085: Scaling Your Product Up After Crowdfunding

With Ben Drury, Founder of Yoto Play

Ben Drury is the Founder of Yoto Play, a connected hardware toy product for kids. Yoto just recently raised $17 million in Series A financing. Before that, Yoto launched its physical product via a successful crowdfunding campaign. Today, Ben is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers grow and scale their products after they finish their crowdfunding campaign in order to get to big-time worldwide sales.

Today you will hear us talk about:

• Going from 750 units to 50,000 units.
• Launching via crowdfunding.
• Start with a starter product as a stepping stone scaling.
• Using crowdfunding success to scale after a campaign.
• Use crowdfunding to learn, it’s far better than traditional test marketing.
• Think about leveraging your hardware to sell secondary add-ons.
• Be connected with your first customers, get a few units out there, then use this traction to raise funding.
• Using the crowdfunding success and feedback to create a better product for your next version, and figure out how to make it cheaper now that you can produce at scale.
• Give a big discount to your Version 1 customers to get them to Version 2.

Episode Links:

EPISODE LINKS

Ben Drury / Yoto Play Links:

• Website: www.yotoplay.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bedrury/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yotoplay_us/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/yotoplay
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yotoplayUS

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

• Website: https://www.ProductStartup.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ProductStartup/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ProductStartup/
• Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ProductStartup/
• Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ProductStartup/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/ProductStartup/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProductStartup
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MakoInvent

Mako Design Links:

• Website: https://www.makodesign.com/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MakoInvent
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MakoInvent/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/MakoDesign/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MakoInvent/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/MakoInvent/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MakoInvent/

Kevin Mako Links:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Entrepreneurs/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/KevMako/
• Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/Kevin-Mako
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KevMakoPage/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/KevMako/

Thanks for tuning in! See you next time.