Absolutely everyone is the owner of a printed circuit board, and most likely even a few dozen boards. However, most are not very well aware of what it is.A printed circuit board is the same, most often green, plate inside the electronics with various electronic components soldered to it. This is what is in any phone, computer, flash drive, electric kettle, car or TV.
Source: www.mobilecollectors.net/phone/1457/Nokia-3510i
Photo: iFixit
Photo: ASUSWe call the various devices electronics, but in fact this is just what is inside - a board with electronic components and chips on it. Most people have little idea how this works, although a printed circuit board can be a self-sufficient building material. Once we decided to demonstrate it, and so the Geeek Club project appeared.Geeek Club - what is it
In the world there are a large number of DIY designers who use boards, but there they are only one of the components of the final product. For the design and assembly of the product itself, various plastic parts, wheels, metal parts, electronic modules, etc. are used.
Photo: robu.inGeeek Club rethought the use of printed circuit boards and made the product out of it.
We do with electronics about the same thing that programmers do when they go down to assembler to simplify the code, making it fundamentally better and simpler.Instead of stuffing the circuit board with electronic components and then wrapping them in a plastic case, we use a flat plate of the printed circuit board and turn it into a 3D object. Thus, printed circuit boards become both an electronic circuit and a product design. Simply put, Geeek Club is a DIY PCB designer.
Each Geeek Club board has milled parts that can be squeezed out by hand, connected together, soldered to them electronic components and get a mini-robot that can glow and move with the help of small electric motors.
How did the idea come
For the 14th year I have been living in China, eight of which are doing business. My company UCHINA helps companies from the Russian Federation and other countries to produce various products in China. The range of work is very diverse: from simple purchases with minimal branding to the development of electronics from scratch.
Nikita PotrashilinIn the past few years, we have focused on electronics and moved from Guangzhou to Shenzhen, the hardware capital of the world. The office was located in the center of the largest electronics market in the world of Huaqiangbei, in the makerspace TroubleMaker. Shenzhen is by far the best place in the world for electronics development. Here you can very quickly create a prototype, and start production of any complexity. What we use, as well as helping other hardware startups as part of our own acceleration program.Our makerspace is essentially an international community of geeks associated with hardware. Here I met with the co-founder of this makerspace - the Frenchman Nicolas Deladerrier (Nicolas Deladerrière, hereinafter Nico).Nico is an industrial designer with experience in various fields: electronics, furniture, art objects, graphic design. He is one of the founders of TroubleMaker's maker space.
Makerspace
NicoOnce, he showed me a card the size of a business card, from which it was possible to assemble a small spaceship from Star Wars. As a geek and a fan of Star Wars, I bought one card from him as a souvenir. A few days later he showed several more samples of such boards and in the conversation I found out that the development of these boards is still at a hobby level. But at the same time, Nico worked for several years in this direction and honed the skill of creating voluminous robots from flat printed circuit boards. A well-developed commercial plan for the implementation of these developments at that time was not yet.Assessing the prospects of the project, I proposed to stop selling samples to friends and acquaintances and create an international company. Nico supported the idea and decided to start with the crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. Moreover, we have partners who have already implemented many successful projects there.Why crowdfunding
Firstly, crowdfunding makes it possible to test a hypothesis.Secondly, crowdfunding allows you to raise money for the production of the first batch of the product.Thirdly, this is a great way to express yourself.There are several hundred crowdfunding platforms in the world, but the largest is Kickstarter. On it, we decided to stay.Kickstarter - myths and reality
Many people know the stories of companies that raised more than a million dollars with a very simple product on Kickstarter. On the Kickstarter main page, it might seem that it’s not difficult to make money on a cool idea by collecting more than 100k USD.I have to break this myth with the following statistics:Every day on Kickstarter, approximately 250-300 new projects are registered, of which 62% of the projects do not collect the necessary amount. Successful hardware projects no more than 19%. In the moment for the collection of money is fighting in the region of 4000 thousand projects. Of the 38% successful, only a quarter collects 3% more than the declared amount, and half - the amount 10% more than the declared amount.Of the total number of successful projects, more than 65% are projects up to 10 thousand dollars.Accordingly, Kickstarter is a highly competitive environment and preparation should be approached thoroughly. Consider this one of the sales channels you need to learn how to use. To work out a strategy, draw up a business plan, evaluate your strength and budget.On the Internet you can easily find dozens of articles on how to properly prepare a kickstarter campaign. Here are the basic things to be done:- Make high-quality clear video. Without a video, you don’t even have to think about launching, this is your business card for backers (those who give money for the project).
