$ 170K with Kickstarter: interview with Wearhaus ARC CEO

Every day on the pages of Kickstarter or Indiegogo there are hundreds of new projects, bright and promising, utilitarian or very futuristic and incomprehensible. But the first serious milestone - funding - overcome units.

What is the secret of a successful startup? In the idea? Of course. In its high-quality implementation? Undoubtedly. As it turns out, this is not all. Moreover, an unequivocal recipe for success does not exist, each developer has his own vision.
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Richie Zeng, one of the co-founders, agreed to share his opinion with us.
more than a successful Kickstarter project - wireless headphone concepts
Wearhause ARC.



What is it about them that a startup has already collected more than $ 160,000 (with a target of $ 50,000)? How did they manage to go from a completely inexpressive prototype to a bright, stylish and very functional gadget? All this in our interview.

So let's go.


Your project makes listening to music one of the elements of live communication. That is, the headset complements the file sharing function and the ability to broadcast the song to several devices at once. Great idea. How soon were you able to start the project?




Let's clarify: in our headphones you can not listen to music from social networks, especially in a group. It is against the law in the USA. The idea was to transfer the audio stream from one headphone to another - socialization, if you can call it that, occurs exclusively in local groups. Actually, this idea was implemented in a working prototype created by Nelson (Nelson Zhen - the main ideologue and developer of the project) in July 2013.




Your product includes several non-standard solutions. Data exchange, touch controllers and so on. How quickly did you realize that without these functions, headphones can not do? What opportunities were added in the process of working on the first prototypes?




Of course, many decisions were taken from life. We love to listen to music, love to share it with friends. Why not simplify this process?
But I will not say that we managed without innovative solutions that we looked at in the Chinese laboratories in Shenzhen, where, in fact, our production cycle takes place.






The design of your headphones can not be called familiar. Large companies probably would not have decided on the production of such an unusual, bright product. How was the design born? There was a lot of controversy?






This idea occurred to Nelson. Perhaps because DJing was his hobby and the topic of music is really close to him. He created the first prototype and, already working on it, we created Wearhaus ARC. The process took us one and a half years, during this time the image of the device has changed several times. Probably, the design of the headphones turned out so bright, because we were inspired by electronic music.




How was the production of prototypes organized? What time did it cost you? And how was the project financing at an early stage?




In general, all stages of the creative search took place in our small office in Berkeley, California. As for the cost of producing the first prototypes, they were not significant - we could buy almost all the necessary parts in the nearest store. But the improvement and refinement of prototypes required certain resources - this was helped by Highway1 (business accelerator, San Francisco).




The project has a young team. Who is the youngest?




There are 13 people in our team, and the youngest is Nelson. Taking this opportunity, we congratulate him on his upcoming 21st birthday - December 11 is his birthday!




Did you immediately come to Kickstarter or were you looking for investors first? Offered the idea to large companies?




Business angels helped us a lot at the start of the project, in fact, the final concept and appearance of the commercial prototype appeared with their direct participation, as was our current presentation at Kickstarter.






Why to promote the product you chose Kickstarter, not Indiegogo?




There are several reasons. Firstly, a more stringent technical orientation of Kickstarter and the possibility of promoting upgrades than we have already taken up closely (the guys will soon release a new project here). Secondly, Kickstarter has a very large musical community, and this is our target audience. To get a positive feedback in this environment was very important for us.




How much time was spent on preparing the project to start on Kickstarter? Preparation of promoters, calculation of remuneration, etc.




It took us a few months. We made a video together with the producers from 845a, in parallel, prepared promo in social networks.






How important is the product marketing for the Kickstar project? Can a good product fail if the creators didn’t pay enough attention to competent marketing?




Proper marketing on Kickstarter is one of the most important elements of a successful project. Do not think that people will come with money, and money will do everything for you. Even with a truly revolutionary product, the audience has to create itself.




Almost all key online publications wrote about your project, did you write to someone yourself? Or did it all happen without your participation?




I will be dishonest if I say that we have not put a hand in this. Competent marketing and work with the media - the most important components of success.






Did you remember which edition was the first? After what publication did everyone else connect?




The first resource that told about us was the Boston Bostinno.streetwise.co. But this is a local resource, we did not receive wide popularity after this publication . But after the news on Techcrunch, many of us really started talking about us.




What role did the promotion of your product play in social networks? Do you pay much attention to this part of the campaign?




The key. Social networks are our target audience; according to the first reaction, we judged the potential of the project. If you use the capabilities of the environment correctly, it can be very effective.




Statistics show that most projects on Kickstarter have a lot of problems after the money has been raised. Your project turned out to be very popular and collected an amount three times the stated amount. What difficulties are facing you now? Sales? Advertising? Anything else?




The production cycle for start-up hardware companies is always a challenge. You may not know many nuances that can significantly increase the time to delivery of goods to the backers.




How do you think to organize sales? Will you do everything yourself or are you planning to work with a large offline retailer?






Everything is very simple here. First, we immediately start selling through our website. And, secondly, many retailers have shown sincere interest in our product.




When creating a project, did you pay attention to the experience of such companies on Kickstarter? If so, who inspired you and who did you learn from?




Such a project for us was Pebble Watch. We consider them the coolest!




Do you think the popularity of wearable gadgets, such as smart watches, is excessive?




Not! We like it, we are following with great interest the development of this technology industry.




On Geektimes Kickstarter, and indeed crowd funding, is a very popular topic. What would you like to novice developers?




We need to start by studying the needs of the audience. And create a product that meets its needs (all as in Philip Kotler). Large companies, with rare exceptions, are fearful of innovations, are afraid of losing their audience, of releasing an inappropriate product, in general, they feel much more constrained than you. And you, on the contrary, have complete freedom of action - you can do what you think is necessary. Be bold!





Draw your own conclusions - how smoothly and quickly everything worked out for the guys.

The fact remains that funding is at an unrealistic pace, and a new version of headphones with an innovative noise reduction system from Wearhaus ARC is already preparing for a presentation on Kickstarter.

Bright ideas to you and generous backers!