Pebble’s huge success proves that Kickstarter is a marketing tool.
When Pebble launched its original smartwatch campaign on Kickstarter, the startup reached its goal of raising $ 100,000 in just two hours, becoming one of the most funded campaigns in the entire history of Kickstarter.
Three years later, Pebble broke its amazing record, earning $ 500,000 in just 17 minutes in its last Pebble Time watch. When I started writing this article, the campaign has already earned $ 1.9 million. When I finished it, the amount already reached $ 4.3 million.
Such success does not surprise anyone who watched Pebble from its first campaign. Being originally a venture, today Pebble has become a significant company with a popular product that is sold in such well-known stores as Best Buy and Target. In particular, in this strange time of projects with 10-digit amounts, Pebble would hardly have problems with collecting venture capital. The question is: why did the “Pebble Time” watch be laid out on Kickstarter at all?
In a video of the campaign, Pebble CEO Eric Migikovski tells potential lenders: "We are back at Kickstarter to work directly with you - the society that found us here." And this may indeed be true. Although regardless of whether Migikov understands this or not, it is also marketing.
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This is a minor change in the role of the Kickstarter site. The fundraising service has become a place where companies that have already risen well, enter the market independently and spur interest towards new products - an interest that periodically overshadows projects that really need Kickstarter assistance.
Change
Earlier, Kickstarter positioned itself as a place where independent artists, filmmakers, craftsmen and entrepreneurs could get money for their valuable ideas. Co-founder and former CEO Perry Chen said in an interview with The New York Times in 2009, when the site just launched: “Money has always been the most difficult obstacle to creativity. We all have a lot of ideas that we would like to implement, but if you don’t have a rich uncle, you can never put these ideas into practice. ”
Kickstarter still remains a place to implement various ideas. But Pebble showed that this place has another purpose. In an interview with the online magazine Backchannel about the Pebble Time campaign, the current CEO of Kickstarter emphasized this imperceptible shift - although not recognizing it as a shift. “The Pebble Time project will show that the real power and usefulness of our platform lies not only in money,” he said, “it lies in society and marketing.”
In other words, it's about marketing. Bring the idea to the last point - the one where any company, regardless of size, can use Kickstarter to gain access to society and market its products - and Kickstarter will be a microcosm of market dynamics that he originally wanted to change.
Kickstarter is not the only platform that tackles this problem. Recently, in the column of the WIRED editor, one master accused Etsy of having lost their soul, as now the sellers on Etsy are allowed to work with third-party manufacturers. This has led to an influx of mass-produced products, which complicates competition for sellers of home-made goods. The network effect created by this is good for Etsy, as well as for Kickstarter. It has become more difficult for merchants and creators on these platforms to enter the mass market than ever before.
Price of freedom
At the same time, it is difficult to blame companies like Pebble for trying to make money this way. Especially considering that Pebble has posted a significant project on Kickstarter for the first time ever. It was a valuable idea from a small but strong team that was rejected by the venture capital society, and which gained its popularity on Kickstarter largely due to its merits.
Fundraising on Kickstarter helped Pebble to make sure that there was a market demand and gave the company creative freedom that it would never have if it had to answer to the capitalists. That is why the Kickstarter site is constantly credited with, let's say, the impetus in the technical revolution. Unlike most traditional technical investors, the crowd is more willing to support risky projects such as Pebble and Oculus Rift.
Therefore, it makes sense that Pebble - one of the most significant success stories on Kickstarter - will want to repeat its success after some time. But still the question remains: if successful companies like Pebble continue to return to Kickstarter, how many more successful stories will appear on this site?
Three years later, Pebble broke its amazing record, earning $ 500,000 in just 17 minutes in its last Pebble Time watch. When I started writing this article, the campaign has already earned $ 1.9 million. When I finished it, the amount already reached $ 4.3 million.
Such success does not surprise anyone who watched Pebble from its first campaign. Being originally a venture, today Pebble has become a significant company with a popular product that is sold in such well-known stores as Best Buy and Target. In particular, in this strange time of projects with 10-digit amounts, Pebble would hardly have problems with collecting venture capital. The question is: why did the “Pebble Time” watch be laid out on Kickstarter at all?
In a video of the campaign, Pebble CEO Eric Migikovski tells potential lenders: "We are back at Kickstarter to work directly with you - the society that found us here." And this may indeed be true. Although regardless of whether Migikov understands this or not, it is also marketing.
')
This is a minor change in the role of the Kickstarter site. The fundraising service has become a place where companies that have already risen well, enter the market independently and spur interest towards new products - an interest that periodically overshadows projects that really need Kickstarter assistance.
Change
Earlier, Kickstarter positioned itself as a place where independent artists, filmmakers, craftsmen and entrepreneurs could get money for their valuable ideas. Co-founder and former CEO Perry Chen said in an interview with The New York Times in 2009, when the site just launched: “Money has always been the most difficult obstacle to creativity. We all have a lot of ideas that we would like to implement, but if you don’t have a rich uncle, you can never put these ideas into practice. ”
Kickstarter still remains a place to implement various ideas. But Pebble showed that this place has another purpose. In an interview with the online magazine Backchannel about the Pebble Time campaign, the current CEO of Kickstarter emphasized this imperceptible shift - although not recognizing it as a shift. “The Pebble Time project will show that the real power and usefulness of our platform lies not only in money,” he said, “it lies in society and marketing.”
In other words, it's about marketing. Bring the idea to the last point - the one where any company, regardless of size, can use Kickstarter to gain access to society and market its products - and Kickstarter will be a microcosm of market dynamics that he originally wanted to change.
Kickstarter is not the only platform that tackles this problem. Recently, in the column of the WIRED editor, one master accused Etsy of having lost their soul, as now the sellers on Etsy are allowed to work with third-party manufacturers. This has led to an influx of mass-produced products, which complicates competition for sellers of home-made goods. The network effect created by this is good for Etsy, as well as for Kickstarter. It has become more difficult for merchants and creators on these platforms to enter the mass market than ever before.
Price of freedom
At the same time, it is difficult to blame companies like Pebble for trying to make money this way. Especially considering that Pebble has posted a significant project on Kickstarter for the first time ever. It was a valuable idea from a small but strong team that was rejected by the venture capital society, and which gained its popularity on Kickstarter largely due to its merits.
Fundraising on Kickstarter helped Pebble to make sure that there was a market demand and gave the company creative freedom that it would never have if it had to answer to the capitalists. That is why the Kickstarter site is constantly credited with, let's say, the impetus in the technical revolution. Unlike most traditional technical investors, the crowd is more willing to support risky projects such as Pebble and Oculus Rift.
Therefore, it makes sense that Pebble - one of the most significant success stories on Kickstarter - will want to repeat its success after some time. But still the question remains: if successful companies like Pebble continue to return to Kickstarter, how many more successful stories will appear on this site?
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/286226/
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