Harness the Power of Viral Videos to Crowdfund Your Next Project

Roy Morejon:
Welcome entrepreneurs and startups, to Art of the Kickstart, the show that every entrepreneur needs to listen to before you launch.

Roy Morejon:
I’m your host, Roy Morejon, president and founder of Enventys Partners, the world’s only turnkey product launch company.

Roy Morejon:
From product development and engineering to omnichannel marketing, we’ve helped our clients launch thousands of inventions and earn more than $1 billion in sales over the past 20 years.

Roy Morejon:
Each week, I interview a startup success story, an inspirational entrepreneur or a business expert, in order to help you take your launch to the next level.

Roy Morejon:
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Roy Morejon:
Welcome to another edition of Art of the Kickstart. Today, I’m super stoked because I am speaking with Mr. Suba.

Roy Morejon:
If you haven’t heard of him, then you need to go and check out all of his campaigns. He is the most funded winter sport crowdfunder ever. He is the founder of Snowfeet company. He’s created several crowdfunding campaigns during the past five years, across multiple platforms and countries. Over 6,000 backers in total, and he’s raised over a million dollars.

Roy Morejon:
Mr. Suba, thank you so much for joining us today on Art of the Kickstart.

Zbyněk Šuba:
What’s up, guys?

Roy Morejon:
Well, thank you so much for joining us. I’m really excited about diving in today. And before we do all of that, if you would, give our audience a little bit of your background and how you got started in entrepreneurship.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Well, I think it was in 2015, plus, minus. I was in college. It was for the first half a year, and I decided I don’t like the college anymore. I want to build a business.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I remember that I used these short mini skis when I was younger, with my friends. We use them on hills, around our region, and we loved them so much.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I thought, well, they don’t have them abroad. So, I’ll try to sell them abroad.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I did that, and it went pretty well. So, we developed a better model and created a brand around it.

Zbyněk Šuba:
So yeah, in 2018, we launched our first campaign, with Snowfeet on Indiegogo.

Roy Morejon:
Yeah. You had tremendous success with that. So I’m really interested to know, one, I mean, I think it’s a really cool concept because you’re kind of innovating in a sport.

Roy Morejon:
You’re creating a new category, which is always the most exciting piece of crowdfunding, is just bringing something that’s totally a game changer, brand new. Stops you in your tracks on social media, in terms of scrolling and being like, what is that? They look like they’re having so much fun.

Roy Morejon:
How did you go about, through the first process of bringing your first product to market and then solving that problem of, overcoming any fear that someone may have had?

Zbyněk Šuba:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It’s like, this kind of product has one big disadvantage. That is that no one knows it. No one is searching for it. No one even wants it.

Zbyněk Šuba:
But the big advantage is that it’s so unique and so new, that it’s very easy to grab attention of people, with a nice video online, on Facebook, on YouTube.

Zbyněk Šuba:
We just went to Italy. We made some great videos, and then we shared them online, mostly Facebook and YouTube and Instagram.

Zbyněk Šuba:
People really either loved it or hated it. I love the haters. The haters are amazing because they comment. And because they comment, they spread the video.

Zbyněk Šuba:
So, we really created big viral videos, online, of people either loving it or hating it. It got, I think over 50 million views, even more in total, all kinds of videos that either we shared or other media companies shared.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Out of these 50 million people, there are a just couple thousand crazy people, who will buy it. They really loved it. So, yeah.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I always knew that people will love it because I love it so much. Whenever I use the product, I love it so much that I thought, there must be people like me, somewhere in the world and especially in the US. Yeah. We found out that there are.

Zbyněk Šuba:
It’s also taking a sport that already exists, like inline skating or ice skating, on a different terrain, which is snow, in this case.

Zbyněk Šuba:
So, it’s like snowboarding. There was surfers or skateboarders who just wanted to have fun on the snow. So, they created snowboard.

Zbyněk Šuba:
This is basically for hockey players, inline skaters, roller bladers, ice skaters, who want to have fun on snow. That’s our product, Snowfeet or ski skates.

Roy Morejon:
You bring up an important thing, that I think a lot of creators or people that are hesitant of launching their idea, is the haters, is the commentary that, my product might not be a good fit. But you guys fully embraced that and look at the success.

Roy Morejon:
I think, instead of drawing a line in the sand, you drew a line in the snow and said, “This is what we’re making. Love it or leave it.” These people want to have fun on the mountain, doing it a little bit different than everyone else, all the traditional skiers or even more newer snowboarders, if you will.

Roy Morejon:
You guys have fully embraced the haters and said, “Hey, it’s great. Yeah, comment all you like. Hate it all you want, but we’re still here. We are a force. People enjoy this sport.”

