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Hi HN, Casey from the Elevation Dock project. People use the term disruption pretty loosely, I think crowd-funding is really doing it. Goodbye middlemen, sayon

by hop 15y ago

Hi HN, Casey from the Elevation Dock project. People use the term disruption pretty loosely, I think crowd-funding is really doing it. Goodbye middlemen, sayonara to the massive traditional barriers to entry. Hello bootstrapped projects like this that would otherwise never see the light of day.

VikingCoder 15y ago
Hi Casey, First off - Congratulations! I have a burning question. Have you figured out how you're going to do shipping and handling? Are you using a 3rd party to do all of the distribution, or do you have the workforce yourself to do it? Kickstarter and Amazon don't do it for you, do they?
- jmonegro 15y ago
  Kickstarter doesn't, but Amazon does have a fulfillment service. IIRC, you send your stock to their warehouses and they ship it from there.
- hop 15y ago
  Thx. Probably will use Shipwire or a local fullfillment company.
- ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
  I did calculations for my (failed) kickstarter campaign between Amazon Fulfillment and me personally packing and mailing everything. Amazon Fulfillment would have cut my profit in half. Yes it saves you time but depending on where you live and where the fulfillment warehouse is, the size of the products you're making, and the cost of shipping them. For my specific case it wasn't worth it. Hiring a few neighbors and working out of the garage for a few days would be far more feasible.
  - rikf 15y ago
    There are cheaper alternatives then Amazon for fulfilment.
    - prawn 15y ago
      Can you list them?
nathanbarry 15y ago
Congratulations on the success! Other than having a great product, are there any marketing things you feel added to your success? Particularly things that could be applied to other projects.
- hop 15y ago
  I am going to write a long post about it soon b/c so many people have asked. I would say polishing your video and articulating your widget well are the most important things you can do - you don't want to waste anyone's time. I did a million revisions to our video over the course of a year to get to where I thought it was launch worthy. Double Fine's is exceptional. I also found I am horrible in front of a camera unless I am the only one in the room. We did no PR or anything before hand. A friend sent a link to Gruber a half hour after launch, he wrote one nice sentence about it, then it exploded around the web. It also helped that Apple makes crappy docks and few people challenge Apple on anything. And that's a testament to Apple because they do usually kill at design. Marco Arment says it concisely here - http://www.marco.org/2012/02/09/elevation-dock http://www.marco.org/2012/02/09/elevation-dock
tibbon 15y ago
I think one important thing here to note about crowd-sourced funding is that it doesn't just eliminate the middle-man, but rather it connects the end consumers with the product directly. It may seem a small difference, but it is real. Consider this, when a company goes to get funding, it is the company and the investors together who are postulating what consumers might want. In this model, the consumers fund what they actually want, not what some guys who got lucky once or twice (VCs) assume people want. Add that to the fact that VCs like to fund things that are going to be like winning the lottery, whereas consumers want to fund things that seem useful to them right now. Huge difference.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  Indeed. Consider how many layers of buffering exist between consumers and makers in traditionally financed projects. Not only do you have a convoluted connection during creation (capital investments, layers of management, etc.) you have an equally convoluted connection during production (retailers, distributors, marketing, management). All of this blunts the strength and the edge of the consumer-creator feedback loop. That's not only a huge efficiency and effectiveness difference (how do you tell what someone really wants when there are N levels of bullshit between the creator and the consumer?) but it also makes for a much stronger emotional connection.
prbuckley 15y ago
Casey way to go man! Huge fan of what you did. If you ever want to talk about growing a manufacturing business with an e-commerce component reach out to me. I have some experience from building dodocase.com, my email is patrick (at) dodocase.com.
test23452 15y ago
Dock for a phone? Really? On the pictures it looks like they are at least sending a man to the moon. A charger for Nokia phone costs 1.5 USD. Why this costs 79 USD? What a ripoff.
forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
"Goodbye middlemen, sayonara to the massive traditional barriers to entry." The middleman is there(kickstarter gets 5%) but is way more reasonable than old middleman.
bhc3 15y ago
In classic "disruptive technology/business model" terms, I agree. (1) What is disrupted? Existing means of accessing capital (banks, individual investors, corporations). (2) It's coming at it from the low end of the market. Small little projects getting funding, nothing that hits the bigger players' radar. But slowly, it starts to grow in terms of volume, and funding project size. (3) It's addressing an end of the market that was really underserved by mature sources of funding. Based on all this, I would say crowdfunding is disruptive, with Kickstarter leading the way.

