| Have only been a backer before so take my opinion with a gain of salt. Thinking ahead is great, but it's often too easy to overestimate how good an idea is and get lost in thinking about all the things that were never going to happen. It appears that you are not going to spend any more time on validating your idea, so why not just focus on having a nice prototype, see how it goes on Kickstarter, and use that as an opportunity for idea validation? How quickly and/or how well your idea will be funded will likely give you an indication of whether or not you should be thinking about the next step. Even in the case that it's underfunded, you still get an opportunity to interact with those who pledged, find out what works and what doesn't, and then decide on whether you can make things better or even eventually turn it into a business. It should be noted that in the case that your idea is overwhelming overfunded, you will likely be forced to scale up and effectively doing many of the things (accounting, manufacturing, shipping, customer service, etc.) required to turn it into an actual business. As I gathered, manufacturing depends entirely on what your product is and you may have to deal with overseas suppliers for cost reasons (there are horror stories, don't always go for the cheapest). I assume that most people only think about that after they see how successful their campaigns are (it's very frustrating that things keep getting delayed for the backers though, so please try your best not to over-promise). Some people take care of the the rest by themselves (if they have a team), or using third-party services. In any case, I don't think you will miss the signs when that happens. Good luck! Edit: removed random fullstop in the middle of a sentence. Typos. |
Anyways for me part of the benefit in taking my time is building out the skillset to do this in general:
- knows how to file patent
- knows how to make case
- knows how to get a case design
- knows how to design the board
- knows how to get the cases and boards manufactured
- general idea of all the prices involved
- how do to Kickstarter marketing
- how to handle the legal side (like an LLC or ...?)
Because you're right I'm just kind of hoping people will like it. But if they don't I'll still then have the skillset to try something new. Plus the more people I ask the more likely someone will demotivate me, or steal my idea, or just leak the concept which would take some shock and awe out of marketing. I'll do more market research when I get closer to launching.
How did you hear about the campaigns that you backed?