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As a hardware incubator and VC, we atSVV考虑公司投资时，请看一些关键的事情。

One thing that will automatically set you apart from other companies when attempting to raise institutional funding is a successful crowdfunding campaign. If you have one, we immediately take your company much more seriously than the thousands of other companies that we look at.

Especially in hardware. It has become crucial for founders to be able to execute a successful campaign. It’s one of the best ways to get early traction before having to manufacture your product, which as you probably know, is a very capital-intensive task.

With some projects, it seems easy for the campaign owners. Products like the Pebble watch, OUYA, and others seemed to just naturally attract the huge numbers of backers that they needed, with ease.

Is it just luck?

I think not.

As we constantly analyze what it takes for a hardware company to succeed, we’ve found that the most successful projects all have seven things in common, and if you get these things right, too, you’ll be poised for the same kind of success that they had.

1. High-quality production—graphics, video, etc.

Your company is in its very early stages. This creates a bit of a conflict for your potential backers. They hope that your product will come into existence and deliver what it promises, but your company lacks the credibility and track record of fully established companies.

Having professional graphics, a nicely produced video, and nicely planned out campaign can immediately add the credibility that you need to win over your potential backers.

Have you ever heard of the saying, don’t judge a book by its cover?

The truth is, most people do just that.来自斯坦福大学的一项研究, researchers found that 75% of web users make judgements about a company’s credibility based on their website’s design. What’s more is that they found that in total, first impressions are 94% design-related. If users make these judgments just by looking at your website, don’t you think the same thing will happen on your campaign page?

Your graphics, your copy, your video, and your layout matter.

Knowing that the vast majority of people make judgements about your company based sheerly on visuals can begin to work for you. If you follow the example of the crowdfunding all-stars, likePebble, you’ll get an idea of the type of design finesse you need to bring to your campaign.

Get these things right, and you’ve completed the first step of becoming a highly funded project.

2. A clear outline of how you plan to deliver

Second on the list is another credibility issue.

There’s been a lot of unrest in the crowdfunding world lately, especially in hardware, because more and more projects have failed to deliver their product.Projects like Zano和many others raised large sums of money from their backers, only to never even create their final product, leaving their backers out of luck.

As crowdfunders are getting smarter and realizing that more startups are using it to get some easy early sales for their company, many have grown weary of just seeing a fancy campaign page that doesn’t have a plan to deliver.

In other words, on your campaign page, you have to talk the talk, but on the other end of things, you have to show your backers that you can walk the walk. After all, most campaigns that never delivered their product to their backers had fancy campaign pages, too.

By clearly outlining yourmanufacturing plan和mentioning that you’ve already started working with manufacturers and expect to be able to ship, you’ll put your backers’ fears to rest, and you’ll likely raise much more money. This is usually done in the FAQ section, where backers that need extra information can find it. TheCoolest Cooler campaignis a great example of an in-depth FAQ section that inspires backers’ confidence in the company.

If you’ve been unable to begin talks with manufacturers before your campaign,this guide may be of great use to you!

3. A community around your product

This is arguably THE most important component of a crowdfunding campaign. If you have a passionate community around your product, they’ll be very willing to overlook many of the problems that crowdfunded products present.

If you’ve taken the time to build a communitybeforeyou launch, you’ve already built up credibility with a crowd, and they will trust you much more. These will be your early backers.

But this also creates a snowball effect.

Even if you already have a passionate community, a huge number of your backers will be people who stumble across your product for the first time by landing on your campaign page.

Nothing adds more credibility to your brand on a crowdfunding platform than seeing that people are already backing your product.

If you’ve made it this far, your product is probably already pretty cool, which means that people will want it. Now, your barrier is to convince them that you can deliver, and that they should buy it. Nothing does that better than seeing that other people are already backing your project.

A great example of a campaign that had a passionate community around it before even starting the crowdfunding process is theOUYA game console campaign。Even though after raising their money and operating for a time, they seemed to alienate their customers, they got it right in the first steps.

