Student finds Kickstarter Success Creating What She WISHED Existed

Roy Morejon:
Welcome entrepreneurs and startups to Art of the Kickstart, the show that every entrepreneur needs to listen to before you launch. I’m your host Roy Morejon, president and founder of Enventys Partners, the world’s only turnkey product launch company. From product development and engineering to omnichannel marketing, we’ve helped our clients launch thousands of interventions, and earn more than $1 billion in sales over the past 20 years. 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. This show would not be possible without our main sponsor, ProductHype, the weekly newsletter that goes out and shows you the best inventions that just launched. Make sure to check out producthype.co and join the HypeSquad. Now, let’s get on with the show.

Roy Morejon:
Welcome to another edition of Art of the Kickstart. Today, we are starting super early in the morning because I am super excited to speak to Darya and Babak Forutanpour, founder and CEOs of the Blanktech. Darya is a junior in high school. Yes, she has started super young, which I am really excited about. They’re in San Diego, California. In her free time, she enjoys lots of things, but mostly solving problems in novel ways. She’s joined by her dad, Babak, who helped with the prototyping and manufacturing process. This is actually your third invention together. So I’m really excited to, one, have you guys on the show, and talk to our audience. So welcome to Art of the Kickstart.

Darya Forutanpour:
Thank you so much for having me.

Babak Forutanpour:
Yeah, Roy, it’s a real pleasure, man. It’s an honor. You’re one of the guys that’s been in the game the longest. My first Kickstarter was, oh wow, six, seven years ago on AryaBall. And you and I worked together on that. And so it’s actually an honor to be on your show because you’re one of the OGs. So it’s our pleasure.

Roy Morejon:
Yeah, they’ve kept me around for some reason, I don’t know. I love this and I obviously really was excited about having you guys on the show, Darya, specifically. Babak, we’ve already talked about lots of different things. But in terms of young entrepreneurship, I have two daughters and I’m always trying to figure out ways to get them involved. And just learning and being smart about how they’re approaching their futures. And they’re very young, they’re much younger, they’re in lower school. But I really want to hear how this product came about, first off, Darya. And talk about some of the process that you guys went through to bring this product to market?

Darya Forutanpour:
Okay. So I first started out, during quarantine, looking for something to do, bored out of my mind. Came across reading because my mom has thousands of books in her office. And I’ve wanted a better way to hold my book through a blanket. So that’s why I tried flipping the pages through the blanket with no success with that. And then it came to a brilliant idea of cutting up a blanket with one slit, leading to two, when we realized that was too constricting. So this is how Blanktech started. And then we were like, “Wait, can we make a business out of that?” And we were like, “You’re onto something.” And I asked my dad. So he was like, “Well, you always use your weighted blanket so why don’t you incorporate that?” And I was like, “Whoa.” And I just got to the next level.

Babak Forutanpour:
Yeah. And that was one of the things that was interesting was we thought something like this must exist. The first thing I told her was, “Google it. Let’s see, has anyone made a blanket that’s specifically for reading, that has the arms, the two holes?” And, surprisingly, we couldn’t find anything on Amazon or on Google. And then when she combined her gravity blanket with it, then it became even more unique. And it just became this amazing all-in-one product. And that’s when I’m like, “Man, my baby girl, she’s onto something.” So we started going down the prototyping process.

Roy Morejon:
Nice. My daughters have been cutting up blankets and sheets but for Halloween to go as ghosts. So I’m glad that you were doing it for a productive purpose.

Darya Forutanpour:
Thank you.

Babak Forutanpour:
Yeah, we have a blanket here we can show your… Because I know some people watch it on YouTube as well. I’ll hold it up.

Darya Forutanpour:
Okay.

Roy Morejon:
Yeah, I’d love to hear about the features that you guys included into it. Because I think that’s really the unique aspects of this, in terms of combining the weighted blanket and the Snuggy, if you will.

Babak Forutanpour:
Yeah, it’s got the four features.

