5x Campaign Creator Attributes Success to Creating Trust With Backers

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, I am super excited because I am speaking with the one and only, Mr. Hunter Sparrow, the marketing manager for US and Europe for Magpie Tech. If you haven’t heard of Magpie Tech, that’s okay, because you probably heard about their other five campaigns, many of them, the most recent one called Kiko, which just finished on Kickstarter, raised a whole bunch of money. These guys are really amazing at laser measurement technology. I’m super excited to be speaking with you, Hunter. Thank you so much for joining us today on Art of the Kickstart.

Hunter Sparrow:
Oh, yes. Thank you so much, Roy, for having me on the show. I’m excited to talk about Kiko, talk with you, and let the listeners know what we’ve been up to, where we’re going, and how we’re getting there. This is going to be a great first interview. Thank you.

Roy Morejon:
Yeah. No, I’m glad to break the seal, so to speak, on this for you personally, but also I’m really excited for the audience to learn about this because this truly is a revolutionary company that’s created amazing products and continue to go back to Kickstarter now for five campaigns on the platform. So I know there’s a ton of learnings on there, but if you would, let’s just backtrack a little bit and talk about Magpie Tech and the evolution of products on Kickstarter that they’ve continued to launch.

Hunter Sparrow:
Oh, yes, definitely. I think we should get a championship belt at this point for five stars, but getting this Kickstarter our fifth time, yeah, you think we would be champs at this time, but every single time they’ve launched a new product on Kickstarter, we learn a ton more new stuff that we would love to share. The evolution of our product has been slow, but it’s been very steady and we’ve had a lot of feedback, listened to a lot of our backers and improved it. Then we just released another product on Kickstarter and we’ve had a ton of success. So now, with our latest product with Kiko and Magpie, we wanted to enter a new market, getting into the consumer market, help people in a different way, use our technology, our laser technology in a different direction. That’s where Kiko was born and that’s what we’ve been focusing on.

Roy Morejon:
With the first product that was launched on Kickstarter years ago, I think it was 2017 or yeah, March-

Hunter Sparrow:
Yes, that’s correct. Yes.

Roy Morejon:
What was that evolution of the first problem that Magpie was solving to the most recent one?

Hunter Sparrow:
Yes. Good question. Back in 2017, we wanted to create a product with our technology that solve the time and energy cost of DIY projects. People are using tape measures. They’re trying to do things manually and we thought, hey, we can cut this out with just our laser technology. We can help people measure, track store, and help them complete those DIY projects in a really simple, easy device. So that was the first solution we wanted to provide with our laser technology. Then we realized as time went by and we have improved it and upgraded it, people were actually using this technology for other reasons. One reason was measuring people’s heights. So we put it together. Oh, wow, maybe we should use this technology for other fields. That’s when the Kiko spirit came alive along with a lot of brainstorming ideas.

Roy Morejon:
Let’s talk about the evolution. I know you’re newer in the role in terms of the marketing side with Magpie Tech, but given that they ran a campaign five years ago and now five years later, five separate products, what was the impetus in terms of wanting to use Kickstarter as a means to launch their first innovation on?

Hunter Sparrow:
Yes. I think I can speak to most of that part. I know as you said, I’m a little bit new, so I’m not 100% sure, but for us and for Magpie, we want to do it directly to the backers. We want to make a product for the backers. We want to get their feedback and through Kickstarter portals is honestly an excellent way to do that. You make a product. You market it. You pitch it to the backers and you’ll know if it’s successful or not based on how successful your campaign is. So that’s a really huge thing for us. We want to do it to the backers. We’re here for the backers. We want to create products for people like that and that’s a great source to find them. It’s kind of our temperature gauge.

Hunter Sparrow:
The first product, oh, this is a new idea, let’s check it on Kickstarter. And whoa, we’re really surprised people really want to use this type of product and solution. Then we just upgraded it, improved it, put it back, released it step by step. We love that. We’re huge. We’re a small company. We understand the small mind. We want to provide to the people directly and that’s a huge part of our values for us. So yeah, we’re all for the Kickstarter campaigns. That’s our go-to. It’s just how we do it.

Roy Morejon:
No, it’s amazing because again, we are seeing more and more companies continue to tap into the community that they’ve built on Kickstarter. I think that’s the number one component of crowdfunding itself is being able to have a crowd to tap into not only to sell product to, but to get feedback one on one from. So what have been, if you can speak to it, some of those learnings along the way of launching multiple different products on the platform and some of that feedback that’s led to new innovation?

