Fillow originated with a common story: one of the founders got their period unexpectedly and was dissatisfied with current solutions in the market. “Comparing the menstrual products of today with what they looked like in the 1920s, there’s barely any difference. It’s almost harrowing to see that for such an important product, and one that fails often, there really hasn’t been any upgrades to the user experience in over 100 years,” says co-founder Camryn Ross.
Enter Fillow Disc: a sustainable menstrual product that combines tampon’s ease of use with the convenience and reusability of cups. The solution aims to reduce waste and provide a more comfortable, healthier, and eco-friendly experience for people who menstruate.
Creating any type of physical product can be expensive and risky to launch, so we talked with the Fillow team about how they leveraged pre-seed funding (including their LongJump investment) and eventually embarked on a successful Kickstarter campaign, raising $116,403 on a $15,000 goal, validating demand, creating community among their users, and reaching the next stage of their growth.
Leveraging Customer Discovery and University Resources
Fillow's journey started when their team of University of Chicago and MIT undergraduate co-founders (Camryn Ross, Mary Woo, Phoebe [Seoyeon] Choi, and Helena Kim) came together to create a sustainable menstrual product that would reduce waste and provide a more comfortable, healthier, and eco-friendly experience for people who menstruate. Having experienced ineffective period solutions themselves, they set out to talk with users who gave them feedback including:
“I leak through my clothes often. I have to change my tampon every 4 hours to prevent leakages and toxic shock”
“Took me 2 years to use a cup correctly. Also, I can’t clean it in public-I have to carry the bloody cup in my bag all day, then boil it at home!”
The team knew there had to be a better way and set out designing countless iterations of prototypes and testing among the founding team. They started leveraging UChicago’s acceleration and pitch programs to raise funds. Boosted by a win at the university’s College New Venture Challenge (CNVC), the Fillow founders were the first all-female team to win the competition and received $75,000, the largest investment the university had ever made in undergraduate students.
Maintaining Early Momentum to Raise Pre-Seed
Bolstered by UChicago’s support, Fillow started to focus on relationship development with interested users and reaching out investors who mentored them throughout their various programs at the university. Nurturing community around pre-launch signups and using this as traction when approaching investors, they closed $670,000 in funding.
During this period, Fillow was still iterating on their product and set their goals post-investment to eventually get to a design freeze - a deadline on making major decisions on product design - that would provide the foundation for their Kickstarter campaign.
Fundraising Validating on Kickstarter
“The main reason we went into Kickstarter wasn’t really about funding. It was more that we wanted to test consumer demand on a very real scale through product orders before going full force into selling DTC,” says Ross.
After over a year of product design, customer discovery, and fundraising, the Fillow team knew it was time to test the market - people liked their idea, but was it enough for them to pull out their credit cards? Settling on a crowdfund strategy to enter the market, they identified a partner to help them launch their campaign, Russell Marketing. Ross says this partner was a key part of their success, “You really need to work with an agency or some sort of partner who dedicates their profession to learning the tactics of how to successfully launch a crowdfunding campaign.”
With Russell, they embarked on three stages of their Kickstarter journey:
Stage 1: Pre-Campaign - This included a public announcement where they started building out an email list, largely through advertisements on social media. By testing and tweaking these ads through A/B testing, they collected over 11,000 emails and funneled 3,000 interested customers into a Facebook group where users shared stories around their periods and the Fillow team could keep people engaged and informed around the launch of the campaign. Using different testing tactics, such as user surveys, they were able to identify which individuals were more likely to convert to being an actual backer when the launch date arrived.
“Pretty much the universal standard for an email conversion rate is 2-5% and these tests helped us validate who were our high-intent leads out of the email conversions,” says Ross.
Stage 2: The Kickstarter - After two months of setting the foundation for their campaign, it was time to launch their Kickstarter. The team chose a goal of $15,000, which essentially covered their agency fees for the campaign. This low amount was intentional - Kickstarter doesn’t distribute funds if a project doesn’t reach its funding goal and they wanted to ensure the campaign was successful. The team was okay with this - remember, the Kickstarter was about validating demand and learning about what worked in DTC targeting.
Ross says they were confident that they would greatly exceed their goal and she was right: in just a week, they had raised over $50,000. Their data sho that they were overachieving on their conversion goals from their email and Facebook audiences, people were referring the campaign to friends (something they now wish they had built in incentives for prior to launch as their user research indicated nearly everyone uses a period product upon referral from a friend or family member), and Kickstarter listed them as A Product We Love, securing them space on the homepage. At the conclusion of their 30-day campaign, Fillow reached 1,740 backers and $116,403 in pledges to bring their project to life.
Stage 3: Getting the Product to Backers - Having successfully raised funds on Kickstarter, Fillow is now focusing on the next steps to bring their product to market. Their plans include running a pilot test for excited backers, nurturing their most engaged community through online conversations, and sending backers and followers their design updates. They continue to iterate on their product design and plan to ship to backers in 2024.
Key Takeaways
Fillow's success on Kickstarter is a testament to the team's dedication, preparation, and execution. While every company’s crowdfunding journey must be adapted for their industry and customer base, Fillow’s team recommends that startups:
- Find a strong partner to help you organize your campaign - Their crowdfunding launch partner’s strategic guidance was core to helping set up ad strategy, keep interested customers warm, and de-risking Fillow’s eventual launch.
- Set an achievable, informed funding goal - Do your own research or work with your partner to identify industry conversion rates on crowdfunding platforms and set a crowdfunding target based on the size of your existing funnels (email lists, social media communities, etc.).
- Engage with your audience - Getting interested parties in the funnel isn’t enough, you need to keep them warm. Respond to their comments, send them surveys, and ask for their thoughts on the problem you’re addressing.
- Leverage your own community early on - Fillow benefitted from being an active member of the UChicago entrepreneurship ecosystem, leading to program opportunities and investment. Whether it’s through a university, incubator, industry accelerator, or mentorship program, actively seek out a community that fits for you and keep relationships with instructors, peers, and program staff warm.
Special thanks to Fillow for sharing their learnings and helping other companies reach success in crowdfunding. To learn more, check out their website and sign-up for their email list, where you can become part of the community that is bringing their product into market.