All new products should have to be put through the rigour of a Kickstarter campaign. Not many people know about Kickstarter. Well, having worked on it quite a bit on and off over the last decade and raised millions on it, I thought I would share this as something useful to brand owners and operators. There is a science and skill that would set you up well for the modern pace and thinking around commerce today.
Here is the problem. Most brands still launch products like it’s 2006: lock a brief, disappear into development, throw something on a shelf or a PDP, and hope the demand shows up later.
If you’ve ever run a serious crowdfunding campaign, you know how insane that looks.
When you raise real money from real people on a fixed timeline, there is nowhere to hide. You’re forced to prove there is an audience, at a specific price, for a specific product, with a specific promise, before you pour cash into inventory, logistics, or headcount.
After doing this across rewards‑based crowdfunding (Kickstarter, Indiegogo) and equity crowdfunding (Seedrs, Crowdcube), I’ve come to believe something pretty blunt:
Every serious new product should be forced through a Kickstarter‑style gauntlet before it’s allowed to hit the market.
Not “it would be nice”. Not “maybe if we have time”. Forced.
Because once you’ve done it the hard way, classic ecommerce NPD, build first, hope later, looks like gambling with other people’s money.
(Drop in a full‑page style screenshot of a strong Kickstarter campaign here, big headline, funding bar, hero video.)
What Crowdfunding Actually Trains You To Do
Let’s define terms. When I say “Kickstarter‑style rigour”, I’m not saying everyone has to go live on a crowdfunding platform. I’m talking about a discipline and a sequence:
Public commitment to a clear promise (“we are making this for you at this price, by this date”).
A time‑boxed campaign with a visible goal and a success/fail threshold.
Real money on the line before you commit to full production.
Live, messy communication in front of a community that can see everything.
That structure forces a set of behaviours that most brands only talk about in offsites:
Obsession with product–channel–price fit.
Ruthless prioritisation of what actually moves people to buy.
Tight cross‑functional collaboration (everyone becomes a marketer).
Operational discipline that survives contact with reality.
If you’re building ecommerce brands in 2026 and you’re not doing some version of this, you’re voluntarily throwing away information, leverage, and momentum.
A Short History of Kickstarter (And Why It Matters)
Kickstarter didn’t start life as an ecommerce feature. It was born from frustration: a musician‑slash‑designer (Perry Chen) couldn’t convince a promoter to risk money on a concert idea, and wondered why there wasn’t a way for the crowd to underwrite the risk upfront.
Out of that came a simple idea: creators post a project, set a funding goal and deadline, and if enough people pledge, the project goes ahead. If not, nothing is charged. That’s it. Simple it ain’t.
A few important points from its origin story:
It was built for creative projects, music, art, comics, film, experimental technology, long before “DTC brand” was a buzzword. And it worked - didn’t change the world but for individuals involved, it changed theirs.
The goal was “help bring creative projects to life”, not “maximise GMV”. Kickstarter later became a public benefit corporation to hard‑code that mission into its governance.
It unlocked projects that would have been un‑fundable via normal channels: weird films, niche hardware, up‑and‑coming authors, small theatre, zines.
In other words, it was invented to fund things that couldn’t clear traditional gatekeepers, labels, studios, publishers, buyers. The audience was the gatekeeper.
Fast‑forward and you have categories like design and technology that look like mini‑ecosystems entirely built on this model: backpacks, camera gear, board games, niche electronics, indie books, whole micro‑industries bootstrapped from “let’s see if anyone cares”.
Even if you never touch Kickstarter, that’s the mindset you should want in your product pipeline.
Phase One: The Private Campaign Lab
Think of your pre‑launch phase as a private Kickstarter campaign. The goal is not “make something pretty and ship it”; it’s “earn the right to exist”. This is where you learn if you have launch or failure to launch.
Validate the Problem, Not Just the Product
Too many teams start with “we have a cool product idea” rather than “we see a painfully obvious problem”.