Hunter Sparrow:
Yes. I think for the first part, a really important part is creating a lot of trust on those campaign sites, because you’ll see, there’s a lot of horror stories, unfortunately. Companies promise big things to their backers. Looks great. It looks amazing and when time comes, they just MIA. So that’s a big thing. So one of the first things we try to establish is just a base of trust. We’re going to create this product. We’re going to deliver this product and it’s going to be used materials from our manufacturer. We’re going to be crafting it and checking the quality and we’re going to deliver it out to you. So I think that’s the biggest thing we are concerned about, especially with COVID. That really threw a curve ball for many small businesses trying to launch on these platforms and then the prices just skyrocketed. We couldn’t meet those demands and that’s a perfect example why Kiko failed the first time.

Hunter Sparrow:
We didn’t know what to do. With the whole COVID, we couldn’t get the materials. Everything went up and our promises just went out the back window. So yeah, we really are sensitive to that kind of situation. I think that’s a huge, fundamental part of these Kickstarter things is to establish trust very early on. That’s why our campaigns have been so successful is we’ve managed to establish trust each time and the backers get their products. That’s the biggest thing for us.

Roy Morejon:
You guys have had over, I think, 7,000 separate backers now on all of these campaigns come in. Obviously, you’ve checked the box on trust as well as just amazing innovation. How has that changed from the first campaign to the most recent campaign in terms of continuing to build trust, especially when you have a failed campaign or a campaign that you have to cancel because of not wanting to deal with potentially any backlash from the consumer audience?

Hunter Sparrow:
Yeah. That’s a great question. For the earlier campaigns, I wish I was around to see how bad it went and what they had to do to do the damage control. But from this recent campaign, it’s funny, we launched Kiko and we sent out an email to the previous backers because we got quite a big pool of them, and a lot of them were asking about our other products. They weren’t even caring about these products here. They didn’t even care about Kiko. That was the funny part. Then through those communication, through those previous backers, we could identify which ones were satisfied and which ones weren’t. That was a big wake-up call as well. Okay, these customers didn’t get their product. Something was wrong. We have to take care of it immediately. We have to provide them a solution and help them out.

Hunter Sparrow:
With our campaigns, we are really trying to keep that high level of trust and support. Even those previous backers back to 2017, people were asking us questions about those previous campaigns, and we were trying to find solutions, communicate with them and help them get those products and fix it as soon as possible. Yeah, it’s a constant 24/7 job just keeping this trust for now. I don’t know how other campaigns do it, but we are putting 100% into this every day.

Roy Morejon:
Yeah. No, I can definitely see that. I think with your most recent campaign with Kiko, it seems to be like a shift into more consumer health, if you will, kind of that home clinic as you guys put it on your campaign where I think a lot of people now during COVID have certainly focused on living longer and taking care of themselves, hopefully. Not only that, but obviously, this product was really focused on kids and adults and parents to be able to track their kids and their height measurements and smart scales and all of that. What was maybe that direction change in the company to produce this product? Did it come from consumer feedback from the campaigns or consumer insights from where innovation is heading in the market that you wanted to be in?

Hunter Sparrow:
Yes. Great question. I think it’s a bit of both. I think for us, as we created the previous four campaigns using laser technology, one little clip of insight we got is that some people were using that device to measure their kids’ height. So I thought, ah, that’s an interesting use of our technology. We didn’t really think about that. Then one of our coworkers at the job, she has kids. She was saying, “Well, it’s interesting. I want to measure my kids and keep track of them in a practical way that doesn’t destroy our house and do it more digital.” That’s the more modern way of measuring your kids and tracking their health. So we put the two together. We put that idea, health concerns.

Hunter Sparrow:
The company, the CEO is trying to find new ways to bring values, especially with COVID and health. He’s very concerned about those kind of topics. So they brainstormed and they got together and they realized, oh, Kiko could measure kids’ height, track it. We could put a scale with it, couple it with an app that helps parents manage their kids at home in a much more modernized way, and that’s how it came about, yeah.

Roy Morejon:
Yeah, it’s amazing. It saves all of us a wall of marking on and all of that and all the clean up. Everything’s being digitized these days, right?

Hunter Sparrow:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:11:19].

