A Mixergy Premium member inspired today’s post.

He wanted to hear more about building physical products, because that’s what he’s working on. So we did this interview with a founder who created physical products.

And today, we’re highlighting three more interviews from the Mixergy vault about how proven founders created profitable physical products.

1. Reach the “Unreachables” to Open Doors

Founders who build physical products have to play by different rules.

“If you look at tech startups today, you can pretty much put out a version one that barely functions but sort of hints at it, and people give you a pass,” says Benjamin Rubin, co-creator of Zeo Personal Sleep Coach. “They use it for free. They get hooked. You iterate, you iterate, you iterate, you iterate until finally you’ve got a product you can be proud of.”

But with certain kinds of physical products, it doesn’t work that way. “Customers won’t have it crash, they won’t have it not perform its function,” he says.

To build the best product right out of the gate, Ben had to learn from the best. So he cold-called the founder of iRobot.

“We cold-called him about five or six times before we got through,” says Ben. “So, we got to know his secretary. We knew her name. We knew her cat’s name, and we just kept on calling and saying, ‘Hey, if Colin has a minute…’”

Finally, Ben called at the right moment, and the secretary put him through. The five-minute call led to an hour-long meeting. “He’s been a wonderful contributor,” says Ben. “We couldn’t have done it without him.”

In the full interview, Ben tells you how to use the right tone and ask the right questions so that you can befriend the gatekeeper, instead of annoying them.

 

2. Zig Where Giants Zag

Before Barry Nalebuff co-founded Honest Tea, he had an idea for a different beverage product.

“I was interested in mixing orange juice and club soda, says Barry. “I make it for myself all the time, but I figured if we did that, we would just be test marketing for Tropicana.”

That’s because Tropicana could flip a switch to make the same product. “If I [created that drink], you would not be interviewing me today, because I would be some bitter guy claiming my idea got ripped off. [Tropicana has] better orange juice, better distribution, lower costs, and fine club soda.”

So Barry, who still wanted to create a low-sugar beverage, started looking into tea.

“The Cokes and the Pepsis and the Snapples…want their products to be consistent,” he says. “They want it to taste the same whether it’s in Mexico or Canada or in Texas or in Rhode Island.”

But with tea, inconsistency is part of the deal. “The tea leaves came from different estates,” he says. “Sometimes, the water would be from different sources. Our view was that it didn’t matter if they tasted different, provided they always tasted good.”

Ten years after he launched, Coca-Cola bought Honest Tea for an undisclosed sum.

Barry tells you how he got distribution, raised money, and created the product in his full interview. (Be sure to pay attention to the part where he turned a big problem into a feature his customers loved.)

 

3. Crush It on Kickstarter So You Can Afford to Build Your Product

Mike Del Ponte had an idea for an elegant filtered water carafe. But as any inventor of a physical product can tell you, the upfront costs are usually pretty steep.

So Mike used Kickstarter to partially raise funds. “Within nine days we had done over $100,000 in product,” he says. Actually, he raised $147,444, far surpassing his $100,000 goal.

Even though he raised additional funds, Mike offers this advice: “If you can bootstrap it and just raise money for your own production, then that is an incredible way to go.”

So how could he have raised even more from Kickstarter?

Mike says that although they ran a scrappy campaign, he could have been even scrappier.

“We didn’t have a PR firm or advertising or anything like that,” he says.

But in retrospect, he would’ve asked for more money, using a low-budget video. “I loved [our video], but you could also look into a webcam and say, ‘You know guys, we put our entire lives into this and we need you and literally it’s going to cost a quarter million dollars. We can’t do it for less…’ I think that would be more compelling than doing a fancy video like we did.”

He also recommends marketing the campaign for longer. “Instead of doing it for 10 days, I probably would have done for 30 days,” says Mike. “And those are 18-hour days. It’s exhausting, but definitely it’s doable.”

In his full interview, Mike tells you about each step of creating a physical product, as well as how he’s gotten mentors like Tim Ferriss.

 

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