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16 | I NSIGH T • J u n e 2 0 15 w w w . i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m FACE TIME The great thing about crowdfunding is that you have proof that someone is buying your product — not only for you to build confidence to keep making it, but also for distributors and shops to be able to see that consumers have desire for your product. Technical College's Fab Lab, and then I eventually got them manufactured at McCormick Industries in Appleton. I kind of lucked my way into having a successful Kickstarter campaign. VeloNews.com published an article about our prototype right before Christmas 2012. We had the campaign two weeks later, and that story generated 550 emails. When I launched, I emailed all of those people. And that's what got the product some momentum. My first campaign raised $42,000 on Kickstarter in 30 days (the goal was $18,000). In 2014 we did another Fix It Sticks campaign, version two with replaceable bits, as well as another product called a T-wrench. at campaign raised $82,000 (goal: $14,000). Back Bottle is the third campaign, and that was just a couple of months ago, and that one hit $15,000 on Kickstarter (goal: $7,000). I have a good entrepreneur network that I meet with every two weeks for coffee and we just chitchat. at core group of people, we call ourselves "disrupters," was critical in making sure that I didn't screw up. ey're my sounding board. I get asked to go to coffee quite a bit to help people with their crowdfunding ideas or their inventions. A lot of times people just don't do the work, and that obviously is going to lead them into a bad situation. Before I launched, I had a virtual assistant. Sometimes you just got to spend money, so I had a part-time employee and a virtual assistant while I was still in my day job, paying other people to do all the tasks I didn't have time to do. We have a really good game plan for launching a campaign. As long as I can keep coming up with quirky ideas that are interesting, we should be able to keep plowing them out to the public. If they fail, that's OK. at's where crowdfunding is really nice because I haven't had to spend massive amounts of money to launch a product that I don't know if anybody wants. It's called crowdfunding as a generic term, however, 'funding' is where people get tripped up. In reality, it's just preordering a product. e great thing about crowdfunding is that you have proof that someone is buying your product — not only for you to build confidence to keep making it, but also for distributors and shops to be able to see that consumers have a desire for your product. I can't recommend crowdfunding enough, because it's the ultimate test to see if (your product) is going to work. Fly Local. Be Home Sooner. FLYGRB.COM