Company

A Kickstarter campaign can help you turn your business idea into a reality, but you still need to sell the concept in order to win over backers.

In this episode of Shopify Masters, you’ll learn from two entrepreneurs who started selling a barebones version of their product before launching and how it prepared them for their Kickstarter campaign.

Toby Maurice and Frank Bouchard are the creators of Wipebook: zero waste office gear for those of us that have to write stuff down.

Kickstarter is great for raising the funds you need to turn product ideas into actual products.

But transitioning from Kickstarter to an online store after can be a complicated process.

That's why we've put together this guide to help you every step of the way.

The search for business financing can be endlessly frustrating. The banks don't want to lend to you because they say your company is too risky. Venture capitalists say you're not fundable, and angel investors...well, they can be hard to find as the name implies.

Is crowdfunding the answer? Kickstarter and Indiegogo can work well—especially if you can offer great rewards and you are really good at online marketing. But there's another way to raise money from the crowd.

It's called equity crowdfunding.

Now you can sell shares of your business to just about anyone. And no, it's not just for tech companies.

The search for business financing can be endlessly frustrating. The banks don't want to lend to you because they say your company is too risky. Venture capitalists say you're not fundable, and angel investors...well, they can be hard to find as the name implies.

Is crowdfunding the answer? Kickstarter and Indiegogo can work well—especially if you can offer great rewards and you are really good at online marketing. But there's another way to raise money from the crowd.

It's called equity crowdfunding.

Now you can sell shares of your business to just about anyone. And no, it's not just for tech companies.

In 2012, a year after quitting their day jobs to run their business, Walnut Studiolo, Valerie and her husband Geoffrey, had the idea for a new product. A bicycle frame handle made from leather, that could comfortably allow cyclists to carry their bikes.

After some brainstorming, they looked to Kickstarter to help fund and validate their product idea. Within three days, they met their fundraising goal and wound up raising over five times the amount of money they asked for. On June 16 2015, Valerie and Geoffrey launched a new Kickstarter campaign to fund their next project, which is still on-going at the time of this article being written.

I had the chance to speak with Valerie to talk about their very successful Kickstarter campaign, as well as their latest on-going campaign for The UpCycle Cage, a bicycle water bottle cage made from upcycled stainless steel water bottles.

Noah Dentzel of NOMAD has run two crowdfunding campaigns in two years on two different platforms. His first campaign, on Kickstarter, reached 322% of his funding goal. His second, on Indiegogo, reached even higher.