A Kickstarter‑style lab forces you to answer three brutal questions early:
Who is this actually for?
What existing behaviour are we displacing?
Why would someone change what they’re doing now and pay us to do it?
You test that through:
Message testing: multiple landing pages and ad angles that each frame the problem differently. See which problem statement gets people to click, sign up, or pre‑order.
Audience testing: different segments in your targeting, by interest, by job, by geography, and watch where you get signal.
If you can’t get cheap signal that a problem resonates, don’t rush to “solution”.
Treat Price as a Feature, Not a Tag
Crowdfunding teaches you very quickly that price is not a label you slap on at the end; it’s part of the product.
I’d structure pricing tests like this:
Run the same creative and landing page at three price points. Watch not just conversion, but quality of customers (engagement with emails, willingness to answer surveys, typical basket).
Experiment with rewards tiers: base product, “founders edition”, bundles, early‑bird discounts, lifetime guarantees. See where the demand piles up.
Capture willingness‑to‑pay data directly (“At what price would this feel too expensive?” / “At what price would you doubt quality?”) to shape your corridor.
If nobody cares at your target price but they stampede at a much lower one, you don’t have a marketing problem. You have a unit economics problem and, probably, a positioning problem. And what happens in interesting. If you are at this phase you will test 4 prices. Your goal price, a premium, a discount and free. Ideally at this stage you end up with 1 dominant price not a hung jury.
Prototype the PDP Before You Prototype the Product
Most brands design a product, then brief a PDP. In a Kickstarter mindset, you almost invert that: you use the story and the PDP to design the product.
Take a rough spec.
Build an over‑the‑top PDP around the imagined best version of that product: video, diagrams, FAQs, comparisons.
Put that in front of people and see where the questions, objections, and confusion live.
You’ll hear things like:
“Does it work with X?”
“How heavy is it?”
“Is it vegan / waterproof / airline‑compatible / dishwasher‑safe?”
Those questions tell you what needs to go into the actual spec, and what needs to be front‑and‑centre in your launch assets.
If, at the end of this lab, you can’t get decent pre‑order intent at a sane contribution margin with a story you’re proud of, you should be willing to walk away. That is the discipline Kickstarter forces, and that classic product calendars almost never do.
Developing the content for this is key - you think, words, images and videos. Gifs, memes and shareable assets. Think of this as the place you deliver content that is shareable in the second phase - would I share this with a friend?
Phase Two: Story‑First Go‑to‑Market
Once you’ve greenlit a product, you don’t “switch back” to normal ecommerce. You stay in campaign mode.
Everyone on the team becomes a marketer. Everyone is answerable to the campaign.
Build the PDP Like It’s a Pitch Deck
The best Kickstarter pages read like a founder pitch:
Hero promise in one line, clear, specific, almost meme‑able. “Bear‑proof cooler.” “The only shoes you need for travel.” “The everyday tripod.”
Narrative arc, the problem, why existing solutions suck, what you’ve built, how it works.
Receipts, technical diagrams, materials breakdowns, lab test results, certifications.
Social proof, quotes, use cases, early tests, expert endorsements.
Objection handling, shipping, returns, compatibility, risk.
Your ecommerce PDP should do the same job. The difference is only in the scaffolding around it, payment options, bundles, cross‑sell, analytics.
If you wouldn’t be confident putting your PDP up as a pitch slide in front of 10,000 people with a live Q&A, it’s not done.
Drip the Story, Don’t Dump It
Crowdfunding campaigns don’t just drop a polished video and vanish. They drip the story out over weeks:
Teaser posts: prototypes, sketches, workshop clips.
“We’re live in 7 days” countdown content.
Deep dives during the campaign: behind‑the‑scenes, factory visits, user testing anecdotes.
Milestone updates: “50% funded in 24 hours”, “Stretch goal unlocked”.
For a brand running DTC plus marketplaces, your version is:
Email and social lead‑up that treats launch as an event.
A coordinated content calendar that runs from “we’re working on something” through to “first reviews are in”.