Darya Forutanpour:
So the first main one that I pushed was the V-neck design, to keep your shoulders warm. Because my other blanket didn’t keep my shoulders warm while I was reading. The next one here is the weight pack, so you are able to put it underneath.

Babak Forutanpour:
Yeah, this part opens up and you put in a five pound weight pack in here. So when you’re laying down, it feels like a nice hug. Just five pounds of pressure over the chest, that compression just, again, feels like you’re being held. So that was Darya’s idea of taking her 20-pound weighted blanket and just getting the part that she needed the most. Which is just over the chest, not over the ankles or the knees or your arms, hard to put on, hard to wash, but just right here. I thought that was genius to make that jump.

Darya Forutanpour:
I didn’t want to put on a weighted blanket that took an arm workout to put on. I just wanted something to throw over myself. And the next novelty that we added was the pockets for your reading glasses, TV remote, originally for snacks. And you can still put snacks in there too, but I like to put my reading glasses in there.

Roy Morejon:
Snacks sound great. What I love about this, though, is that you guys went through, in your crowdfunding video that was on Kickstarter for anybody that didn’t check out the campaign or support it, that you showed the process in terms of the prototyping process. Of starting with the sheet, then moving to the blanket, having specific spots there, and then testing it with multiple sized humans. Talk about that prototyping process and why people shouldn’t be afraid of it?

Darya Forutanpour:
So the prototyping process was just easier than I thought it was. I was hesitant that I was going to fail a blanket, but I was like, “No, let’s just go get at it and just one step after the other.” So that’s really-

Babak Forutanpour:
Yeah, we did prototyping at home, showed it to friends and family. And we got that early data, they loved it. And then we found a seamstress, not too far from the house, and we would go with our drawings and our own prototypes. And I think… How many iterations did it take?

Darya Forutanpour:
Eight. We wanted it to be perfect.

Babak Forutanpour:
Yeah, it went through eight iterations, driving to a city in Escondido, not too far from here, and just kept refining it. Originally, I think what this pouch was-

Darya Forutanpour:
Was on top of the blanket.

Babak Forutanpour:
… was on top because we would add the weight on top. And when we showed it to people, the feedback was, “Well, can you-“

Darya Forutanpour:
“It’s bulgy and we don’t like the bulginess. It doesn’t look nice with the bulginess.”

Babak Forutanpour:
Yeah. So that pocket that you saw went from the top to underneath. And then the location of the arm holes, we tried it on different people, and so that started to morph where those went. And I think one of the important things, I think we let the data lead us. Constantly showing it to people, getting feedback, not being afraid to prototype. Fortunately, it was a blanket so it’s different than others who might be working on an electronic device. But even these days, with Arduino, you can do electronic devices with 3D printers. You can do your own plastics. So yeah, it’s a great time to be an inventor.

Darya Forutanpour:
Their feedback from the prototyping process made me very much more excited to bring this to market because I felt like, “This is something that they’re going to love.”

Roy Morejon:
No, it looks like it absolutely did. Obviously, given your location, you were able to bring people in, or bring the blanket to people. And they certainly showed up when supporting the campaign. What was unique about yours is almost, I think, nearly half of the backers were actually first time supporters of a Kickstarter campaign. So it’s great to see that you converted them through the technology, through your surveys, through your data, to actually say, “Yes, this is the product that’s coming to market.” And that they believed in you, as a young inventor, to be able to deliver the product. And I know, now, you guys are doing this, it looks like in the garage, as I’m following along on social media. And fulfilling these orders and taking trips to the post office. How rewarding is that, Darya, to finally have that prototype and be able to start delivering it to your customers?

Darya Forutanpour:
It’s very rewarding because this is so much far than I thought we would ever get. And it’s just someone special to do it with by your side, because I really look up to Dad.

