Dan Shapiro

I’ve been asked by a lot of folks for advice with their Kickstarter campaigns. I’ve thought long and hard about it. I worked hard on the Robot Turtles campaign, but fundamentally thought of it as a fun diversion. I had no idea it was going to turn into the blockbuster that it did! Since then, I’ve had a lot of conversations around the experience and done a bit of writing and some interviews. I thought I’d collect them all in one place for those who want to binge-kickstarter for some reason.

Robot Turtles midmortem at $250k

This was a blog post written in the middle of the storm. I  wrote up some of the techniques I used to construct the campaign and published some live data from the actual campaign, including traffic sources and amounts.

Anatomy of a $631,230 Kickstarter Video

This was a blog post I wrote after the campaign was finished. As the title says, I went deep on the video - the whole story of how it got made, the theory behind it, strategy behind the script, etc.

3 semis, 65 countries, 36 tons: Shipping my Kickstarter

Shipping logistics is one of the hardest parts of Kickstarter campaigns, so I wrote a piece for VentureBeat about all the gory details.

Shell Game with Dan Shapiro 

One of the best interviewers in the business, Glenn Fleishman (a Kickstarter creator himself) dives in deep to how production gets done, how to structure the campaign, and more.

How Dan Shapiro created the most-backed game in Kickstarter history

This talks more about the inventive process (and goes beyond Kickstarter)

This Guy Just Sold $600,000 Worth Of Board Games

This was an interview halfway through the campaign where I touch on a bunch of different aspects of the campaign – timing etc.

I hope some of these are helpful. I’m going to have a significant section in my forthcoming book on startup CEOs about the strategies and opportunities around crowdfunding (among other types of fundraising) so stay tuned!

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