This Revolutionary 3d-Printed Product Should Have Raised Millions From The Crowd, So Why Didn’t It?

Three weeks ago I gave a lecture at Tel Aviv University about crowdfunding. Thirty minutes before I was due to take the podium I received a newsletter with a link to a very cool, 3D-printed, guitar gadget (curated by Raz Karmi). Tom Barnes, a journalist for Mic had this to say about the gadget:

“Trying to assemble the perfect guitar for every situation is a pipe dream for most musicians. Most would likely bankrupt themselves paying thousands of dollars to collect the perfect armada of guitars to own every genre they want to play. Yet, there’s one company working to bring this dream of high-end guitar customization to the people.

Strassell Guitars — a small, New York City-based company founded by Andrew Strassell — has come up with a way for guitarists to essentially turn a single guitar into dozens.”

Sage Lazzaro of The Observer wrote about Strassell Guitars as well. He was so confident that Strassell’s idea would take off that he titled his piece: “How 3D Printing Is Changing the Guitar Forever.”

But the device wasn’t in production yet. The company was looking for funding and offered a link to its crowdfunding campaign on IndieGogo, a platform I really like.

As a founder of a crowdfunding platform, I’ve seen thousands of campaigns and I expected that this one, for a great idea with a big potential market, would have done very well. What I found made me change my lecture notes and talk about why ths crowdfunding campaign failed.

This is what I saw:

That’s right. A campaign to raise $50,000 had run for two months and managed to generate a grand total of… $30.

Now, there are a lot of reasons for a crowdfunding campaign to end up like that. In many cases, it’s down to marketing. Crowdfunding platforms are not like Kayak. People don’t usually stop by looking for a campaign they want to support in the same way that they visit a travel site to buy a plane ticket for journey they need to take. However, when people crowdfund successfully, it’s also because they’ve worked hard to show and tell people what they’re doing. They’ve created a campaign — and a campaign that’s effective.

Strassell Guitars barely bothered with its campaign and the campaign it did offer had five mistakes in five essential areas:

1. Video: A short film is essential in a crowdfunding campaign. It’s the most effective way for a company to tell its story and engage with an audience. While Strassell Guitars’ product was exciting, its video was dull, short and delivered the wrong message with the wrong content.

You can see it for yourself.

When people look at a crowdfunding video, they want to understand the product, but they also want to see the creators and be inspired by their vision. Nancy Durate has analyzed thousands of speeches and has a great Ted talk analyzing the structure of the best pitch. Strassell Guitars’ videos had none of those essential elements.

The video will also have between five and ten seconds to win people’s attention — that’s it. Strassell Guitars’ creator should have showed himself with a guitar and opened with something like: “History will split the guitar industry into two parts, before the Strassell and after. Now I’m going to show you why.” That would have been enough to keep the viewer watching. Instead, we got waffle… and lost audiences.

2. Perks: Although supporters could donate any amount they wanted, Strassell Guitars’ campaign had only two perks: one at $100 and another at $2,500.

The average pledge in a crowdfunding campaign is around $25. For that price, Strassell Guitars could have offered a discount or a sack of guitar-related accessories. It wouldn’t have taken too much imagination to find a few dollars’ worth of goodies to give away in return for $25. By starting four times higher, the company missed out on its biggest potential audience.

The huge gap to the next perk guaranteed that they missed out on even more. Effective campaigns must use perks and rewards to incentivize donations and pitch at price levels to suit a range of different budgets.

3. Graphics: The body of Strassell Guitars’ campaign had too little imagery (they uploaded the images to the gallery, which in my opinion is less effective). When it comes to product-related campaigns people want to “feel” the product as much as they can. The campaign should function like an online store allowing supporters to almost pick up the product and try it out.

They also want to be convinced that this idea will happen, and that the project owner knows how to turn a concept into a product. Here is a good example of how to do it right.

4. Friends And Family: No one wants to be the first to reach into their pocket. A crowdfunding campaign should start with more than two backers from its closest circle to provide funds. Whoever those first backers may be, they should be lined up so that strangers can see that the project is already trusted and that they won’t be the only supporters.

5. Duration Of The Campaign: When it comes to the time available for support, more is not better. Campaigns should have a sense of urgency, a threat of a lost opportunity if the Support button isn’t pressed now. Indiegogo published some data recently that showed the ideal campaign duration is 30 days. Strassell went for 60.

6. Point by Tom Dawkins, founder of StartSomeGood.com: I shared a draft of this article with my subscribers at my “weekly crowdfunding pearls” and requested for feedback. Tom added that this should have been an “all or nothing” campaign and not a flexible one. I’m not sure I totally agree with this point, but I might be a minority on this one, so I think this is absolutely worth mentioning (thanks Tom!).

The founder of Strassell Guitars has a great idea and he can still raise a lot of money for his product using crowdfunding. He just needs to learn more about the specific needs of a crowdfunding campaign and the best ways to bring people to the page, engage and give.

I’m the founder of Mimoona and SonyaBot, the first crowdfunding bot (see VentureBeat). I recently launched “Fully-Funded-Club”, a premium crowdfunding course.