Babak Forutanpour:
Yeah, it’s been such a bonding experience. Roy, you’re a father of two girls. And, sometimes, society makes us think that you’re going to have more in common with your boys because football, sports, et cetera. But it’s really not about whether it’s a boy or girl, it’s about the personality. And Darya and I are like… One of the things that she… I don’t know if maybe it’s in her DNA that she loves… She’s picked up on Dad in the garage prototyping and doing his Kickstarters in the past. Or trying to bring products to market, some successful, many not. And it’s interesting that that’s become one of the things that we bonded over, that, also our love for music. We were at a concert this past weekend.

Babak Forutanpour:
So it’s just been awesome finding all these things that Darya and I have in common. And the blanket is a metaphor for our love. And the way our relationship is, is building stuff together. My son’s going to listen to this, I love him too. We have our own interests. But Darya seems to have gotten the entrepreneurial, inventor gene, and I couldn’t ask for a better partner. Her energy is infectious. And as an old dog who’s been added, she’s bringing me new life. It’s been fantastic. And the questions she asks are like, “Damn, she’s picking this up faster than I ever did, for sure.”

Darya Forutanpour:
One of your most famous things that you say to us is, “Stay curious and always ask questions.” That has helped me come up with this, especially, because that’s why I was reading and doing it underneath the blanket. So that’s how this all-

Babak Forutanpour:
Yeah. And what’s interesting is, I’ve launched a couple, or I’ve tried to launch some businesses on my own, and for the most part, it’s been a learning process. I haven’t had the right partner that you need in order to be successful. And I would’ve never thought that Darya, my daughter, would be the right partner. And in fact, it’s her business and I’m partnering her, that it’s like, “Wow.” So we’re both becoming successful. It’s really interesting because all the other ones have been you prototype it, maybe you get the patent, but then it just didn’t work out. This one, I’m so proud of her, her first one out the gate. It’s taken me 30 years to get to this point, and this girl did it in two years. So I’m in awe of her. It’s pretty funny.

Roy Morejon:
That’s great. No, I love this story. I am curious, how do you think more parents could get their kids involved with keeping curiosity alive, and trying to build things and do things together in this space? Because I think a lot of families, like ours, watch Shark Tank every week, and it’s amazing when we get to see our clients and products on there. But I always wish parents would start earlier with their kids, just building that curiosity up. So any nuggets of wisdom there for parents or kids?

Darya Forutanpour:
Just ask questions around. That’s pretty much all I did. I was like, “That’s how-“

Babak Forutanpour:
I think to Darya’s point, it’s being curious. To this day, I don’t know if it’s nurture or nature. Because you know Roy better than anyone, you’re only going to be successful if you’re solving a real problem. And that problem requires ingenuity to even know that there’s a problem. That’s sometimes half the battle. And so for Darya to have that notion of, “Why doesn’t someone make a blanket that makes it easier to read?” I don’t think that’s me or Pulak, necessarily. I don’t know if that’s parenting, it might be. But a lot of it is just… I think there’s this inner entrepreneurial, curious person inside all of us and you’ve just got to feed it. And the parents can help. But, ultimately, it’s up to the child to be bold enough to be like, “You know what? I can…” Not to get all over dramatic but, “I can change the world. I can’t create something that never existed.”

Babak Forutanpour:
And I think parents can nurture it, but that fire has to be there to begin with. So I think it’s that age-old question of nature versus nurture, and I don’t know what the answer is. I wish Pulak and I could take credit for Darya being very curious, but at a young age she was very observant. Some people go through life, they just eat, sleep, work, college, grades. Darya does that, but she’s also just very, literally, looking around. One thing I want to say about Darya I’m so proud of is, she joined a… Sorry to gush about you. But her and her brother entered this camp in Washington, D.C. It was a young leadership camp. And she came to me, she’s like, “I’m so excited to go.” I’m like, “Oh, because you’re going to make new friends and learn more about the US political system?” She’s like, “No, because it’s going to put me in situations where I can find new problems to solve.”

Roy Morejon:
Amazing.

Babak Forutanpour:
What 16-year-old going off the camp is thinking along, “It’ll put me in an environment where I can find new problems to solve”? So Roy, to answer your question, I think it’s a little bit DNA, that’s what I think.

