KickstarterForum.org

Hey guys,

My name is Mike from New York. I always wanted to start a company and finally just last night, I launched my first Kickstarter Campaign. Here are some take aways for the first 24 hours:

1. To get press, I find that facebook messaging the editors was the best approach in getting their attention.

2. E-mail subscriber list of 3,000 did not work as planned.

3. If I had set my pledge goal lower, I think I would get more noticed with press and Kickstarter main page. Currently I am on #4 for popular product under fashion.

4. Friends and Family are everything for your first day! They are your #1 support

Anyways. The company is called HIKARO and it is a modern industrial take on wooden watches. It was all custom designed and one of the thinnest wood cased watch.

Now that my super early bird pricing is SOLD out, I am slowing down on the early bird pricing. Would love some feedback on what else I can do!

If you have any questions on the product, or anything in general - please let me know!

Thanks!

http://kck.st/1pYqsLF

Hi,

I am interested to know what was your approach when messaging journalists on facebook? Did you message them your short pitch or just ask for their email

twentyeightco wrote:Hi,

I am interested to know what was your approach when messaging journalists on facebook? Did you message them your short pitch or just ask for their email

I put together a list of blogs that covered something that was similar to my product. In this case, any articles on wooden watches. I will then research their name via google or facebook to see if I can get their facebook profile (If I can't, ill try finding their twitter or personal e-mails).

I will message them and be friendly while referring back to what they had post. I also asked what they thought about the watch and that if they are interested, we would love to be featured.

Usually they answer because its like direct messaging. It is a lot easier to ignore an e-mail compared to a FB message

that is a great idea I will try that for myself.
I don't supposed you have a facebook message template I could sample

HIKARO wrote:Hey guys,

My name is Mike from New York. I always wanted to start a company and finally just last night, I launched my first Kickstarter Campaign. Here are some take aways for the first 24 hours:

1. To get press, I find that facebook messaging the editors was the best approach in getting their attention.

2. E-mail subscriber list of 3,000 did not work as planned.

3. If I had set my pledge goal lower, I think I would get more noticed with press and Kickstarter main page. Currently I am on #4 for popular product under fashion.

4. Friends and Family are everything for your first day! They are your #1 support

Anyways. The company is called HIKARO and it is a modern industrial take on wooden watches. It was all custom designed and one of the thinnest wood cased watch.

Now that my super early bird pricing is SOLD out, I am slowing down on the early bird pricing. Would love some feedback on what else I can do!

If you have any questions on the product, or anything in general - please let me know!

Thanks!

http://kck.st/1pYqsLF

Hey Mike, great job so far!

You're probably right about the goal being a little high. Did you check other watch campaigns to see what their successful goals were?

Why didn't the email list go as planned?

You should try out adds on Reddit, Twitter and Facebook as well.

We are almost 50% funded. Goal is high but even if we raised $35k, we have to still put in a good amount of money in ourselves!

I think I should of targeted to people who know about crowdfunding. I also think that the e-mail list was from a long time ago where people lost interest.

I've tried reddit, twitter and facebook. I have 5 facebook ads going on right now to test. Reddit didnt do much. What section of reddit do you recommend posting?

twentyeightco wrote:that is a great idea I will try that for myself.
I don't supposed you have a facebook message template I could sample

"
Chat Conversation Start

"Hey Patrick, I created a watch that will suit your readers at XXX. I wanted to know your thoughts about our KS campaign? The video was actually shot in Chicago!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/21 ... n=50eafca1"



"Hi XXX Hope you're enjoying the amazing weather in San Francisco! (I'm jealous - I'm in NY). I came across some of your articles on design-milk. Would you be interested in writing about our all custom wooden watches inspired by industrial landscape? You can see our press pictures at www.hikarodesign.com/presskit . Talk to you soon! - Mike"


This is in e-mail

"Hello!

I'm reaching out because I thought you might be interested in our innovative wooden watch.

We just launched Monday night (March 21) and have already reached 45% of our Kickstarter goal of raising $35,000.

You can take a look at our live Kickstarter page here: http://kck.st/1pYqsLF

Given how well we've done so far, we think we'll blow our goal of the water.......etc (i did talk more about what we are)"


I was able to get 7 press coverage from the awesomer, the coolector, unique hunters, trend hunters, wrist watch review...etc We also reached out to Examiner which is a huge blog and they showed interest but want to do an actual review of the prototype.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for sharing. The ones you mentioned pretty much promote anything that stands out though. I think you need to focus more on your niche but 45% is great!

Maybe. We are in the works with discussing with Examiner which is very big! And also a couple of korean blogs.

Surprisingly, we have had a lot of backers from other countries.

We have 15 days to go and its slowly becoming a stand still. EEK!

Sounds good if you can get those guys to review you and put a new angle as to why backers should back you.

Feel free to get back in touch if you need help to get the campaign moving again Mike, we were recently featured on Producthunt too the other day: https://www.producthunt.com/tech/hyperstarter