How This 14-Year Old Business Made $226,499 on Kickstarter

Kickstarter is just for startups, right?

Well, the owner of this 14-year old business just launched a $226K campaign…

So I think it’s safe to say he proved otherwise.

Meet Ken Minn – the founder of Kenu and creator of Stance+.

Ken’s story starts back in the early 2000’s. He co-founded Joby Photo and was instrumental in the creation of the GorillaPod, a flexible tripod that became a favorite among photographers worldwide.

But by 2010, Ken was looking to start something new.

So he started Kenu and quickly made his mark with the Airframe, selling over three million units to date. I bet you’ve seen it (or a product inspired by it) before.

Despite his success, Ken was facing an issue: the majority of his sales were through retail, which meant that he…

Didn’t have as much control over his brand and
Didn’t have a direct line of communication with his customers

So he decided it was time to build up his direct-to-consumer business, and he wanted to use Kickstarter as the launchpad.

The product he decided to launch on Kickstarter was called Stance+ – a 10-in-1 smartphone “super gadget.”

But even though Ken was set on using Kickstarter, he felt lost when it came to the marketing.

So in 2023, Ken joined LaunchBoom. We showed him the best way to market his product on Kickstarter and by October, we were ready to go.

When Ken pressed the launch button, the response was immediate. Ken told me, “We knew we had something special, but the level of support was beyond our expectations.“

He raised $33,692 on the first day, and by the end of the campaign, Stance+ had generated $226,499 from 3,750 backers.

But how did Ken do this?

Well, let’s dive into the Kickstarter marketing strategy that made this possible.

Stance+’s pre-launch marketing strategy

Making $226,499 in 30 days isn’t easy.

And hitting that milestone takes a combination of different marketing tactics, with the most important marketing tactic being the pre-launch. More specifically, building an email list of superfans before you launch your campaign who can’t wait to buy your product. Ken used LaunchBoom’s Reservation Funnel to do this.

Here’s how it worked.

1. Stance+ drove traffic with Meta Ads

Meta ads are the first step to build a pre-launch email list. This is how Stance+ drove traffic. They tested many different variations of copy and imagery, but here was their best performing ad.

Here are the metrics for this ad:

Click through rate: 2.29%
Cost per lead: $3.09
Cost per reservation: $13.14

You can see all the pre-launch metrics later in this case study.

2. Stance+ collected email addresses on a landing page

The landing page is where they explained their product and collected email addresses. The landing page looked like this:

By the way, this is a screenshot from our LaunchKit software that all LaunchBoom Creators get access to.

3. Stance+ collected $1 reservations

This is the most important step and why we call this funnel the Reservation Funnel. Stance+ had this VIP offer for putting down a $1 reservation:

A guaranteed 47% discount
An invite to their VIP Facebook group

The most important thing to know is that people who put down the reservation were way more likely to buy (30 times on average, in fact).

Stance+ got funded on day one

Leading into the launch, Kenneth had 880 people who had put down a $1 reservation deposit. Remember, there’s no better predictor of launch success than the reservations.

And just like we thought, their launch was a success.