4. Planned price increases

即使我也承认，当我看到众筹活动时，我的第一个想法是：“我只会等到它真正出来，然后我就会明白。”唯一的问题是，几乎100％的时间我忘记了回来，而该活动永远不会得到我的钱。

It turns out that I’m not the only one who does this.A study by Baymard Instituteshowed that in typical Ecommerce situations, average shopping cart abandonment rates can be close to 70%! That means that there is a large percentage of people who打算to buy your product but just don’t follow through and end up forgetting about it. This exact reason is why you need to make sure that you create a sense of urgency in your campaign that ensures that you get the maximum amount of people to back your product when you need them to.

This comes down to value. Either show them that they’ll get your valuable product at a large discount for backing you, or add additional valuable bonuses that are only available during the crowdfunding stage. This will add more urgency and get more people to actually follow through. If you take a look at any successful campaign today, almost all of them have a sense of urgency that leads people to back the project now, rather than wait to purchase it later.

5. Different levels of rewards

Almost all campaigns that have been wildly successful have had a very well thought-out reward system. After all, the reason that people back your campaign is to get your rewards.

One very important thing that many hardware entrepreneurs overlook is to get large backers on board before you even launch.

许多最成功的广告系列都为那些愿意捐款的支持者提供了高昂的奖励。Ouya是您在众筹活动中可以以99美元的价格获得的游戏机，在500美元的范围内有很多选择，一直到达到$ 10K。实际上，仅以超过500美元的选择，它总共筹集了近100万美元。

You can do this is by making sure that your campaign has options to back it at levels above the basic consumer level. Depending on your product, you may have a developer license, or sell in bulk to people who want to become distributors.

这使它更容易to reach out to these people before your start your campaign, because it’s a much more controlled group. If you have a $50K goal and a $10K funding package, you’ll only have to get five interested large parties on board to reach your goal.

除了Ouya之外，如果您查看包括卵石手表在内的大多数其他超级成功的广告系列，它们都会遵循相同的型号。

6. Attainable goals

看看最成功的广告系列，您会注意到他们的原始资金目标最终不到他们筹集的总金额的10％。如果您认为他们只是通过超出数字而变得幸运，请再考虑一下。在众筹世界中，您需要以合理的可实现目标设定资金目标，但要筹集更多的议程。

For instance, you may need to raise $250K for your product. If you wanted to do this, you might set your goal at $50K, because something very interesting happens once you hit your goal.

通常，一旦项目达到最初的目标，项目就会取得更大的成功水平。目前，他们开始获得新闻提及，传播传播，分享并超越了最初的目标。

Most of this phenomenon is due to the press. Plain and simple, it’s pretty difficult to get press to an unfunded campaign, because most journalists don’t want to write about a product that may or may not exist.

But once you hit your successful goal, your backers and members of the press become much more confident that your product will exist. This is usually when most products start to get mainstream press, and a larger audience begins taking notice.

If you take a look at thePebble Time campaign, which is one of the most successful of all time, surpassing the $20M mark, you’ll see that they set their initial goal at $500K.

Notice that their bulk orders (all above the $800 mark) raised more than $1M alone.

Obviously, you’ll want to make sure that if you only reach your attainable goal, you can still deliver, but by doing so, you are much more likely to raise a larger sum.

7.新闻计划

As discussed in the previous section, the press plays a huge role in the success of crowdfunding campaigns. Once again, many founders think that this comes down to luck, but if you want to almost guarantee success with the press, you’ll have a well thought-out plan on how you’re going to approach the press.

Make sure to keep note of recent trends in your industry, and know how your product fits into what is relevant at the time. Knowing this will allow you to make a list of the journalists who are writing about the most recent trends, and you can reach out to them when the time is right, which is usually once you reach, or are getting close to reaching, your initial funding goal.

Main Takeaways

By studying successful campaigns, you’ll see that running a successful campaign is a science and a repeatable process, especially for companies like Pebble! If you follow these guidelines, your campaign will already be set apart from the average campaign, and you’ll be exponentially more likely to do the large numbers that the crowdfunding hall of fame has generated. I encourage you to talk about these ideas with your team and make sure you’re implementing the things on this list to ensure your product’s success.