Roy Morejon:
Yeah, I think also, with the age of distraction that we’re in, I don’t think we allow ourselves to get bored anymore. And I think boredom allows us to spur on that curiosity, and find those opportunities out there to solve problems, or just sit with your thoughts and come up with these creative ways to solve problems. I just don’t think, with mobile phones in front of us, we can be as distracted as we want all of the time, but we really don’t allow ourselves to just sit and ponder.

Babak Forutanpour:
Exactly. And to your point, I think the fact that we don’t allow Darya on social media, to your point, maybe that’s a check mark for a win for the parents. Which is like, yeah, she was bored, she was not sitting there watching TikToks all day. So to your point, I think it’s both. It’s also putting the child in an environment where their brain can think freely, instead of just the next meme or whatever.

Roy Morejon:
Exactly. Well, this has been amazing. This is going to get us directly into our launch round. Darya, are you ready for my questions?

Darya Forutanpour:
Yes.

Roy Morejon:
All right. So what inspired you to be an entrepreneur?

Darya Forutanpour:
Honestly, it starts with Dad. So I see him every day in the garage, tinker in the garage, many prototypes, many inventions. And that has led me to, “I want to develop my own invention.” So that’s why I was thinking of every problem I could solve, every single day. [inaudible 00:15:33]

Roy Morejon:
So if you could meet with any entrepreneur throughout history, who would you want to have a chat with?

Darya Forutanpour:
Lori Greiner.

Roy Morejon:
Oh, Lori, okay. And what would be your first question for Lori?

Darya Forutanpour:
She has the saying, “Hero to zero,” would Blanktech be considered for that?

Babak Forutanpour:
Hopefully, she says hero and not zero. We’re dying to know that, so we applied this past season for Shark Tank. Didn’t get on, but we’re going to try again. We’re going to get in front of Lori one of these days, for sure.

Roy Morejon:
Absolutely. I look forward to that. Darya, what do you think are the top three skills that every young entrepreneur needs to be successful?

Darya Forutanpour:
What are the top three-

Roy Morejon:
What do you think are the top three skills?

Darya Forutanpour:
Oh, what are the top three skills? Oh, just have faith and hope and dedication to it. And stay consistent.

Roy Morejon:
Absolutely. Solid advice right there. Darya, what’s one invention that’s made your life easier during this pandemic?

Darya Forutanpour:
Blanktech, every single day.

Roy Morejon:
Amazing. Where do you see yourself in three years, besides finishing high school?

Darya Forutanpour:
Well, college, and producing this to market, and Amazon sales going up.

Roy Morejon:
Amazing.

Babak Forutanpour:
I think one of the things is, Darya and I, we’ve invented together two other products. And we didn’t go to market because the tooling was expensive. So we’re hoping that… One of them’s a tooth diary. It’s a way for parents to keep their baby tooth, which was inspired by Darya and Arya. The other is a baking contraption. So Darya and her mom and I could bake more often without the messy cleanups. And we’re hoping that the sales from Blanktechs, she can reinvest in her tooth diary and in the baking thing, the Baker Buddy. So we’re hoping this is the start of many successful products that were either created by her, like Blanktech, or at least inspired by her, like the other two.

Roy Morejon:
Amazing. All right, last question for you, Darya. And I know you’ve just finished this campaign, you’ve worked on others. But very interested to hear both of your takes, honestly, on what does the future of crowdfunding look like?

Darya Forutanpour:
Well, it starts with Kickstarter, that’s the main goal. And then you go to Amazon next to sell your product and that’s where we’re going to be next. We’re also selling through Shopify at our website.