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- Choose a strategic partner to promote the project in social networks. In crowdfunding, slightly different algorithms work and there are rock stars of digital marketing and promotion services. For example, such as Jellop, Funded Today, Green inbox, Backerkit, etc.
- Think Stretching goals - Becker reward system
- Consider all possible costs when calculating the cost of the product. Often, startups do not have enough money collected, because they do not take into account all the costs: for example, the cost of molds for mass production, logistics, payment for the work of engineers or designers, etc.
There was already an understanding of the process of preparing the project for Kickstarter, since earlier we were working on the launch of another project. After analyzing the niche and the probability of collecting the necessary amount, we decided to postpone it.Spoiler:-, Kickstarter - Stripe. Stripe .
Kickstarter Campaign Preparation
Without experience, it is almost impossible to successfully conduct the first Kickstarter campaign. Therefore, we turned to our friends from Reproject. Their team is professionally engaged in the creation and promotion of products for Kickstarter.There are 20 projects in their portfolio with total collections of more than $ 3.5 million.
They praised the potential of such a project, as DIY and educational technology products are becoming increasingly popular in the world. So we opened a joint company, where Nico became the chief designer and engineer, our company took over the management of production and product development processes in China, and Reproject closed the tasks of marketing and promotion.Most of the time was spent on negotiating a partnership agreement between the project founder Niko, our company and the Reproject team. These are fundamentally important things and all the details should be discussed ashore. But as soon as we signed the contract, the process flew.The active phase of the development of the project began in August 2019, and the project had to be launched at least a few weeks before Christmas. After the Christmas holidays, Americans no longer buy anything, since they pour out all the money at this time. We did not want to wait for another suitable time. So there were exact deadlines.It turns out that we had about 3 months to finalize a whole product line. By the time the contract was signed, we had only 3 robots, and to launch the campaign, we needed 14.In order not to waste time, we organized the filming of some robots in the middle of the preparation of the project, and some were removed from the phone in the last days before the project started.
We were able to optimize prelancing expenses. They compensated for it by the fact that the Reproject team already had a huge user base to which the newsletter was made. Of course, the prelanch would not hurt, but in this case they decided that it would be right to refuse it. Including because we were faced with the choice: either to do everything as it should, "in the first place," or to start the project as soon as possible. In the first case, we would definitely not have time to start before Christmas, and we would have to postpone the launch to the beginning of the year. But time is money, we decided to launch in November at any cost. Because of this, we deliberately worked out some things not so well. Nevertheless, despite the short preparation time, we collected an amount 20 times higher than the declared amount.
What is the budget?
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:Conclusion 1: if you plan to seriously declare yourself on Kickstarter, it is advisable to be prepared to spend at least 15-20k USD. You can spend endlessly on advertising in general, while each dollar invested brings at least a cent more. But this needs to be monitored after the start of the campaign.How we got to the Kickstarter homepage twice
Literally a few percent of all projects receive ProjectWeLove by Kickstarter status and we received it on the first day.What's the secret?The fact is that Kickstarter is originally a platform for inventors, designers, makers and creators of unique creative products. And our project fits this definition perfectly.So it is written in the original on the Kickstarter website:Kickstarter is just for creative projects:
We built Kickstarter as a tool for artists, designers, makers, musicians, and creative people everywhere. We’re proud to be the only platform that’s fully dedicated to building community around creative projects.