Retail partners looped into the narrative instead of getting a random sell‑in deck three months after the news moment.
Launch should feel like opening night, not “we quietly added a SKU last Tuesday”. IN essence this allows you to audience build, deliver for the audience, create FOMO for those who miss out - this is how campaigns should be thought out anyway.
Phase Three: Operations in Public
This is the part most ecommerce operators underestimate. Crowdfunding doesn’t just stress‑test demand; it stress‑tests your ability to operate in public. This can be challenging. You are a new brand or a small one and you know how supply chain negotiations or reliability can go - Particularly over the last 4 years. Your job is to be honest, and communicate. You learn quickly what customers hate is the void - not the thing that happens.
Demand‑First Supply Chain
Putting cash in your hand gives you options. You will churn some yes, but proving your ability to do this is key. Over time this promise gets easier. The obvious superpower is ordering after you’ve sold:
You enter factory negotiations with committed volume in hand, not a “we think we’ll sell this much” forecast. That changes your leverage on MOQs, payment terms, and pricing.
You see country mix, size curves, colour preferences before you place POs, so you don’t end up with warehouses full of the wrong variant.
You can build production ramps instead of giant single bets: first batch for backers, second for general release, third for retail partners.
Most brands still do the opposite: they buy stock, pray, then discount their way out of regret. Crowdfunding logic trains you to flip that.
Communication as a Core Competency
This is your discipline, but communicating is a marketing skill we don’t talk about - it combines brand, proposition and product comms. If you’ve backed 20‑plus projects, you’ve seen both ends of the spectrum:
Creators who go dark at the first delay and watch trust evaporate.
Creators who over‑communicate, photos from the production line, shipping timelines, admits when they screw something up, and end up with more goodwill than when the campaign ended.
That’s the attitude you want baked into your brand:
Default: “Tell them early.”
No happy‑path fantasy in timelines, build slack in, and then still communicate when reality hits.
Treat backers (or early customers) as insiders, not “orders to fulfil”. They’re the people who will evangelise or kill your next launch.
In traditional ecommerce, most brands only get this serious about communication when something catches fire on social. Crowdfunding teaches you to be proactive.
Upsell as a Service, Not a Shakedown
Sometimes we get so caught up in the core, we forget about the classic upsell or crossell - this is part of us knowing our audience. I learned this even at GM, car drives off the lot or forecourt and the cross sell happens then. I am not sure why or how this happens but there is the option in that moment - not a forced one, a genuine”Oh, I forgot about that” The gap between pledge and delivery is pure gold for thoughtful merchandising:
Add‑ons that genuinely improve the experience (cases, straps, accessories, extended warranties).
Upgrades: “You backed the base version; here’s a limited run premium version we’re doing for early supporters if you want to switch.”
Future product seeding: soft surveys and early access offers for the next product.
Done well, upsell here does three things:
Improves per‑customer margin.
Teaches you what to bundle and push in future non‑crowdfunded launches.
Turns your campaign audience into an R&D panel.
You don’t need a reward platform to do this, but you do need the same mindset: upsell as a way to deepen the value of what people already bought, not to squeeze ARPU for its own sake.
Tropicfeel: Turning Campaigns into an Operating System
Take Tropicfeel, the Spanish travel shoe and gear brand you may never have heard of if you live outside the crowdfunding bubble. I am an annual buyer - spending more than on Nike, or Hoka or On. Though, I am open.
Their pattern is textbook:
Launch travel shoes and gear with a clear, narrow use case: shoes and backpacks aimed at travellers who want to pack less, do more, and feel like they’re not trashing the planet.
Use Kickstarter and Indiegogo as the launch engine: campaigns hitting seven figures in days, with 20,000–25,000 backers not as a one‑off miracle but as a repeatable playbook.
Evolve from platform dependence to owned launches: once the community is built and conditioned, run “crowdfunding‑style” drops on their own site, with similar time‑boxed offers and content cadence.
