Climbing EverestDeveloping a tool to support the crowdfunding journey.

Maxwell Salzberg

Realities of fulfilling a Kickstarter Campaign

● Fulfillment can be difficult for big projects● Project creators have to handle fulfillment alongside managing their

business and developing their product.● The process involves a large amount of communication and adjusting data● Backers want to update all kinds of information about their orders

Problems backers have● Change of shipping address● Pledging extra money for extra items● Splitting one big order for multiple people● Failed pledge payments● Refunds● Someone missed the campaign● Non-Responders● Hard to track who has shipped and who hasn’t.

The biggest catch of allAll a project creator gets is a big spreadsheet to work from.

Uncomfortable Truths1. Raising money is the easy first half

of crowdfunding. Fulfillment itself is much harder.

2. Fulfillment can rob a project creator of both time and money that could be spent on making their product.

Three Years Pass...

Diaspora* - 2013

● Two sources of development - core team and community developers.

● Core team was focused on providing a major overhaul to user interface.

● Pivoted from startup model into a volunteer-run community project.

● Project adopted self-governance model through establishing consensus on issues.

● Core development team stepped away.

We wanted to make a product that could help a group of people in a useful way.

We’ve always wanted to build products that empowered people.

What if we could make the fulfillment process for crowdfunding easier?

The Old, Slow WayDon’t spend your time manually managing your backers’ info, while time ticks away.

The BackerKit WayHave everything on autopilot so you can focus on making.

Pivoting into BackerKit

Initial Offering● Free beta period - early customer feedback helped

establish first pain points.● Basic features - pledge management, add-on

purchases, shipping addresses, a way to represent whether an order is fulfilled, can export all order data.

● Niche support - can synchronize data from Kickstarter to use project data in a useful way.

● Flexible - if there isn’t a feature for it, we can implement a workaround

● Free Backer Support - we help project creators take care of their backers.

Challenge of UX Design

● BackerKit is designed to assist with every step of the fulfillment process

● Just because something makes sense to you doesn’t mean it makes sense to the customer.

● Self-service vs. full-service

First Refinements● Segments - search queries that create groups of people that an app can

perform actions on.● More Platforms - sync with campaigns from IndieGoGo, Tilt/OPEN● Pre-Orders - project creators can get new orders after their campaign

ends to keep the momentum going.● New Interface - focused on reward items in pledges belonging to backers.● Counts - easy counts for manufacturing.● Shipping - We integrated with the USPS to offer cheaper postage.

Backer pledge accounts● 6 order states: Not Sent, Not Answered, Open, Locked Down, Ready to

Ship, Shipped● Invite system: all backers are invited once a project is ready to go live.

Each backer gets a unique link that logs them into their pledges automatically.

● Pledge Switching: Backers may be allowed to change pledge levels● Linked Pledges: For pledging multiple times on platforms like IndieGoGo.

Fulfillment Integrations● We launched a partner’s program

for fulfillment houses.● Easily send orders out at the click

of a button.● 2 partners at launch: FulfillRite and

ShipStation● Orders get tracked between

BackerKit and fulfillment partner, so data is always up to date.

New Fullfilment Integrations

● Some of our customers: Soylent, Amplitude, Reading Rainbow, ToeJam & Earl, What We Do in the Shadows

● Over 700+ projects served● Many revisions to features and designs● Campaigns of all sizes and every niche● Team of 6 people