So I'm very pleased to have here today Justin Kazmark who is the VP of Communications at Kickstarter. And he's been at Kickstarter since the very beginning overseeing lots of projects and really understanding the messaging about what makes some projects succeed and other don't. And we're going to get a chance to talk to him today. So I guess the first question is people who are taking this course have the option to go to lots of different crowdfunding sites, and some are more appropriate than others. When should someone choose to go to Kickstarter? >> Sure, so Kickstarter is now the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. I think that people come to Kickstarter for a number of different reasons. I'd suggest taking a look at all of them. And if you are doing a creative project, meaning something that's in film or music, creating an album, a book, Kickstarter is probably the best place for you. You'll be alongside other investing class creators. I think that's kind of important for creative people. It's not necessarily a great thing to be alongside projects that are raising funds for disaster relief or donations, philanthropy, that kind of thing. It creates a kind of a weird moral compromise. As a backer, that side of the marketplace is deciding whether or not they need to get behind a creative project or something that's a little different. So I think that being alongside the most creative people and peers like that is important, sort of operationally Kickstarter exhibits a little bit of differences than other platforms. We are an all or nothing platforms, so you set the scope of your project and you're budget, the number of days that you want to fund. And if you get that funding amount by a certain deadline all of the pledges are transacted at the same moment and you walk away with the money and you can move forward, that's all or nothing. And so other platforms don't offer this or if they do offer it people don't choose it. That's kind of an important difference between us and other platforms. We think it's important because it sort of creates a safety net. As a creator that you're only going to have to move forward and bring the project to life if you have the budget that you scoped out. And so, it would be really difficult if you're going to try to bring a food truck to life with $1,000 of a $10,000 budget. If you get that money that could be problematic. Likewise on the backwards side you know that you're only getting behind projects that receive the amount of money that the creator scoped out. So it might be the case that they eventually do run into trouble even with the amount of money they hoped for. But at least there's sort of a threshold at which they're not expected to move forward unless they have the thing itself. Kickstarter is also six times, likely to get six times much money on Kickstarter as our next nearest competitor. So if you're looking for more money for your creative project, that would be something to keep in mind. And then, I don't know, those were the things that sort of come to mind immediately. >> So, when you think about a successful kickstarter project, right? My research which is partly on your platform shows that it's a long-term process, right? >> Yeah. >> It starts well before and it continues well after. What do you think you need to do at the early stages of a project to make it successful before you even come to the platform? >> Sure, yeah, I think the first thing that anybody thinking about running a Kickstarter project should do is come Kickstarter and find a project that inspires them. Look at a number of projects that might share similar attributes and then back them. Get a sense of what it means to become a backer, because those are the people that are going to be supporting you and that you're going to want to keep happy throughout the whole process. So if you haven't backed a project before then I would suggest probably don't try to launch one yet as a creator. Yeah, so that would be important, I think that in terms of creating the film or the album or the book or whatever it is that you're creating. You're going to want to have some sort of sense of a plan for getting that done, after the fact. The campaign on Kickstarter is important to plan that, but it's also important to plan what it is that you're trying to accomplish, and what the action plan is for producing it. So I would say head of the campaign both of those things are important. And I would say that we found that project's have more success when they are visually compelling, they let people into the back story. So you're going to want to get a sense to your backers about who it is, not just what is trying to accomplish but who it is that you are, how did you get to this place. And what it is that you're going to do and how are you going to invite people on along for that journey, so I think all those things are key. >> So since preparation and making sure you have a compelling story to tell are so important, do you have any examples that you might be able to give of somebody who did a particularly good job telling a compelling story? >> Sure, one that comes to mind is the Low Line project. This project launched a few years ago on Kickstarter, maybe 2010 or 11. It was called the Delancey Underground, I think, at the time. And they had this idea for sort of the world's first ever underground park. It was an architect and his partner. And they found out that there's this giant sort of abandoned trolley station in the lower east side of Manhattan. And they though to themselves, this would be an amazing public work. And so without having the license to do this, or the proper permitting they had this idea to create an underground park below the surface of Manhattan. And that inspired a lot of people to get behind this idea. They sort of gave people a sense of what it would look like through designs and that kind of thing. Now along the way, the years that have gone by, they've kept people in the loop. And this is an exciting part of the think sort of journey as a backer. No one can go to this park, because it doesn't exist. And the people that pledged to it aren't, they're not visiting this park yet, but they've been sort of kept up with the journey along the way. And just recently, I think they've gone through the steps to get the permitting. So they're sort of making progress, slowly but surely. And this is exactly what the kind of thing you want to do. >> What about during a project? What's important to do during a project's run to make sure it's going to be successful? And how do you deal with the fact that you're asking for money from people, often friends and family? The