Almost the entire first week we were on the main page, which gives a very strong boost to the whole project. And two weeks later we were taken to the main page for the second time, which is extremely rare.But you should not forget that you need to communicate with Kickstarter. The Reproject team already knew what approach was needed. For example, we even sent a detailed BOM file with a list of all components, materials, cost, production dates and contacts of suppliers to prove that we are confident in the feasibility of the project after collecting the necessary amount.Conclusion 2: make a useful honest project that people may really like not because of cool thoughtful marketing, but because of the uniqueness and usefulness of the product.
Production and coronavirus (yes, and here it is)
We completed the project before the Chinese New Year (this year, January 25), and production could not begin until early February after a long weekend. But at that moment, the coronavirus epidemic began in China, and not one of the plants began to work. We had to complete the instructions and order the final samples to confirm the final configuration before starting mass production. Many processes were disrupted, as the team was scattered around the world, and at this time everywhere began to enter quarantine. As a result, instead of the planned start of production, we started it only now in mid-March.However, part of our team managed to participate in a toy exhibition in New York on February 26-29. But this turned into a difficult quest. Samples of new models were needed, but China was quarantined. We had to study motherboard offerings around the world. As a result, we learned that board prices in America are about 10 times higher than Chinese prices, 5 times higher in Taiwan and 4 times higher in Russia. Pleasantly surprised for our country, we ordered some of the samples in Russia. At the exhibition itself, we collected a lot of positive reviews from different companies., Received tips on how to improve the product, what to launch in the near future. The Lego team came up twice. Now we are negotiating with them.
Unfortunately, due to the virus, it was not possible to order a decent stand in China. I had to exorbitantly buy in New York the simplest stand and table.Mistakes
Given the tight preparation time, we made the content quickly. As a result, the positioning of the project turned out to be a little childish, although in reality the project is designed for a wide audience: geeks of any age. Because of this, we have lost part of the audience. In addition, children's projects on Kickstarter traditionally collect small amounts. More often than not, people there buy something for themselves. We have taken this into account and are already working on a new project with a different positioning. And this time, we’ll definitely do a pre-launch, because it’s not always possible to get to the main page twice. We need to attract an audience ourselves.Future plans
We are not going to stop at Kickstarter. Immediately after sending all orders to backers, we will start selling from the site and Amazon, we will send samples to potential distributors. In parallel, we update the identity and prepare a new website with a store. We have also developed 4 lines of new products and we will launch one of them again on Kickstarter after receiving feedback on the first product. Naturally, we will take into account past mistakes aimed at a slightly different audience. New models will be bombed, do not miss the announcement!There is a lot of work ahead: to develop training materials, create more interactive models, finalize a patent, polish the ecosystem of products, and turn the Geeek club into a real geek club with a platform for supporting inventors.And one of the next tasks after the second Kickstarter is to carry out crowdinvesting. Crowdinvesting is a form of crowdfunding, only instead of a product or service, investors receive a share in the company. Our team has already analyzed all possible sites and there is an understanding of the requirements for starting a crowdfunding campaign in America. Plans to attract at least $ 500k for 5% of the company.For the implementation of all plans and a good pace, without attracting investments, crowdfunding will be difficult and long. So prepare the pitch deck.Grandiose plans and everything is just ahead!Conclusion
Crowdfunding, Page, Prelanch, Pitchdeck, Skill, Quest, Boost, Becker, Hardware, Feedback, Makerspace, Coronavirus, Shenzhen - ROUND!The first time I heard about crowdfunding 6 years ago. The idea of ​​attracting hundreds of thousands of dollars, having only a prototype and nothing more, seemed unrealistically cool. I thought that it’s enough to take a sample of the product, take it on the phone, take a simple selfie video, put it all on Kickstarter and you can watch the money dripping. But this is not at all true.The crowdfunding campaign must be approached comprehensively and thoroughly. If you want to invest in your project on crowdfunding, you will first need to invest a little yourself. And if you do this with a brilliant team, then this is already 80% success.Thanks to everyone who participated in the preparation of this project!