Roy Morejon:
I think it’s [inaudible 00:11:20] and fits itself really well. Hunter, I know, again, you hadn’t been there since the start, but really interested to dive in now on the crowdfunding campaign in terms of talking about a little bit of the preparation. Maybe if you were able to see what Magpie did for campaign one versus what you’ve done for the last ones and how that’s changed over the years.

Hunter Sparrow:
I think definitely the first attempt, they gave it their best. They gave it their best shot. In terms of that, we’re dealing with different cultures here. They’re based in South Korea. We have to communicate with them. They have to make the product. Entering into the US market can be a little different. It’s a little bit of a different mindset, how you marketed, how you worded, how you presented, what problems you solve. I think there’s been a huge transition from understanding the customer base and understanding that the community of Kickstarter and what they expect from a crowdfunding campaign. I think that’s changed a lot. We’ve marketed different. We’ve promised different results. We got better guidelines. We got better safety and recommendations. We’ve definitely wanted to show them this product is worth your time. It’s worth your money. Compared to now, we’ve done a much better job, much more efficient definitely now that I’ve known more about the company, look where they’re going. Just for example, Kiko, we had 20 prototypes even before we released it on Kickstarter because-

Roy Morejon:
[inaudible 00:12:45].

Hunter Sparrow:
… we knew exactly. Yeah, we knew exactly. If we did it at 15th or 12th or 10th prototype, it never would’ve been enough to keep their trust. I think that’s the hugest thing is you got to do prototypes. You got to test it, rigorous testing, because once your trust is gone, they’re not going to come back. It’s very hard for them to come back and they’re going to leave the comments. They’re definitely going to leave these comments. You can’t hide it.

Roy Morejon:
[inaudible 00:13:08] the $1 backer so they can leave a comment, right?

Hunter Sparrow:
Yes. Exactly. The COVID situation was a blessing in disguise. The company got a chance to recalibrate, check the product. We changed the color design. Slightly, we changed the buttons, the pressure of the buttons. We checked the technology, recalibrated it. We really wanted to get it the second time. That was a huge thing is 20 prototypes, rigorous testing, a lot of quality control, and then especially with the app and the scale, we all have to make sure it connects. I guess our biggest lesson from the previous campaigns is a rigorous testing, rigorous testing, tested on every single possible way, upside down, everywhere you could think of. Test it till it breaks, because then you’ll know how good the quality of the product is and that’s what we did.

Roy Morejon:
Amazing. Magpie’s now a part of, what is it, a accelerator program with Samsung. How about did that come forward and what was their level of excitement, if you will, for the crowdfunding campaign and them being a part of it?

Hunter Sparrow:
I wish I could speak to that. Unfortunately, that was before my time. They have a bit of results with that. That’s a different department, unfortunately. I wish I could speak to that because I’m a huge fan of Samsung. I know they’re a big powerhouse here and we’re happy to have them on board and showcase their technology in our product in that way. Sorry. Unfortunately, next time.

Roy Morejon:
I’m happy to have their technology too. It’s great. All right. We’ll skip past Samsung.

Hunter Sparrow:
Yes. Perfect.

Roy Morejon:
Let’s talk a little bit then about shipping, because-

Hunter Sparrow:
Yes.

Roy Morejon:
… something that’s always come up and certainly during this pandemic, shipping has always been an issue and now, certainly top of mind for all creators that are out there. How have you gone about managing shipping expectations while shipping this product globally?

Hunter Sparrow:
Yes. That’s a huge concern for our backers too. They’re asking us almost every day on there. In terms of shipping, yes, we gave ourselves a pretty good cushion of guidelines to make sure we have the product. Because we can manufacture it in house, so we’re, very much in control of what’s being done, how much quantity is being out there, and how we’re going to ship it over. We’ve, how do I say, crossed all the Ts, dotted all the Is in this situation because this is round two for us and we didn’t want to disappoint the backers. So yeah, we have everything on schedule. We’re looking to get our first batch out this coming week, test it, and then we’re going to be shipping them out in August, August to arrive in September as projected.

Roy Morejon:
That’s a cool start for all those kiddos, right?

Hunter Sparrow:
We are [inaudible 00:15:45]. Yes. Yeah, those kiddos need us, so we really have to get this down.

Roy Morejon:
That’s for sure.

Hunter Sparrow:
Absolutely.

Roy Morejon:
They want to know how tall they are before they start their next grade, right?

