Presentation by John McLear of McLear Ltd./NFC Ring at the June 2014 NFC Forum Tap Into NFC Developer Event.

1. Crowdfunding an NFC
adventure
John McLear
Storm Trooper, NFC Ring
June 17, 2014| Edinburgh

2. What did we make?
Raised £240K in 6 weeks
Secured VC funding

3. Chronological
Oct 2012 -Turned 30 & quit day job as Founder/MD at PrimaryT, began
prototyping ring
Jan 2013 – Began marketing/raising funds for NFC Ring project
Mar 2013 – Raised funds from VC
Apr 2013 – Began implementing marketing / application to KS
Aug 2013 – Launched crowd funded campaign
Oct 2013 – Got funds through and began production
To present – Fulfilling orders

4. Were we successful?
Raised £240K in 4 weeks
Secured VC funding
Sold 15k rings
Successful pre-order since Crowd funding
However....
Started shipping 5 months late
Burnt through all crowd-sourced funds

5. Platform options
Indiegogo – Easy to get onto, lots of vapor, has referal scheme
Kickstarter – Lots of prep work to get onto, confident
consumers, difficult handling messages
Bitcoinstarter – Bitcoin only funding
SelfStarter – Higher initial bar, keep all funds

6. Dragons
Lots of communication w/ backers required.
Lose a % of all fees raised
VAT fees unavoidable
Hard to operate behind closed doors
Success as a double edged sword

7. Unicorns
Strong & vocal community
Very fast iteration / feedback
Lateness is expected
Press and Media attention
R&D Funds

8. Preparing
£20k in marketing prep PRIOR to K/S
£10k in Videos
£5k in Prototypes (All open source)
£5k in Source code (All open source)

9. Things we learned
Our factory were saying yes to everything despite not knowing what they were
doing.
What you get as a prototype is not what you get from a production run.
NFC Crowd-funders like Open source
NFC Crowd-funders will engage with a community
The NFC community helps each other out (big help from NFC Forum members
who will remain anonymous)

10. Come at me.
john@mclear.co.uk
http://mclear.co.uk
Also has social tentacles.