by hop 15y ago

VikingCoder 15y ago

Hi Casey, First off - Congratulations! I have a burning question. Have you figured out how you're going to do shipping and handling? Are you using a 3rd party to do all of the distribution, or do you have the workforce yourself to do it? Kickstarter and Amazon don't do it for you, do they?

jmonegro 15y ago
Kickstarter doesn't, but Amazon does have a fulfillment service. IIRC, you send your stock to their warehouses and they ship it from there.
hop 15y ago
Thx. Probably will use Shipwire or a local fullfillment company.
ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
I did calculations for my (failed) kickstarter campaign between Amazon Fulfillment and me personally packing and mailing everything. Amazon Fulfillment would have cut my profit in half. Yes it saves you time but depending on where you live and where the fulfillment warehouse is, the size of the products you're making, and the cost of shipping them. For my specific case it wasn't worth it. Hiring a few neighbors and working out of the garage for a few days would be far more feasible.
- rikf 15y ago
  There are cheaper alternatives then Amazon for fulfilment.
  - prawn 15y ago
    Can you list them?

nathanbarry 15y ago

Congratulations on the success! Other than having a great product, are there any marketing things you feel added to your success? Particularly things that could be applied to other projects.

hop 15y ago
I am going to write a long post about it soon b/c so many people have asked. I would say polishing your video and articulating your widget well are the most important things you can do - you don't want to waste anyone's time. I did a million revisions to our video over the course of a year to get to where I thought it was launch worthy. Double Fine's is exceptional. I also found I am horrible in front of a camera unless I am the only one in the room. We did no PR or anything before hand. A friend sent a link to Gruber a half hour after launch, he wrote one nice sentence about it, then it exploded around the web. It also helped that Apple makes crappy docks and few people challenge Apple on anything. And that's a testament to Apple because they do usually kill at design. Marco Arment says it concisely here - http://www.marco.org/2012/02/09/elevation-dock http://www.marco.org/2012/02/09/elevation-dock

tibbon 15y ago

I think one important thing here to note about crowd-sourced funding is that it doesn't just eliminate the middle-man, but rather it connects the end consumers with the product directly. It may seem a small difference, but it is real. Consider this, when a company goes to get funding, it is the company and the investors together who are postulating what consumers might want. In this model, the consumers fund what they actually want, not what some guys who got lucky once or twice (VCs) assume people want. Add that to the fact that VCs like to fund things that are going to be like winning the lottery, whereas consumers want to fund things that seem useful to them right now. Huge difference.

InclinedPlane 15y ago
Indeed. Consider how many layers of buffering exist between consumers and makers in traditionally financed projects. Not only do you have a convoluted connection during creation (capital investments, layers of management, etc.) you have an equally convoluted connection during production (retailers, distributors, marketing, management). All of this blunts the strength and the edge of the consumer-creator feedback loop. That's not only a huge efficiency and effectiveness difference (how do you tell what someone really wants when there are N levels of bullshit between the creator and the consumer?) but it also makes for a much stronger emotional connection.

prbuckley 15y ago

Casey way to go man! Huge fan of what you did. If you ever want to talk about growing a manufacturing business with an e-commerce component reach out to me. I have some experience from building dodocase.com, my email is patrick (at) dodocase.com.

test23452 15y ago

Dock for a phone? Really? On the pictures it looks like they are at least sending a man to the moon. A charger for Nokia phone costs 1.5 USD. Why this costs 79 USD? What a ripoff.

forgottenpaswrd 15y ago

"Goodbye middlemen, sayonara to the massive traditional barriers to entry." The middleman is there(kickstarter gets 5%) but is way more reasonable than old middleman.

bhc3 15y ago

In classic "disruptive technology/business model" terms, I agree. (1) What is disrupted? Existing means of accessing capital (banks, individual investors, corporations). (2) It's coming at it from the low end of the market. Small little projects getting funding, nothing that hits the bigger players' radar. But slowly, it starts to grow in terms of volume, and funding project size. (3) It's addressing an end of the market that was really underserved by mature sources of funding. Based on all this, I would say crowdfunding is disruptive, with Kickstarter leading the way.