The magic is not just in the product (travel shoes using recycled materials) but in the repetition:
The audience knows the beats.
The brand knows how to ramp creative, media, and operations around those beats.
Over time, trust compounds to the point where customers will buy at double the original price with minimal new information because the system has been de‑risked in their minds.
That’s what you want for any serious ecommerce brand: a cadence where customers don’t need to be resold on your competence every time. They assume you’ve done the work.
Peak Design: Making “Boring” Hardware Legendary
Then there’s Peak Design, who did something similar in a totally different category: camera accessories.
On paper, “tripod” is as unsexy as it gets. In practice:
They treat each new tripod iteration like an event: hero film, obsessive breakdown of every design decision, comparison with the junk you’ve been putting up with for years.
They lean into Kickstarter as a stage, not just a checkout. Funding numbers in the millions for tripods sound ridiculous until you realise they’re really selling certainty: this will solve your specific problems in a way no Amazon generic can.
They build a pattern of delivery and support that makes you comfortable backing them again and again.
What’s interesting is not the headline funding number; it’s the setup:
They’ve trained their team to think like campaigners, not catalogue managers.
They’ve trained their community to expect versions, not static SKUs, “we’ll be back in a few years with something better.”
Imagine applying that mindset to any “boring” category you touch: luggage, kitchenware, pet accessories, niche B2B stack. A tripod at 8am on Kickstarter is a better marketer than half the inventory in most ecommerce warehouses.
Equity Crowdfunding: The Same Game, Higher Stakes
Rewards‑based crowdfunding is training wheels for something even more intense: equity crowdfunding.When you run a campaign on platforms like Seedrs or Crowdcube, you’re not just asking people to back a product. You’re asking them to back you and your entire business model.A pride swallowing up at dawn siege. Most founders know this feeling.
You have to articulate how the business makes money, how it scales, and why it should exist at all. You do that in public, in front of hundreds or thousands of potential investors who can ask questions, poke holes, and share concerns in real time.
The discipline transfers directly from Kickstarter‑style campaigns. You need message clarity, because if you can’t explain the business in a few slides and a 60‑second video, you will lose people immediately.
You also have timeline pressure. There’s a clear funding window. If you don’t build momentum early, the platform quietly buries you and your campaign turns into digital wallpaper.
Most importantly, you get a taste of “all‑team marketing” under pressure. Finance, operations, product, and marketing are all pulled into the story and the numbers, whether they feel “ready” or not.
Once you’ve been through that, “we’re launching three new SKUs next quarter” feels almost relaxing by comparison.
The Algorithmic Timeline: Why the First 72 Hours Matter
Both crowdfunding platforms and modern ecommerce channels behave in eerily similar ways. They reward what spikes early and punish what limps out of the gate.
On Kickstarter, if you don’t hit meaningful funding quickly, you rarely get picked up in discovery or editorial features. You’re effectively invisible to anyone who doesn’t already know you.
On Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and marketplaces, the logic rhymes. If your launch content doesn’t create engagement in the first few hours, the algorithms decide it isn’t worth distributing widely.
Retail buyers do a softer version of the same thing. If your hero product doesn’t move in the initial window, you quietly lose leverage on support, space, and future listings.
So your job is to engineer those first 24–72 hours like game day, not like “soft launch week”. You pre‑load enough demand through waitlists, VIP groups, and partner lists to guarantee a spike rather than a shrug.
You then align creative, budget, and operations around that window. Everyone knows when the curtain goes up and what success has to look like by the time it comes down.
That mindset is straight out of Kickstarter. The only difference is that the “funded” badge is replaced by the invisible thumbs‑up (or down) of algorithms and buyers.
Why All New Ecommerce Brands Should Do This (At Least Once)
Even if you never publish a live crowdfunding campaign, you can run your internal process like one. The point is not the platform; it’s the discipline.
First, it gives you a truth serum on demand. You find out if anyone actually wants this thing, at this price, in this format, before you pile in with cash and ego.
