How Font Awesome Broke Kickstarter Records with a Hilarious Video

In this podcast, the Font Awesome team discuss the success of their 2017 Kickstarter for Font Awesome version 5. This was the most funded and most backed tech Kickstarter of all time. The team reflects on what contributed to the project's success, including the video, and the decision to add a paid, Pro version to Font Awesome. The team also discusses how they were invited to Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley tech accelerator, after making the decision to give Font Awesome a go as a viable business. 

To get their paid version of Font Awesome off the ground, Dave and the team decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign. They learned from the failure of their previous campaign for Font Awesome Black Tie. For the version 5 video, they'd need to hire professionals to create an engaging video to tell their story. After some research, they decided to work with Knox Avenue, who did a fantastic job.
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TIMESTAMPS
 
0:00:09   
Reflecting on the Success of Font Awesome's 2017 Kickstarter

0:02:14   
Was Y Combinator Worth It? 

0:05:32   
Lessons Learned from the Font Awesome Crowdfunding Campaign

0:07:30   
The Journey to Finding a Professional Video Production Company 

0:09:03   
The Risky Decision to Create the Font Awesome Kickstarter Video

0:13:10   
The 12-Hour Filming Session for Kickstarter Video

0:14:58   
The Font Awesome 5 Kickstarter: A Story of Success
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HIGHLIGHTS 

We have no idea how this is going to hit. But we think this is hysterical. We thought it was funny, so we launched the video. We did a few things right with it. We did a lot of things right. And we still got an article out there somewhere about all of the we think are good ways to run a Kickstarter. And it's a few years old, but most of it's going to be evergreen with that. And we set a goal for ourselves for $30,000.

If Brian hasn't shared his nerd about baking, that would yeah, we should do that. The parallel we come up with [for the video] is a bakery. Because a bakery is we think of Font Awesome as this intersection of art and technology. We think of it as how do we make these Awesome assets. You get your icons. How do you make these real? How do you get these where they need to be in the way people want to use them so that everything can be better? 

As a company, we like humor. This is actually a core piece of who the company has become. Is that we value this so much, and so we're like, okay, so humor seems a clear way that we can try to make this more interesting. But also, what if we have nothing overtly digital in this? What if we tell this in the real world? What if we tell the story of Font Awesome 5, what we want to build? What if we tell this story in the real world? And so what's the biggest parallel, right?
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NOTES

• Font Awesome 5 Kickstarter Video 
• How Font Awesome became the most funded software project on Kickstarter  — and what we can learn from it 
• The Font Awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin
• Audio mastering by Chris Enns at Lemon Productions

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