like real low — I’m talking walking to the shop to get a £2 microwavable pizza for the tenth time in a week, potentially some cigarettes (even though you don’t smoke) having a conversation with a homeless man thinking maybe this could be me one day low. People can sense the energy. VSU definitely can thats for sure, and it was an angelic moment.

Monday came and I couldn’t be any more excited. I’d practice my pitch to Rich and I was feeling good. Whatever happens, at least I get to say I’ve met dicky! I turned up prompt with my prototypes and set them up in the board room. Rich (we’re practically mates now, I can refer to him as Rich, it’s cool) arrived looking like he’d just kite-surfed from Necker island with his salty, wind-swept, bleached hair; smelling like a mixture of beach and Bleu de Channel. He immediately brightening up the room with his huge white smile, shaking hands of all his colleagues as he made his way to the interview stage. It was great to see the Virgin family atmosphere come to life. Rich openly shared his views about Brexit and how it’s important to vote remain (livid) due to how potentially damaging it could be for small businesses and trade. He touched on the legalisation of Marijuana and how profitable it could be for the economy to Tax it, whilst it would relieve time for the police to concentrate on other matters. He also touched upon his wild days hanging out with the rolling stones and talking passionately about the importance of taking time out to just enjoy life especially with family and friends. Overall the man’s a legend/dream #ManCrush.

We went in to the board room with around 5 other startups, Rich happened to walk in and sit right next to me (I told you we were mates). We went around the table and explained our product and hurdles to Rich whilst he responded with words of wisdom. HE’S SO WISE! It got to me and I opened with how a guy (who supplies coffee to his Virgin Hotel in Chicago) emailed me asking for units to fill the hotel with. I also explained how I needed to find around £100,000 in 48 hours in order to cross the line on Kickstarter, and if he knew of anyone that may have that type of money to help a brother out it would be massively appreciated. He didn’t get the hint and swerved the question gracefully with a response of — “Well if it makes coffee like my wife does, I’m sure it will be a success.”

I left feeling energised — someone managed to snap a picture of me and my new best mate and I was going to use this to give the Barisieur even more credibility. I had 48 hours to give this one last push.

Rich wrote a little article called How to act on a business idea and spoke about his encounter with myself and the Barisieur. I was stoked!

Brexit was announced shortly the next morning whilst I was working part-time at design store in Shoreditch (yes working part-time whilst trying to crowd-fund a product is not easy). On my lunch break I had to turn lemon’s into lemonade and frantically email all the potentially American backers, explaining that the sterling had just plummeted and your Barisieur is now more affordable! I blogged about my time with Rich as well, and people could see how close we were to the finish line. We had strangers who had backed from all over the world trying to get friends and families to back in order to push us over the line. I had stranger donating £50 instead of £5 — it was incredible.

Kickstarter even saw the potential in our campaign and made us project of the day to give us more exposure. Granted the Barisieur is a premium product that comes at an expense — so it’s not an impulse buy. I was hoping that the consumer behaviour for people who wanted to purchase the product would potentially take slightly longer to mull over compared to an impulse buy for a cheaper product. I was hoping people who had given them selves time to consider the purchase and potentially wait for pay day would come back and buy before the campaign was over. We had to make £63,000 of pre-orders in 23 hours.

Showing the funding journey. £100,000 in 6 hours at the beginning. to levelling off to £100 in 17 days, to the final push over the line!

With only minutes to spare we crawled over the line at £383,000. It was a tough ride, but we did it. We actually DID IT!

Comment from one of the Barisieur Backers

The Barisieur is now on Indiegogo Demand raising more pre-orders before we go to production in August.

Thank you to everyone involved

Joshua Renouf

Written by

Product Designer | Creator of the Barisieur - Coffee Alarm Clock — http://www.instagram.com/joshrenouf

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