Second, it acts as a forcing function for focus. You simply don’t have the bandwidth in a campaign to indulge “nice to have” features, channels, or pet ideas. You pick the few things that demonstrably move people.
Third, it’s a training ground for the team. Everyone learns to think in terms of campaigns, not BAU. Everyone gets closer to the customer and the live feedback loop.
Finally, it gives you a healthier relationship with risk. You stop pretending risk doesn’t exist, or that a great internal deck neutralises it. You bring it into the open, monetise it, and learn from it.
The underrated benefit is permission to fail on purpose. If a product “fails” your Kickstarter‑style process, that’s a win, not a loss.
You’ve avoided dead stock. You’ve avoided discount addiction. You’ve learned what doesn’t resonate, the idea, the positioning, the price, before you tried to scale it.
You’ve also signalled to your team that failure is data, not shame. That mindset alone will save you more money than any single “hero product” ever will.
A Practical Checklist: Running Your Own Kickstarter‑Style Launch
If you want to plug this into your planning cycle, here’s a simple template you can run with.
Before you build
Start by writing the one‑line promise. If you can’t summarise the product in a single sentence that a stranger would understand, you’re not ready.
Sketch the PDP headline, sub‑heads, and FAQs before you touch CAD or sourcing. Treat the story as a design constraint.
Define what a “good enough” contribution margin looks like at your target price. Be explicit about the floor you won’t go below.
Finally, decide what success looks like for the pre‑launch lab. That might be pre‑orders, email sign‑ups, survey responses, or a certain level of ad‑driven intent.
Testing sprint (4–6 weeks)
Run multiple creative angles and compare how they perform. Don’t argue in a room when you can let the market decide.
Test different price points, bundles, and offers. Track not just conversion, but the downstream behaviour of those customers.
Capture qualitative feedback relentlessly. Use surveys, interviews, DMs, comments, anything that exposes where people are confused, excited, or sceptical.
Kill or radically rework anything that doesn’t show clear signal. Don’t talk yourself into “maybe if we had more time” when the numbers are telling you no.
Commit or kill moment
At the end of the sprint, force a binary decision. Either you green‑light production, or you don’t.
If the numbers and narrative clear your bar, you commit. You lock the spec, book production, and plan the public campaign.
If they don’t, you either re‑frame dramatically or walk away. No zombie products kept alive by sunk cost and optimism.
Public campaign (even if it’s just on your site)
Treat launch as a time‑boxed event, not a calendar line. Set clear dates, milestones, and targets.
Coordinate content, media, and operations around that window. Everyone knows their role in getting you to “funded”, even if that’s an internal goal on your own site.
Communicate progress, setbacks, and next steps in public. Use email, social, and on‑site updates to bring people along for the ride.
Post‑campaign
Once the dust settles, dissect what actually drove demand. Look at creative, channels, audiences, and timing with a cold eye.
Turn those learnings into constraints for your next product brief. Make it harder for the next idea to skip the queue.
Stay in touch with early buyers. They’re now your R&D panel, your launch list, and your reality check on what to build next.
Ｗho am I so wise in the ways of Science (name the movie)
If you’re a founder, CMO, merchandiser, or head of ecommerce, it’s worth sitting with a few uncomfortable questions.
Would your next hero product pass a Kickstarter‑style test today? Not in theory, but in practice, with a public page and a live timer.
Could you clearly explain who it’s for, what problem it solves, and why now in a way that gets strangers to pay months in advance?
Are you genuinely willing to kill it if the answer is “no”?
Or would you quietly push it through anyway because the calendar says you need “newness”?
If any of those answers come back as “not really”, then you’re not running a launch process. You’re running a very expensive experiment with no hypothesis and no stop‑loss.
You don’t need to live on Kickstarter to fix that. You just need to steal its rigour, its time pressure, and its intolerance for fuzzy thinking.
If you do, you end up with fewer products, better products, and a team that knows how to launch like it actually matters.