Roy Morejon:
I think a lot of the entrepreneurs don’t necessarily embrace that or take that opportunity to have that dialogue with customers or people that aren’t going to be customers.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. They’re just afraid that their brand or product would be criticized. That’s a completely normal thing.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I’m a hater too, sometimes. I hate other products too. It’s okay.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Whenever I look on Facebook or anywhere, if there’s a very viral video, it’s often around a very controversial topic, which has two sides. The two sides fight in the comment section, and that’s how the video gets viral, sometimes. So, yeah.

Zbyněk Šuba:
But I don’t want it to sound like we have so many haters. Most of the people really love the product. Yeah.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Now, our videos are not as viral as it used to be, as they used to be. They are not shown to all the people who never even skied. They are usually shown to people who either ski, snowboard or inline skate. So, they are more our target group. Yeah. People usually have a good feedback.

Roy Morejon:
Absolutely. You’ve mentioned that the product initially was a little bit more common in your region, in the Czech Republic, I believe.

Roy Morejon:
How did you go about designing it for, let’s say more of the American audience or global audience? What did that process look like, in terms of deciding on what features to include or not include with those designs now?

Zbyněk Šuba:
Well, it wasn’t so much that we designed it for American customer. We only used, let’s say American shoe sizing in our texts and this stuff.

Zbyněk Šuba:
But there were products like these, throughout the history, in many different countries, even. Yeah. There were really many products like this, in the past two centuries. None of them really created the product market fit.

Zbyněk Šuba:
It was either a very cheap product for kids, or it was too pro, but there were not people who would be riding it.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I think with Snowfeet, we created a great mesh of both of these worlds. So, we still made them able to be used with winter shoes, which is a very good benefit.

Zbyněk Šuba:
You don’t need snowboard boots or ski shoes. You can basically use them with winter shoes. That gives you the ability to walk up the hill, with Snowfeet in your backpack, and then put them on, once you’re on top of the hill and slide down.

Zbyněk Šuba:
We take them on our hikes. That’s the perfect way to use them. But at the same time, we added metal edges and other features, that enable you to take them on a slope. So, it’s very versatile.

Zbyněk Šuba:
You can take them on a slope, on a hiking trail, on a sledding hill, to the snow park. So, I think we created very versatile product, that isn’t as expensive as traditional skis or snowboards.

Zbyněk Šuba:
You don’t have to buy all the equipment, like ski poles, ski boots. Snowboard boots. You just buy these short skis and you’re all set. So, it’s also very simple.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I think people like the idea of simplicity. They just want to have fun.

Roy Morejon:
Absolutely.

Zbyněk Šuba:
It snows. You just want to slide down the snow. You don’t want to carry all the equipment, expensive equipment. You just want to have fun. So, yeah.

Roy Morejon:
Talking about fun, you guys just finished your most recent campaign for Assled. How did that product evolve? What was the evolution of that?

Roy Morejon:
I’m assuming it came from maybe some of the feedback from your first community of people, that backed the first campaign. But also, for you guys just wanting to have fun, in terms of sliding down the mountain and falling on your butt, but still being able to have speed down the mountain while going down on your rear.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I wish there was feedback from our customers, so that we wouldn’t have to come up with the idea. But unfortunately, they didn’t have the idea, so we had to come up with it ourselves.

Zbyněk Šuba:
It wasn’t that difficult because we simply… I think it was, one time I went on a hike on a big hill, close to my home, that’s quite famous for hikes. So, it was full of people on the weekend.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I always take the Snowfeet with me. I watched people sliding down the sledding hill. None of them had Snowfeet. None of them had Snowfeet.

Zbyněk Šuba:
It was a small sledding hill, so mostly kids, and all of them had sleds, bobsleds.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I was thinking about it, and then I saw people using plastic bags. People from a city, who see snow once a year, on this hill. They don’t have sleds. So, they took plastic bags.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I remember, we did that when we were kids too. When we didn’t have sleds or we wanted to try it, we used the plastic bags. And when I talked to my grandfather, he even remembered using old jute bags, for sliding down the snow.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Yeah. It seems like everyone, if you live somewhere where it snows, everyone tried it, at least once in their life.

Zbyněk Šuba:
So, I thought, yeah, that’s also very practical. You can just simply put it in your backpack or even in your pocket. Let’s try and create something like that.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Yeah. We like to have fun with developing new products. We thought, yeah, why not? Let’s try it. Even if we were the only customers who will use it, we will have so much fun that we just have to try it. Yeah.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Then we come up with the name, Assled, and it was all about the fun. So yeah. Sorry. That’s my copy machine.

Roy Morejon:
Yeah. It looks like you guys had a lot of fun, just looking at your crowdfunding videos. You guys really enjoy the products, while you were out there and filming it and putting it all together. A lot of humor in them. I think that really resonated with the crowd.