Hunter Sparrow:
Oh, God, that’s true. But parents are more interested than the kids, I got to say.

Roy Morejon:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:16:02].

Hunter Sparrow:
How many kids do you have yourself?

Roy Morejon:
I have two girls, so I’m definitely more-

Hunter Sparrow:
How did it go?

Roy Morejon:
… excited than they are about it. But what child doesn’t love a laser, especially when it doesn’t hurt their eyes?

Hunter Sparrow:
Exactly, yeah. Because you know they’re going to point it at each other’s eyes, the first thing they do.

Roy Morejon:
Yeah, or the dog’s eyes, the cat’s eyes, whatever animal is around them. They’re like, lasers.

Hunter Sparrow:
Yeah. That was a big concern. Parents have a weird connotation with lasers because they know growing up as a kid, you probably lasered your brother or sister’s eye, mom, parents, dogs,-

Roy Morejon:
Absolutely.

Hunter Sparrow:
… fish, whatever. Yes. I want to put it out there, the lasers are safe. But yes.

Roy Morejon:
Just to round out the crowdfunding side of things, what was the biggest surprise or takeaway that you want to share with the audience about the most recent campaign that you did?

Hunter Sparrow:
Yes. I think that the biggest surprise for us is just the amount of backers that communicated back to us. Just because you launch another campaign with your brand name and a similar product, don’t expect to always win over the previous backers. You always have to keep the previous backers in mind and you don’t want to abuse their support. That’s one big thing we found. There was a very different shift between the last campaign with the measuring tool device and this campaign with the Kiko height measure. We overlapped. We were hoping a lot more of the previous backers would help us out, but actually, that wasn’t the case. They wanted that other product. They didn’t want this product per se. I think some kind of advice is don’t abuse it. Don’t overuse their support in the previous campaign for this campaign unless you know it’s your demographic.

Hunter Sparrow:
Like when we did the email campaign blasting out, we sent it a couple times. We didn’t get a good response. Backers are emailing us, “Please stop emailing me, stop sending me messages.” That’s not a good sign. I would give my two cents worth of advice, is just know your backers, know where they fit, what they can do, and don’t overreach on them, because they did their part. They helped you the first time. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Just understand that don’t pull them too hard into your next campaign just because they did well in the last one. So yeah, that’s definitely [inaudible 00:18:25].

Roy Morejon:
That’s a sound advice, Hunter. Because again, you guys had two completely separate products overall, right, in terms of the measurement-

Hunter Sparrow:
Yes.

Roy Morejon:
… side of things, one definitely focused on parents with young kids and the others for anybody that wants to measure anything that they’re doing. All of the advice there that sometimes, those databases don’t collaborate. They’re not the same person, so you can’t go all in on one side and expect that just because they bought the first product from you, they’re going to buy the next one. So being able to build new communities and that’s the beauty of crowdfunding. You can build a whole new community around this new product that is a little bit different than the previous one.

Hunter Sparrow:
Exactly, yeah. So that was the biggest wake-up call. The second thing we should utilize, we should have is we should have done a lot more pre-marketing. That’s something we are looking at the next campaign. The next product we launch is a lot more pre-marking. So we just ran in there gung ho. We are a little bit confident. We got five campaigns under our belt. But as you said, it’s a new product, different demographic, different style, different message. We got to get out there. This is kind of a niche product, as you said earlier. People don’t really know. They’re not really searching for Kiko. How can I check my kids health at home? So yeah, that was also a big one. This is a lot of pre-marketing. That’s our next goal for sure.

Roy Morejon:
Beautiful. Well, I’m looking forward to that. Hunter, 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?

Hunter Sparrow:
Sure. Yes, good to go. Ready to rock.

Roy Morejon:
What inspired you to be an entrepreneur?

Hunter Sparrow:
Oh, for me, I come from a long history of entrepreneurship, especially from my family, grandfather. They all managed to find some kind of product, create some value, and present it to the people in their community. I lived my whole life with that kind of mindset. So that’s why I’m a huge supporter of small businesses. It takes a tremendous amount of effort, leadership, people with skills to bring any product to market, and especially now, it’s very competitive. As you know, we’re dealing globally now, not just in your little country. So I have huge respect for every campaign. Every person I checked on out of the kickstart, they all done something amazing. That gives me the inspiration to just keep going, to try and keep brainstorming, keep applying. That’s just the way it’s going to be for now.

