How + When to Crowdfund

Quokka Brew’s Top Tips From Their Game-Changing Campaign

“I wouldn’t change a thing,” says George Passantino, co-founder and co-CEO of Quokka Brew on their 2020 crowdfunding campaign. It’s easy to look back on this experience so positively – Quokka Brew is now one of the top five highest crowdfunded beverages, with over 1,100 individual backers. But at one point in time, George and his co-founder Ofek Arush were just two college students with an idea – and absolutely zero experience in fundraising.

In this article, we break down the origins of this buzzy (not to be confused with “jittery”) brand and learn their top tips for crowdfunding.

Building The Brew

The idea for jitterless, ready-to-drink coffee was first brewed in a college library. Ofek and George couldn’t help but notice their friends at UC Berkeley struggling to make it through finals week. They saw their peers increase their caffeine consumption – and then experience its subsequent jitters and crash. As aspiring entrepreneurs, Ofek and George knew this problem needed a solution, but they had yet to find it on the market. So while their friends spent their summers readjusting their circadian rhythms, Ofek and George got to work researching a crashless solution to fuel finals.

The two worked with food scientists and chemists to create the perfect blend of organic amino acids and nootropics to infuse into cold brew, eliminating the jitters and crash from caffeine without sacrificing energy or focus – and Quokka Brew was born. Throughout Quokka’s early stages, they focused on getting samples of the product into consumers hands. As a product that required consumer education, the co-founders knew that early feedback would shape their brand.

So, they trekked across California college campuses, sampling the product to as many students as they could.

As the team grew and its mission spread across campuses, Ofek and George quickly realized they would need more cash to continue. They were due for their first production run – a minimum of 30,000 cans – and bootstrapping simply wouldn’t cut it. “We needed money for the flywheel to start spinning.”

Crowdfunding would be their biggest challenge yet. And as first-time founders, they were dedicated to setting themselves up for success. They reached out to founders of brands with the most successful campaigns ever conducted and “frankensteined” their ideas together to build the best beverage campaign possible.

BEHIND THE SCENES OF CROWDFUNDING: QUOKKA BREW’S TOP TIPS

Radical transparency

Ofek and George found that crowdfunding was not the time to “fake it ‘til you make it.” Crowdfunding supporters do not have equity in your brand, so their incentive to put their dollar towards your brand has nothing to do with their impending return. Instead, the messaging around the campaign should be radically transparent, making it clear that contributors are supporting founders who genuinely need every dollar.

George reflects, “We really stressed that we needed support to keep Quokka going. We didn't go light on explaining the gravity of the situation.” This made each supporter feel that their dollar could really make an impact.

A pre-launch survey

Many months prior to launching their campaign, the Quokka team crafted a survey asking respondents for their feedback on can design options and shared it with their networks (~10,000 people combined). They received around 3,000 responses – aka 3,000 unique contacts who weren’t just email addresses, but individuals who already felt bought-into and heard by the brand. When Quokka Brew ultimately launched their crowdfunding campaign, they reached out to the survey participants and shared that the team had implemented their feedback, and now are counting on their continued support.

From that outreach alone, Quokka Brew raised $25,000 in the first 24 hours of their campaign.

People > product

“Crowdfunding isn’t about supporting the company,” says George. “It’s supporting the people behind the company.” Unlike later stages of fundraising, crowdfunding isn’t about proving traction. It’s about providing a reason for someone to put their money towards your goals – in other words, it’s largely about being likable. “We worked hard to have people really feel like they knew the team, and that they were supporting their friends.” In practice, this looked like frequent personalized outreach and behind-thescenes footage on their social media accounts.

Perks beyond the product

“Crowdfunding is essentially a pre-order campaign on steroids,” explains George. In other words, backers still have an expectation of receiving something in exchange for their support. Though many of their backers had sampled the product already, many others were simply backing the idea – making other incentives a key piece of the campaign. George and Ofek saw this as an opportunity to further showcase the brand’s personality, offering perks from t-shirts to Quokka Brew branded shot glasses and even plaques proclaiming “Quokka Brew Early Supporter”. Each supporter who purchased a 24-pack also gained lifetime early access to samples of all new flavor launches.

Most importantly, be ready to pivot

Even having completed all the “right” prework, they still hit bumps in the road. Two days before their Kickstarter campaign was supposed to launch, the Kickstarter team reached out to say that they could not launch the product on their platform – they had mislisted it as an energy drink and would not permit them to launch.

Never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth

A common saying in startups is to “do things that don’t scale in the early days” – and Ofek and George took this task seriously. Their team texted every single early backer from their personal phone numbers, thanking them for their support and encouraging them to share the link, again emphasizing how much it would mean to them. Referrals ended up playing a huge role in the success of the campaign, with $10-15K coming directly from referrals; Ofek and George believe this was a direct result of taking time to personalize every single message.

Ofek and George immediately pivoted. They reached out to the founders of Indiegogo to see if it was possible to launch the campaign on their platform in two days – and their wish was granted. On Quokka’s Instagram, Ofek and George remained transparent about the pivot and used this challenge as an opportunity to show the behind-the-scenes stressors of founder life.

When the Indiegogo went live, the Quokka team and ambassadors immediately did what they do best: texted everyone they knew. Less than 24 hours into their crowdfunding campaign, Quokka Brew surpassed their fundraising goal for the entire month – by $10,000. By the end of the campaign, they were one of the highest crowdfunded beverages in the industry.

You can try Quokka Brew at https:// www.quokkabrew.com/ and follow along with Ofek, George, and their team @quokkabrew on Instagram.

By Jenna Movsowitz