This week on Art of the Kickstart we spoke with Andrew Jiang, the creator of The Superbook, a smart laptop shell that lets you turn your Android smartphone into a full laptop. Tune in to hear more about learning from a failed crowdfunding campaign and going on to earn more than a million dollars on Kickstarter. The Superbook: Turn your smartphone into a laptop for $99

Key Crowdfunding Takeaways

Why preparing for a Kickstarter campaign before you launch is so important How to learn from failed Kickstarter campaign How to usefeedback from backers of a previously-failed campaign to make an even better product How to communicate with your email list before launching on Kickstarter How to fund on your first day on Kickstarter

Links

The Superbook on Kickstarter getsuperbook.com The Power of Habit

Connect with The Superbook

Superbook on Facebook @getsuperbook on Twitter

Sponsors Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by The Gadget Flow, a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. The Gadget Flow is the ultimate buyer's guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Click here to learn more and list your product - use coupon code ATOKK16 for 25% off! Transcript View this episode's transcript

Roy:

Welcome to Art of the Kickstart, Your source for crowdfunding campaign success. I’m your host, Roy Morejon, President of Command Partners the top, full service crowdfunding marketing agency in the world. We have helped raise over $70 million for our clients since 2010. Each week, I’ll interview a crowdfunding success story, an inspirational entrepreneur or a business expert in order to help take your startup to the next level with crowdfunding. Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by The Gadget Flow, a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save and buy awesome products. The Gadget Flow is the ultimate buyer’s guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. To learn more visit thegadgetflow.com. Now let’s get on with the show.

Welcome to another edition of Art of the Kickstart. Today, I’m joined by Andrew Jiang with the Superbook. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us.

Andrew:

Roy, thanks for having us.

Roy:

You guys are absolutely crushing it with this Superbook. Please give our audience the overall gist of what you guys are doing.

Andrew:

Yeah, yeah. The Superbook is a shell, it’s a laptop shell that transforms your Android smartphone into a complete laptop. We essentially use the power of your smartphone and then our hardware device to give you, essentially, a replacement for your laptop. Anything that you can do on a regular laptop you can do on the Superbook. It all costs $99.

Roy:

This is ridiculous technology but before we dive into this let’s take a trip back a couple of years ago when you guys first tried to launch the Andromeda dock. It only worked with a few different smartphones and basically had to hook it up with your own keyboard, monitor and mouse. You guys weren’t successful on that first go around. What were some of the things you learned when you first launched that campaign?

Andrew:

When we first launched that campaign in late 2014 it was really a, “Well, this is a cool technology. Let’s put it out there and see how the Kickstart community responds.” We got some reaction. I’ll be honest, I know we fell short by about $35,000 of our $100,000 goal. We didn’t do any preparation. This time, having learned the experience from the last failure, we did a lot of work. We started it 3-4 months before the campaign, put a lot of effort into it and it paid off.

Roy:

I’ll say, you guys are over 1.4 million right now. Trending at around 3 million. You guys are kicking butt right now. What were some of the learning mistakes? I guess things that you guys had learned from the original campaign. You mentioned that you started a few months out in terms of getti...