Babak Forutanpour:
Yeah, to Dario’s point, you start with Kickstarter, you let the crowd decide whether your product passes the main test of, “Does it fit a market need with that money?” Then you can then produce it and then take it to Amazon. So, really, crowdfunding, I think, is only going to get more popular, whether it’s Kickstarter or Indiegogo. And it’s a great way to, again, test the market, get feedback. And I think we’re living proof of the fact that even though the platform’s been around for almost 10 years, maybe eight years or so, the fact that it’s alive and well. And a young girl, 16-year-old, with her blanket can go on there and raise over 10 grand, and use that to fund her first MOQ. And then, with that, continue to get feedback from sales. Our customers are loving it. They’re sending us pictures, we’re getting all these pictures of people using Blanktech, especially little girls.

Darya Forutanpour:
That really warms my heart that they’re using it because it makes me so happy.

Babak Forutanpour:
Yeah. And then as Darya said, reinvest those profits into getting on the biggest platform, which is Amazon. And really trying to get at least four and a half stars on there so you can just share your love with even a bigger audience. So I think the future looks bright because it’s been a great, great platform. And their fees are reasonable and the audience is huge. And thank God that crowdfunding exists, because if we had to do it on our own, we probably would’ve, but then we’re taking on so much more risk. With crowdfunding, it eliminates the risk. You can still choose to do it on your own, but if the crowd loves it and you get the backers, like we did… We thought, originally, we’d get a lot of friends and family to support Darya, but holy smokes, the Kickstarter community just… It went bananas.

Darya Forutanpour:
It bumped it up.

Babak Forutanpour:
Boom, boom, boom. I thought, “Okay, well…” Our goal was $3,000 and that was actually not like, “Let’s a set a low goals so we look like winners.” No, it’s like, “Hey, we need about 3K to 5K to do it.” And we did 12 and a half. So we love the Kickstarter community. And then the feedback, the comments. People writing us all the time saying, “Can you do more designs?” Originally, there was going to be two Blanktech designs, but the community wanted more. So then we negotiated with the factory to get four different designs.

Babak Forutanpour:
Another thing I want to leave your listeners with, that I think is important from the business side that we didn’t touch upon, is negotiating with your factory. Their MOQ was higher and the price was higher, and we were able to work with them to bring both of those down. We got our MOQ down to 400. And we, literally, by showing them prices on Alibaba and other vendors, we were able to get the price also reduced. So our factory was great. But once we challenged them a little bit to try a little bit harder to try to get the prices to something where we’d have healthier margins, they were willing to work with us. So for your listeners, other than continue to be prototyping and don’t give up, negotiating with the factory and listening to your customers. Those were probably the three biggest things that we learned through this process.

Roy Morejon:
Amazing. I really appreciate you both coming on the show today. This has been great. I know our listeners are really going to enjoy it. Where can all of our listeners go and buy this product?

Darya Forutanpour:
You can buy this on Shopify.

Babak Forutanpour:
Our website is-

Darya Forutanpour:
Our website is www.theblanktech.com.

Roy Morejon:
Amazing. Audience, thanks again for tuning in. Make sure to visit-

Babak Forutanpour:
Oh, Roy, we got a code. Roy, we got a code for your listeners.

Roy Morejon:
Oh my God, you do have a code. It’s Roy’s BFF, Roy’s best friend forever. So that’s only going to be listed for two weeks. So if you guys are wanting this, it’s a great product, especially for the winter as it gets colder. So check out theblanktech.com, use code Roy’s BFF for 25% off, only for the next two weeks. And make sure to visit our website, check out the links and everything else. And of course, I got to thank our crowdfunding podcast sponsor over at ProductHype, the top newsletter for new products that just launched. Babak, Darya, thank you so much for joining us today on Art of the Kickstart.

Darya Forutanpour:
Thank you so much.

Babak Forutanpour:
Roy, it was our pleasure, man. Thanks so much.

Roy Morejon:
Of course.

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. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode as much as I did, make sure to show us some love by rating us and reviewing us on your favorite listening station, whatever that may be. Your review really helps other founders and startups find us so they can improve their craft and achieve greater success like you. And of course, be sure to visit artofthekickstart.com for all the previous episodes. And if you need any help, make sure to send me an email at info@artofthekickstart.com. I’d be glad to help you out. Thanks again for tuning in. I’ll see you next week.