Roy Morejon:
What I’m interested in now is, what was your first introduction to crowdfund? And then what led you to wanting to launch Snowfeet with crowdfunding, to begin with?

Zbyněk Šuba:
I think it was watching other entrepreneurs and their stories. That’s one of the reasons I’m doing this interview. I was very inspired by other entrepreneurs’ success stories, how they launched their products and how they created a brand and their company.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Let’s say five years ago, many of them created crowdfunding campaigns.

Roy Morejon:
Yep.

Zbyněk Šuba:
So I thought, yeah, well, let’s try it this way.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I was always very inspired by all kinds of new, innovative products that could be launched there. So, we did it. Yeah.

Roy Morejon:
What are some of the tips or things that you guys have changed over the years, in terms of launching new products on crowdfunding, in terms of your preparation for each campaign?

Zbyněk Šuba:
What changed during the past years, how we…

Roy Morejon:
Yeah. What are some of the things that you guys did in the first ones, but have now changed over the years, in terms of preparing yourselves better for them?

Zbyněk Šuba:
Yeah. Well, I must admit, we didn’t improve that much because with every new campaign, we have a lot of work with our own business. We announce on our website and on many other places. So, we have so much work, that we don’t put as much effort into the crowdfunding campaigns as we used to, when we launched our first two.

Zbyněk Šuba:
But I think we kind of learned from the mistakes. So, we found out which ads agencies are good to work with and which ones are very bad to work with. Now, we only use the ones that are good, and we avoid the bad ones.

Zbyněk Šuba:
We learned that it’s very good to launch on Japanese crowdfunding platforms, which I wanted to share with the audience. That once you’re successful with your product on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, I would highly recommend to launch a campaign on CAMPFIRE. Do you remember any of other?

Roy Morejon:
There’s another one, I believe. GREEN FUNDING, I believe is another Japanese one. Yeah. There’s an amazing audience of early adopters, that just back projects only on their localized platforms. Same with Korea, with Wadiz or a few of these other regionalized crowdfunding platforms. It’s very interesting to see those trends. So, it’s great that you’re giving that advice to other founders as well.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Makuake, that’s another one. Really, try it. I would highly recommend it. You can do it with a partner from Japan. There are many people who offer this kind of service.

Zbyněk Šuba:
We now create these campaigns in Japan, with our distributors. So yeah, I would do it.

Zbyněk Šuba:
We also tried it in France, on a platform called Ulule, I think that’s the name. That wasn’t that successful. So, I don’t recommend it. It was a waste of time for us. It’s probably either very difficult to get the traffic there. Or even the platform and the French people, they are not used to funding projects this way. So yeah, I wouldn’t try it again.

Zbyněk Šuba:
But on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, we learned that, let’s say using your newsletter prototype, that always gains new backers. Yeah.

Zbyněk Šuba:
We use agency Jellop, from Israel. I think they’re quite good at the Facebook ads, even though I’ve never done very good A/B testing with all the agencies, so you never know. Yeah.

Roy Morejon:
Nice. Well, this is going to get us into our launch round, where I’m going to rapid fire a handful of questions at you. You good to go?

Zbyněk Šuba:
Yeah.

Roy Morejon:
Let’s do it. What inspired you to be an entrepreneur?

Zbyněk Šuba:
I think the ability to have freedom and to be financially independent, and to do what I want to do, whatever it is, to not be restricted by one profession. Yeah. To build something that lasts, even after you die, and to have a positive impact on people around you. To employ other people, to create products that people love, to improve something. Let’s say, to create a better kind of company and remove the old companies, that are not as good as the, let’s say, new generation of companies. Yeah.

Roy Morejon:
Absolutely. Out with the old, in with the new. Let’s see. If you could give any entrepreneur throughout history, a pair of Snowfeet and shred down the mountain with them, who would it be?

Zbyněk Šuba:
I’m sorry. You have to repeat it.

Roy Morejon:
What entrepreneur do you wish that you could go skiing down a mountain with?

Zbyněk Šuba:
Okay. Well, that would be one that you definitely don’t know, but that I would highly recommend you research. It’s Thomas Bata. He’s a Czech entrepreneur.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Yeah. He died hundred years ago. So, he’s an old, old guy, but he was very revolutionary. I would say, something like Edison or Ford, in US. He created a big company, making shoes and then other products. So yeah, that one.

Roy Morejon:
What would’ve been your first question for him?

Zbyněk Šuba:
I think it would be, what makes his life meaningful, or what advice he would give me in life, to live a good life and to create a good work-life balance?

Roy Morejon:
Nice. Next question. What advice would you give to a new inventor or entrepreneur, that’s looking to launch their invention?

