Etsy to kickstarter to scale

I just got a chance to see the businesses-in-progress of a bunch of product design students.

They’re using etsy to sell their prototypes and one-offs as a pre-channel test.

Kickstarter is awesome for avoiding channel issues and overcoming fixed setup costs, but the successful projects are pretty far along by the time they become funded.

Etsy is an awesome way to sell one or two and answer the question, “does anybody want it?” It’s the pre-kickstarter (which is itself the pre-everything-else).

It’s like running a concierge MVP, but for physical product companies.

This is such a sharp way to test pricing and features before you can drive any traffic or build a brand or site.

Can you test your tech biz on etsy? Not so much.

But we’re in a time and place where new startup enablers are popping up constantly — you should always be looking for new ways to test your big question marks and never take the historical obstacles (and solutions) for granted.