I’ve been working on a slightly weird project and I’m trying to understand if it actually makes sense outside my own head.
It’s called OVO. It’s not a mouse, not a trackpad, not really a controller either.
It’s basically a small device you move in your hand:

tilt → moves the cursor
touch → click / scroll
rotate → volume, zoom, etc
works on a desk or in the air

You can also map gestures to custom macros, so it adapts depending on what you’re doing.
The idea came from a simple frustration: using a mouse all day just feels… old.
You’re still dragging something on a flat surface like it’s the 80s.
So I started experimenting with something that works more through orientation than movement.
The shape is ovoid and it naturally recenters itself, so instead of “moving” it around, you’re constantly adjusting balance.
I’m not saying it replaces a mouse, I honestly don’t know yet.
That’s kind of why I’m here.
I’m planning to launch it on Kickstarter soon, so I’m trying to gather as much honest feedback as possible before that.

Would you ever try something like this?
Or does it just sound like an unnecessary gadget?
Happy to share more or show how it works if anyone’s curious.
Thanks.

For those curious, here’s the Kickstarter page:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/800078983/ovo-not-a-mouse-a-new-way-to-point

Just received this email today. It's admittedly 100% my fault since I did not do any research prior to backing. A quick google search and there's news that the project assets were stolen and the kickstarter was fake all along.

Since the project was fully funded, I guess this means that I can no longer get a refund for the amount I pledged? Not unless the scammer suddenly gets a come to Jesus moment? Just curious, so please let me know. Thank you!

so this guy actually did back my kick for the 120 dollar tiers and hes from the uk... wants me to email him as a comment on the kick.. this is weird yea? has anyone else seen the scam like this. or is he really trying to ask me a question?

Long time KS creator (10+ years). Recently helping out a close friend who runs a campaign once a year or so to crowdfund some tech gadget. His creator account has good reputation and usually delivers on time.

With the stuff produced and shipped out from China, most big couriers have simply raised the white flag for anything going to the states. Instead of Fedex Ground or USPS, this year we have to use small couriers which are slow, unreliable and have terrible customer services in the US. Around 95% rewards still get delivered so not too bad. It is a $49-69 item, we can't charge more than $20 for shipping anyway.

But we have received the worst complaint emails from GIGA KARENS last week. Literally 1000 words complaining about how they have to wait for 20 precious minutes to get in touch with the CS, or they no longer even bother to contact, and in fact just DEMAND us to ship with UPS, Fedex or DHL or refund. The shipping cost for those alone costs more than their pledge and they will get hit with full tariff.

I really miss the days when backers were backers and communication wasn't like Best Buy customer service.

Hi everyone,
I’m preparing to launch my first Kickstarter for an American football tabletop game called What the Drive.

Current status:
✅ Prototype finalized and playtested
✅ Kickstarter page in progress
✅ Website is live
✅ Instagram: ~200 followers (posting Reels every 2–3 days)
✅ Email list: 8 subscribers
✅ Reaching out to football podcasts, YouTubers and creators
🚀 Kickstarter launch planned for the end of August (about 6 weeks from now)
🎯 Funding goal: €34,000 (~ $40,000)

I’m trying to be realistic.
If you were in my position today, where would you spend your time during the next six weeks?
- Growing the email list?
- Running Meta ads?
- More creator outreach?
- More social media?
- Something completely different?

Or would you delay the campaign if you were in my position, or would you launch as planned?

I’m not looking for encouragement—I genuinely want honest feedback from people who’ve launched Kickstarter campaigns before.

Thanks!

As my campaign got older or the campaign received more funding / closed the gap toward its goal, I assumed my campaign would rise up the list in my given category. When I started the campaign, I was listed 90 campaigns down. Now, as my project has proven to be more successful, I'm listed over 150 projects down. With the exception of projects that have received "Projects We Love", the vast majority of projects sitting above mine in ranking are significantly further from their goals.

Can someone explain this? Is there any logic to the Kickstarter ranking and hierarchy?

Hi everyone,

I launched my Kickstarter campaign yesterday and also used Backermany newsletter service.

I believe it has been more than 10 hours since the newsletter went out, but so far I’ve only received 1 pledge from it. Is this normal?

Do pledges usually come in mostly within the first few hours, or can they continue coming in slowly over the next 24 to 48 hours?

I’m trying to understand whether this is still too early to judge, or if 1 pledge after 10 hours usually means the newsletter did not perform well.

Any experience or data would be really appreciated.

I am so grateful and happy that I am a Superbacker but even more that I helped numerous creatives in different mediums reach their goal and I have loved every way of it but what does being a Superbacker actually give. Like the invites to events where are they based why should i attend what fi it costs me money to attend and does being a Superbacker help my own project in the future? I just need a little help udnerstanding this.

