Do you recall the first time you landed on a crowdfunding project page? Your reaction probably lay somewhere on the spectrum between “huh, this is different” and “how the $#*& did somebody raise $50K to make Potato Salad?”
Either way, you knew you had stumbled upon something new. There was a Pledge button and Rewards, a video telling a story and a big counter showing how many other people were sold on this particular idea. If you weren’t familiar with crowdfunding, it probably looked like a cross between a fundraiser and a limited time sale. You probably didn’t quite get it at first. Neither did we right away, and neither do most people.
Crowdfunding is different than a standard product launch because it doesn’t fit neatly into existing product launch paradigms. It’s like a pre-sale, but the sale only goes through if you reach a certain sales threshold. It’s like a fundraiser, but those who give funds get a very tangible reward in return, one that often out-values the funds they put in. It’s like standard e-commerce, except there’s only one buy button, you can only add one thing to your cart and you specify the price at which you’re willing to buy.
We could sit here and freestyle-differentiate all day. But the fact is that below the surface observations, there are some very real, critical differences between launching a product on Kickstarter and launching a product just about anywhere else. These differences not only highlight the benefits of running a crowdfunding campaign, they also help us think about what we should do differently to make our projects successful.