Zbyněk Šuba:
I would tell them, find something that you love and make a product around it. Find something that you love and make a product around it.

Zbyněk Šuba:
It’s always great idea to be a customer of your product, to be the first customer. And if you really love it, then you’re quite sure that there will be at least a few other crazy people, that will love it too.

Roy Morejon:
Hopefully. Right?

Zbyněk Šuba:
Yeah.

Roy Morejon:
Here’s a easy one for you. What’s your favorite mountain to cruise down?

Zbyněk Šuba:
Okay. Well, it’s Madonna di Campiglio. That’s a ski resort in Italy, in the South Tyrol. Yeah, close to, let’s say Trento. It’s the Northern part of Italy.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I would recommend it to anyone going there. They have very wide slopes, not too steep. Yeah, just ideal. Very beautiful scenery, beautiful place. Beautiful place. And if it was a local hill, for hiking and hiking trails, that would be [inaudible 00:22:18], which is close to my home.

Roy Morejon:
Nice. All right, last question. And given that you’ve run multiple crowdfunding campaigns, really interested to hear your take on, what does the future of crowdfunding look like?

Zbyněk Šuba:
I think it will be more difficult. It already is more difficult, as with all eCommerce stuff, because the ads are more expensive and even the big companies are online now. So, it’s more competitive.

Zbyněk Šuba:
It’s more difficult to launch a new campaign, but that makes you think twice, if you launch or not and work harder.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I hope it will continue being more professional, so backers will be more secure, more sure that if they back a campaign, it will probably succeed.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I think big companies will jump on this trend, even though I’m quite surprised they haven’t done so in a bigger way yet. But yeah, I think it will go more professional.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Yeah. We’re already behind the big… How do you call it? Behind the wild west of the crowdfunding campaigns. Now we’re in a more professional stage, but we’ll see.

Zbyněk Šuba:
I would have to ask you this question. I’m not that smart about it.

Roy Morejon:
No, I agree. I wish there were more larger companies, enterprise companies jumping into it and testing out product ideas, before wasting tens of millions of dollars on ideas that nobody really wants or wants to support or really needs.

Roy Morejon:
So, it’s getting there, but it’s much slower than I expected, in terms of the attrition rate of these enterprises using it and the tools that are available to them. Because most of the times, they don’t have conversations with their customers.

Roy Morejon:
I think that’s the beautiful part of using reward crowdfunding, is that you can have a one-on-one dialogue with the creator, offer feedback, suggestions, or just tell them how much they really enjoyed the product.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. They’re wasting their opportunity, but that’s an opportunity for us small companies.

Roy Morejon:
Absolutely. Well, Mr. Suba, this has been amazing. This is your opportunity to give our audience your pitch. Tell people what you’re all about, where they should go and why they should check you out.

Zbyněk Šuba:
For those who are interested in our products, you can go to our website, SnowfeetStore.com. You can search for it on Google. Just don’t click on the ads, because that will make Google even richer, which we don’t want. Click on the ordinary result.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Yeah. If you’re just interested in learning about how to create the campaign, you can send us a message through our website. I can’t promise that I will reply, especially if this video goes viral, which I don’t expect, but if it does, don’t contact us, please.

Zbyněk Šuba:
But if you’re interested in launching a new project, I would definitely recommend you to do so. Just do your homework. Really, do it very well. Put time into it, create video, a great product. Product is first.

Zbyněk Šuba:
If you don’t have a great product, don’t even go there. It must be something that you would be able to launch without the crowdfunding campaign. It must be something that you would be able to launch, just by word of mouth.

Zbyněk Šuba:
So, you must have a great product. Then, create a great video, great marketing, and then create a big list of first backers and do your best. You will see.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Never give up. Because if your first campaign doesn’t succeed, that doesn’t mean that the second one won’t. Yeah. So, you have to keep trying.

Roy Morejon:
Absolutely. Great advice. Audience, thanks again for tuning in. Make sure to visit ArtoftheKickstart.com, for the notes, the transcript, links to everything we talked about today.

Roy Morejon:
Mr. Suba has been gracious enough to give us a discount code for some of his products on his website. So, make sure to head over to the website to get that code.

Roy Morejon:
Of course, I got to thank our crowdfunding podcast sponsor at ProductHype, the top newsletter for new products that just launched.

Roy Morejon:
Mr. Suba, thank you so much for joining us today, on Art of the Kickstart.

Zbyněk Šuba:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you, too. It was great talking to you. Yeah. Looking forward to do more projects with you.

Roy Morejon:
Absolutely. Thank you, sir.

Roy Morejon:
Thank you for tuning into another amazing episode of Art of the Kickstart, the show about building a better business, life and world, with crowdfunding.

Roy Morejon:
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Roy Morejon:
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