As we move on with MVP LYEONS Heart, we wanted an early small cohort who would be our MVP beta testers. The learnings we wanted to get were: is there potential for LYEONS Heart to support people, and who is it most helpful for? What kind of improvements can we make – product, application, support, and more?
Crowdfunding is always shown as a potential route for start-ups like us to get the product out there, to get early users, and to get early funding to make the idea into real life. Kickstarter is one of the platforms that we started to look into. For those who may be considering the platform, we thought we would share some of our behind-the-scenes learnings.
Understanding how Kickstarter works
As we started preparing for Kickstarter, we learnt about the platform and about how Kickstarter works. We looked at both successful and unsuccessful projects to understand what worked and what didn’t. Kickstarter had great guidelines and advice on creating successful projects too.
One of the best ways to learn about the platform was surely learning from experience. We were lucky to have friends who had done it before, so we got together to learn key pointers and advice to take into consideration. Thank you to everyone who shared their time and tips with us. 🙂 Key message that came up (although it may feel like a given) was that “it requires a lot of work”. Hearing that from founders who already have a high threshold for a lot of work gave us an opportunity to be ready and get ourselves prepared for hard work.
Turning into a plan – timelines, tasks, reality checks)
As a team, to align ourselves we always have a timeline of things we need to do, when we have to do them by, and who will be the key people working on each task. So when we started the Kickstarter planning, we laid out key activities and looked into the timeline.
For us, the key priorities were launching the page, preparing communications for a wider audience, getting the product ready, and making sure inventory, logistics, and supply chain were in place. Once live, our focus was on keeping pledgers updated, delivering on time, and learning from the process.
We originally planned to produce just 15 units for this first beta. Our intention was to keep the cohort deliberately small so we could learn deeply from each user, understand how the product fits into real daily life, and get meaningful feedback on both the product and the overall experience.
As we started sharing the idea and seeing early interest, we decided to increase the batch slightly, while still keeping it small (total of 23 units) . This also gave us a chance to properly understand how the Kickstarter platform works, in case we choose to use it again for a larger-scale launch in the future.
Why LYEONS Heart exists in the first place
When we were building the Kickstarter page, a big part of the work was deciding how to tell the story of LYEONS Heart in a way that felt honest, responsible, and human. We did not want to oversell what the product could do, or hide the fact that this is still an early beta. At the same time, we wanted to clearly share why this project exists and why it matters to us.
The story brings together lived experience, research curiosity, and years of building human-centred technology. Some of us have experienced moments of overwhelm ourselves, others have supported friends or family through it, and all of us care deeply about designing tools that genuinely support people in everyday life. That perspective shaped how we wrote the page, the language we used, and the tone we set.
Rather than presenting a polished product story, we focused on inviting people into the journey – explaining where LYEONS Heart came from, what it can offer today, and what we are still learning as we continue to develop it together.
You can see our Kickstarter page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lyeonsheart/lyeons-heart-exploring-calm-together
Preparing communication materials
The thing with communication, whether it is product photos, user photos, or videos, is that they always feel like we can spend more time and make them better. This is one of the pitfalls of design. We feel like we can always make it better, so actually one of the most difficult parts is saying, “OK, let’s push it out now.”
So often, we set our internal deadlines just to push us to get it out there. One of the biggest learning skills we got from the Innovation Design Engineering course was working with rather tight deadlines that really push us to “make decisions and move on, learn, iterate”. So when we set the timeline for the Kickstarter page, we quickly started gathering materials and went with them.
For the videos, we quickly put together key messages that we wanted to share, came up with a storyline, and asked around to see who might be open to sharing their time to support us in creating them (thank you so much to our friends who shared their valuable time – we had a lot of fun filming them!). We quickly edited them in 1-2 hours.
You can watch our videos here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVsgIDWIXDg
Keeping it small, real, and human for beta cohort
Our aim was to keep communication small-scale so we could reach people who understood this was a beta launch, were keen to be part of the development, and willing to give thoughtful feedback to help us improve. We contacted people and posted on LinkedIn (most of the purchases came from LinkedIn, less from Kickstarter organic reach – we will do another post about reflections and learnings!).
And then something amazing happened…
As we launched, we were lucky to have Cambridge NeuroWorks, Cambridge Network, Imperial Enterprise, friends, and family supporting the campaign by sharing it with their close networks. Thanks to everyone, in 11 hours we were able to get fully funded.
Reaching full funding in 11 hours was encouraging, but what mattered most to us was seeing people step forward who genuinely care about improving everyday life and wanted to be part of the journey with us.
For us, this beta launch is about learning together with real people, being open about what we do not yet know, and building the product with care, curiosity, and responsibility.
In the next post, we will share what unfolded during the live campaign and the lessons we are carrying forward into the next stage of LYEONS Heart. 🙂 Thank you for reading, and your support. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out at info@lyeons.com.
Leave a Reply