Taking the Wheel on Gaming Steering Accuracy

For this episode of Art of the Kickstart, we caught up with Phil Croft, creator of ProSteer. Tune in to learn more about his experience with the intricacies of developing a hardware product and preparing for a crowdfunding campaign. Topics Discussed and Key Crowdfunding Takeaways The development process for their product, pre-crowdfunding Making the decision to take the crowdfunding route with their current prototypes Working with third-party manufacturers The importance of educating your customers through marketing Difficulties for startups in the hardware space Making the decision to work with a marketing agency for their crowdfunding campaign Links ProSteer on Kickstarter Grand Theft Auto Jonathan Livingston Seagull: The Complete Edition Sponsors Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by The Gadget Flow, a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. The Gadget Flow is the ultimate buyer's guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Click here to learn more and list your product - use coupon code ATOKK16 for 20% off! Transcript View this episode's transcript Roy Morejon: Welcome to Art of the Kickstart, your source for crowdfunding campaign success. I’m your host, Roy Morejon, President of Enventys Partners, the top full-service turnkey product development and crowdfunding marketing agency in the world. We have helped startups raise over a hundred million dollars for our clients since 2010. Each week, I’ll interview a crowdfunding success story, an inspirational entrepreneur or a business expert in order to help you take your startup to the next level with crowdfunding. Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by BackerKit and The Gadget Flow. BackerKit makes software that crowdfunding project creators use to survey backers, organize data and manage orders for fulfillment by automating your operations and helping you print and ship faster. The Gadget Flow is a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save and buy awesome products. It is the ultimate buyer’s guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Now let’s get on with the show. Roy Morejon: Welcome to another edition of Art of the Kickstart. Today I am joined with Phil Croft, CEO of BoxDark and the upcoming crowdfunding project ProSteer. Phil, thank you so much for joining us today on Art of the Kickstart. Phil Croft: My pleasure, Roy. My pleasure. Roy Morejon: I know you’re on the other side of the world over in Brisbane, Australia, so I appreciate you being on the line. I’m also really excited to talk about this new handheld analog steering controller ProSteer. So if you would, give our audience a little bit of background and tell us where does this idea start? What inspired you to create this product? What was that aha moment you had? Phil Croft: Right, I guess I was... I’ve always been, let’s say an enthusiastic gamer as I was growing. I’m part of the generation where we first experienced the original PlayStation and then the development and the to and fro between PlayStation and Xbox and that massive development period where the games just improved so vastly over those first, I guess, couple of versions of consoles. I was very much part of that. That was when I was a young man in the ’90s. I had great frustrations because I’ve always loved driving games and I do like to draw cars in real life too. There was a massive disconnect for me, Roy, between what I was experiencing behind the wheel in my own car and what I was experiencing in game in that I didn’t have the control in the face or the realism of what I knew driving was. This was a constant frustration using gamepads with thumb sticks to steer a car. That was where it all started. Roy Morejon: That seems ridiculous now because I know whenever you jump on a video game like Mario Cart or whatever it may be, your