money doesn't always come in right away. What do you recommend, both from a sort of feeling perspective but also from a doing perspective for people considering the campaign? >> Yeah, sure, so yeah, so running a Kickstarter project take a lot of courage. It's a very highly public actor on the Internet asking for support for an idea that doesn't exist yet. And you're doing that for the people that believe in you, also people that you've never met before, complete strangers. So I think that there's a bit of, it takes some emotional confidence, so you want to prepare yourself for that. I think we see a common funding graph for Kickstarter projects, where on day one, you lauch, there's an immediate excitement about it, from your friends, and your closest fans, and your family, and they'll immediately pledge. And you see the graph just sort of spike. And then there's oftentimes, sort of a lull and you might incrementally get some funding. And then towards the end of the funding, as you're approaching the deadline, if you're a few dollars short, a couple hundred dollars short, a couple thousand dollars short, you see the project spike again. And so being prepared for that momentum shift throughout the campaign is important. I think that you want to prepare yourself for that and then try to find ways to engage your network and your network's networks. So you want to sort of come up with reasons for people to come back and look at the project. Create compelling updates along the way. Maybe thinking about revealing new parts of the campaign that you hadn't revealed before. All that kind of stuff is important. And get people emotionally invested in your project. >> So, and then of course after you've raised your money, you have to deliver. So can you give us some tips on making sure that you deliver, and some examples of what separate people are really successful at that or not? >> Sure, yeah, so your campaign is the first chapter in the life of your project. And now that you've received the money, you've got to go on and deliver on what you said you're going to deliver. And that's why people are trusting you and so you need to sort of earn that trust continuously throughout the life of the project. And I'd say the most important thing you can do, aside from producing the thing that you said you're going to produce, is to keep people in the loop and be very, very open along the whole journey. So you're going to want to at a regular basis, maybe every three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, some rhythm, continue to give your backers an inside look, a behind the scenes peek at how you're doing. What progress you're making, what progress you're not making and be very open and honest about that. I think that's going to keep people on your side and you're going to want to also think about keeping backers first. So the backers, they're the earliest adopters for your project. They're the ones that got behind you on day one. And they've sort of earned some kind of position in getting the thing that you promised them. So by the time you're ready to deliver, you're going to want to make sure that you're keeping them in the loop first or getting the things that you said you'd get them first and that's going to pay dividends later on. >> What about if things go badly? So you've had some barrier, you can't deliver, what should people do? >> 100%, so we know this is true and through the research that you've done on Kickstarter we know that 9% of Kickstarter projects fail to deliver rewards. So the first thing, I would say, for backers, is to go into Kickstarter without expectation. Understand that projects do run into hurdles, whether it's on or off Kickstarter. Creating something new is difficult, there are challenges. It just happens to be the case that it's very open and transparent with Kickstarter. So you don't see it when it happens with Hollywood, or with the record labels, or something like that. But for creators, if you're somebody who's trying to bring something new to life, and you're running into hurdles. I would say number one, go in expecting that's going to happen, you won't be able to foresee all those hurdles. But don't lose confidence along the way, you're going to want to do everything you can to make the project happen. I would say you can reach out to people that have been there before. We have a forum on site called Campus where we allow people to ask questions and try to survey the community. But I think for the most part, what you want to do is exactly what you want to do in the project is succeeding, and that is to keep people in the loop. Be very open and honest, do not hide, I think there's a tendency to want to, if something is not going well, to shy away from that. Because that it feels maybe embarrassing or you're not sure how people would feel about it. But I think resist that urge to shy away and to be just completely honest and open. I think the backers expect that, they deserve that and it'll just be better in the long run. We've heard stories of people coming clean about this and then, people within the backward community have something to share that allows them to help them move forward, and so this has happened before. You're just going to want to be very open and forthright about it. >> So this has been really helpful and obviously Kickstarter is one of the pioneers of crowd funding in this kind of way. What's the future of crowd funding you think? >> Yeah, that's a good question. I think that, when I think about crowd funding this is something that feels very new but it extends centuries into the past. And so the future crowdfunding could very much so look like, the history of crowdfunding. Mozart, Beethoven, Walt Whitman all using this kind of activity to engage their subscribers, their fans and create, produce new works. Now that it's on the Internet its shifting a little bit, it's evolving. I think we're seeing it go into different directions. The whole equity profiting space is interesting. I think that feels a little bit more like new investing rather than new crowd funding but we'll see where that goes. There's also subscription models which are coming up which is very interesting. I think that crowd funding itself may remain, the core tenants may remain the same. But I think culture itself is beginning to understand and get used to crowd funding. And what you're going to see is culture begin to look a lot more like Kickstarter than anything else. So you're going to start to see the marquees on theaters and the shelves on bookstores looking more and more like what you see on Kickstarter, but 18 months earlier. >> Excellent. Thank you so much. >> Thank you.
