Hasta La Ideas

Crowd Supply is Kickstarter for product designers. That’s an overly simplistic description and a disservice to what Crowd Supply has accomplished at launch, but it’s the best way to explain what it is. When you dig past the surface, into what a crowdfunding site developed specifically for product designers could mean, the differences become exciting.

The site launched this morning with nine projects and three read-to-ship products, ranging the gamut from an iPhone case with a built-in hand crank charger to a cyclocross bike to a dog collar with a built-in leash that I am admittedly thinking of Backing for my own dog.

About two weeks ago, I spoke via Skype with Crowd Supply’s CEO, Lou Doctor. He was coming from Crowd Supply’s headquarters in Portland and had the familiar look of someone under the gun getting ready to launch a product—happy and sleep deprived. Doctor, like the five other employees at Crowd Supply , comes with a background in engineering that has veered into business, entrepreneurship and running project teams.

I came away from our discussion thinking that Doctor and his team have smartly thought through the experience of running a crowdfunded product design project while simultaneously creating a better experience for Backers.

Let’s start with how Crowd Supply is the same as Kickstarter. All of the big design issues that Kickstarter solved are kept in place. Projects are pitched by Creators. They have funding goals and deadlines. If they meet or exceed their goal by the deadline, they get funded. If they miss their goal, they don’t get funded. Project pages mimic Kickstarter’s familiar layout: Video and funding goal at the top, description and backing tiers below. Creators retain all ownership of their projects and give Crowd Supply 5% of their fundraising total.

Beyond these fundamentals, Crowd Supply has built a platform specifically tailored for product design and manufacturing. They’ve done a bunch of little things right, but I want to focus on three key areas that I think makes them meaningfully different from Kickstarter.

1. Mentorship
This has the potential to be a real game changer: Crowd Supply is staffed by product development veterans who will advise Creators throughout the course of their projects.

When Creators send their projects to be reviewed, Crowd Supply’s team vets them, looking for potential pitfalls in their plans. The feedback could come in the form of, “This will be more expensive that you are thinking, you need to raise your funding goal,” or “Have you thought of adding an engineer to your team? Here is someone that could help,” or “Have you thought through your production plan yet?” If proposals aren’t up to snuff, Creators are given feedback on how to improve their project or rejected.

This is such a great feature, not only for Creators but for Backers too. For any Creator manufacturing solo for the first, or even the second or third time, asking questions like these before launch can be the difference between success and failure. Backers can feel assured that someone with expertise has vetted the project and deemed the Creator worthy of launching a project.

Once Creators are allowed through that gate, Crowd Supply’s staff offers support for the duration of the project, offering advice and even providing their own fulfillment services.

I love this approach to helping Creators, because it solves a major issue of not only crowdfunding but launching products in general. The team shares their learnings of fundamental knowledge of what it takes to launch something. We’re not talking about IP issues, it’s basic stuff like finding a factory or figuring out how to do fulfillment. It’s one of those things you can only really learn by doing, but man wouldn’t it be nice to have an Obi-Wan there to show you the ways of the force.

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Don Lehman just launched a Kickstarter campaign to produce an ingenious idea — a Stylus Cap that turns a standard pen or marker into a touchscreen stylus. The MORE/REAL Stylus Cap turns a Sharpie, a Bic, or a Pilot Fineliner into a touchscreen stylus that works with any capacitive touch screen. You get all the benefits of an marker that can write on paper with a stylus that gives you superior control to sketch and take notes on touchscreens such as the iPad. Read more about his project after the jump and donate here!

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