Let’s get an update on Casey Keller’s Sport Shoe start-up.
Casey Keller ran an indiegogo campaign to raise the $125,000 to start up his company. He has generously shared the details of his start-up with me because he too generosity says my courses helped him. As I have said before, I at best help save time and money, the success belongs to the entrepreneurs.
To recap, Casey was not pleased with the casual sports shoes on offer, came up with his own designs, contracted with a world class designer to make his ideas professional, and found the best place in the world to have the product made. So far so good.
Now, I stress we do not need financing, we need customers. If we do not have customers, we do not need financing. If we find customers, then financing usually follows. Casey understands all of this.
I am a brick-and-mortar advocate, since the internet is less than 6% of retail sales, and I think it is smarter to go where 94% of your customers are, rather than less than 6%. The market structure for shoes evolved such as it is so a small start-up can work through the B2B structure to get wide but manageable feedback upon which to grow iterations.
So to my thesis Casey went antithesis, he pursued social media and marketing his launch in essence as an online B2C effort. I may have a thesis, but my opinions do not matter. Customers ultimately decide all in business.
Next, as a separate element, Casey went after crowdfunding for his start-up. I’ve gone all Islamic as far as financing, and crowdfunding is halal, inasmuch as it is not a loan at all, or finance, just an exchange of gifts (at least in the indiegogo regime.) In any event, I was keen on seeing how that played out.
I was amazed at how Casey’s Likes grew on facebook, when another observer astonished me by asserting Casey was buying those likes. I had blogged on the deleterious effects of buying likes, and confirmed he was buying likes and he was aware of the argument against it. Here again, thesis, antithesis.
(How would a disinterested 3rd party be able to spot Casey was buying likes? Apparently it is obvious)
So with all of this teed up, Casey launched his financing campaign on indiegogo, with 30 day duration. His goal was $125,000 which struck me as ambitious, but who knows? Of the $125,000 Casey set as a goal, he raised less than $5,000 by the end of the campaign, which means he got zero under indiegogo rules
Casey was not happy with the results, so we discussed alternatives, several of which Casey already had lined up. Very good.
So where is he now, three months later? Fully funded by others who have stepped in with classic skin-in-the-game financing with Casey still majority holder.
Now I blogged before on an apparently well-funded company doing a kickstarter campaign, for what reason? Whether or not they succeed, they will get plenty of targeted exposure at no cost. And in essence, although Casey indeed needed the money to start, all this rigamarole brought him to the attention of a cross section of people who in fact stepped in with the requisite funding.
So, what do we learn?
Classic, unchanged -
Zero secrecy
great design talent
best source in the world
never take risks.
New areas of inquiry -
1. What of the B2C and B2B contradiction I mentioned above, that thesis and antithesis? We seem to be forming a synthesis: B2C and Crowdfunding can be useful in exposure with a view to finance.
So we have a valid example of a synthesis, and now we need to establish reliability. who else works along these lines and comes up with the same results. (To be science, “knowledge” it must be valid AND reliable.)
2. Sticking with the classic “find customers first, then financing,” is there a means to use social media and crowdfunding which has a B2B audience as opposed to B2C?
So much to keep learning!
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