Roy Morejon:
Nice. If you could meet with any entrepreneur throughout history, who would it be?

Hunter Sparrow:
Oh, man, that’s a great question. Definitely for this century, I got to go with the classics. I would love to meet Steve Jobs. I’d love to meet Elon Musk. I think just to be able to pick their brain about how to disrupt the market, how they think, how they approach things would be unbelievable experience. They think so differently and they know how to bring a product to life and create that value like nobody else. That would be my two. I could talk all day about that. Sorry, but I’ll stop there.

Roy Morejon:
Nice. Any book that you would recommend to our entrepreneurial listeners?

Hunter Sparrow:
Yes. One great book I’m reading these days is What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, Marshall Goldsmith. He talks about how successful people become even more successful. It’s a lot about mindset. It’s a lot of discomfort. Because you’ll meet a lot of successful people who got successful and then they just stay in that bubble and it’s very hard for them to progress. That book just helps you bring a little bit more awareness and gives you some action plans and that’s hitting the spot for me right now.

Roy Morejon:
Amazing. What’s one piece of advice that you would give to a new inventor entrepreneur that’s looking to launch their product?

Hunter Sparrow:
Ooh, that’s a good question. For me, I think a lot of people these days are a little bit worried about their product. They don’t have that confidence in it just yet and it tends them to shy away from really giving 150%. I’d say it’s better to fail than not have tried it 150%. Especially with Kickstarter, that’s what makes it so brilliant is you can really give it your all and manage the risk very well. You know what you’re getting into. You know what you’re investing. So just give it your all. If you have a $5 budget, that’s okay. It’s possible on Kickstarter. Just give it, offer it, people will be there. Just use all the resources you can. You’ll definitely find a way. So yeah, just I’d say give it a go and choose a platform, choose your budget and just do your best to marketing. Give it that.

Roy Morejon:
Absolutely. All right. Last question, Hunter. I know you’ve only worked on a few campaigns, but obviously, you have some good insights here, so I’m really interested to hear your take on what does the future of crowdfunding look like.

Hunter Sparrow:
Oh, future of crowdfunding. Future of crowdfunding, I think, is going to be a phenomenal part of small businesses. I really think from now, there’s going to be a lot more evolution of crowdfunding, especially platforms like you. You’re bringing awareness to different projects. People are getting more in tuned with their communities. They’re understanding the products that help people and they have a platform to show that without going through the whole third party and all the big companies they need to go through like previously. So I think crowdfunding is going to have quite of a, I say a boom coming out and people are going to realize, hey, we can actually make a product that doesn’t have to be complicated that provides value to people. I think people are going to start realizing that.

Hunter Sparrow:
Because if you go on Kickstarter, you’ll find some really cool products, very simple ideas. Anybody could have thought of that, they just took the time to market and manage again. That’s the exciting part about crowdfunding, is people are going to start realizing their ideas can come to life. So yeah, I’m waiting for it to go to the next level, more products, more platforms, more trust, more accountability. I’m really excited.

Roy Morejon:
Me too, man. Well, listen, Hunter, this has been amazing. This is your chance to talk directly to our audience. Give them your pitch. Tell them what you’re all about, where they should go, and why they should check out Magpie Tech and the Kiko product.

Hunter Sparrow:
Ah, yes. Thank you for the 50 seconds of fame here. Yes. For us, we would love it for anybody listening today to go check out heykiko.com. That’s our product. We put a lot of love and effort and rigorous testing into it. You could check it out there. You can also check out magpietech.net. That’s for our other laser measurement products and those are available there. For Kiko, it should come out in September. We’re going to be launching it there and you can check out all the details on the website, on Instagram, Facebook. You can go check it out there as well.

Roy Morejon:
Awesome. Well, audience, thanks again for tuning in. Make sure to visit the website, artofthekickstart.com, for the notes, transcript, links to all the cool products that these guys are creating. Of course, I got to give a shout out to our crowdfunding podcast sponsor over at ProductHype, the top newsletter for all new products that just launched. Hunter, thank you so much for joining us today on Art of the Kickstart.

Hunter Sparrow:
Perfect. Thank you so much, Roy, for your time and your effort. I really had a great conversation with you.

Roy Morejon:
Absolutely. 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. Of course, be sure to visit artofthekickstart.com for all the previous episodes. 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.