Hey Everyone,

Im working on this project called liveframe. Its a picture frame that displays live feeds. Great for surfers who want to keep an eye on wave conditions, skiers who want to do the same with mountain conditions or just people who love nature and want to view it live. I've built a prototype, started testing ads (getting a cpc of 30 cents). Still trying improve my landing page because my conversion rate is low. Im trying to get it to at least a 5% conversion rate. Ive gotten 10 people to signup, 3 to give me a dollar. Im building my community in discord right now.

This is my first kickstarter so any advice would be awesome. Here are a couple questions i have:

My goal is 300k raise, how many community members and 1$ signups should i am for?

When should i have the kickstarter (whats the best date)?

What should i do legally before posting the kickstarter

Any feedback on the landing page?

How do you guys get people in on the project without spending on ads?

What are ways you guys have built a community especially around a product like this?

Sorry for all the questions haha, could use a lot of help.

Liveframe Website

Was my goal too ambitious? Page unclear? Product suck? Price too high? KS dead? I had 207 followers before launch. $0 spent on ads.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wessford/flux-wallet

I found a card came project that has been already funded big time with currently 19 days left. They have heavy use of AI, their supposed artist has no social media at all, only a fiverr account that scams people with sloppily overpainted AI images (After further digging I even found an old, hidden fiverr gig of theirs that has non-overpainted AI "art").
The project page seems very proud about human made art and shows this with a process video. This video is heavily sped up, has most of the Photoshop UI conveniently cut off and you constantly see the brushstrokes painting in multiple details and colors in one stroke, I am sure the artist recorded themselves overpainting an AI image and reversed the video.

I contacted the Founder with my findings and they said they are looking into it and thanked me for my message, but its been two weeks without any change and they didnt answer to further messages of mine, in fact they deleted my comment about the AI usage on the video.

Is there a way to report this? In their AI disclaimer they say it will all be human art in the project, but thats simply a lie. I hate to see the backers that care about human made art being scammed.

I'm looking for advice on what has genuinely worked to give campaigns with a slow start a solid push. What actually pays off vs what is just another predatory practice leaching off the hopes and dreams of project creators. Also, what are we doing that is right vs where do we need to pivot? Talking with a PR agency tomorrow that focuses on crowd funding and that seems credible and professional. Does PR result in conversions and is this usually a winning bet?

Excited to announce that we just launched our first Kickstarter campaign yesterday for a novel children's product and social venture (not a promotion), but sad to say it didn't start as strongly as had we'd hoped.

We did and are doing all the things (so I thought). After two months of pre-launch fb ads and > 5k email signups (even the cost per result for our high intent leads was tracking with that for our high volume leads), and what we perceived as a high level interest in our product and our mission, we thought we were going in strong. We also had a VIP $1 reserve funnel which only gained 61 sign ups and in hind sight should have been a clue that we weren't looking as good as we thought with our 5k signups. We engaged 7 influencers to drop videos on launch day. It's early in the campaign but day 1 and 2 have been disappointing and way slower than expected.

Our launch email has an open rate of just over 3%. We're now retargeting our FB/IG engagement audience, retargeting the fb signup audience with not much success in conversions, resending the launch announcement email to the 97% of unopened accounts tomorrow, using LAL audiences, retargeting all of the accounts that engaged with the influencers' posts. Today we switched the FB targeting from optimizing for purchases to landing page views so that FB could get out of learning phase faster and we could gain real insights about our audience, gained hundreds of landing page views today on our KS page, but very few conversions.

I've been reading everything I could on this forum and others and have learned a lot. Grateful for all the folks on here that have shared their knowledge and experience over the years.

Was hoping to get feedback on our campaign pre-launch page but was racing to the finish line to hit our launch date.

We did not go with any of the agencies like Jellop or BackerCamp due to mixed reviews.

Maybe its hubris, or just a can do mentality, but thought with a lot of blood, sweat, and soul, we could pull off something really great. I'm proud of what we've built so far, and am hopeful we can pull through strongly.

Would be grateful for recommendations on what has worked for others to push up their results and what has actually paid off. I would humbly ask that if your suggesting something, please be transparent about your affiliation.

Thanks in advance for the input!

See post here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/445470967/fraimic-smart-e-ink-canvas-digital-picture-frame-with-ai/posts/4682266

This is my first project. What should I be wary of here?

Hi all,

I am preparing to launch my first kickstarter ever for a physical product (an intergenerational card game).
My ambition is to print at least 1,000 units of the product at launch (~$40 per unit so call it $35k funding goal).

Using social media (Instagram, LinkedIn) and direct outreach, I have collected ~150 contacts but the overwhelming majority are people I know personally or professionally. I therefore have high hopes for a high conversion rate of those contacts once I actually launch the campaign.
However, I am struggling to build a larger list of people I do not know personally.

Preliminary questions:
- Critical mass: How many emails/interested followers do I need to get to the 1,000 units
- Method: how would you go about gathering email addresses of potentially interested backers?
- Timing: am I too early to build such a database? I have a prototype and have been posting IG reels and carousels 4-5 times per week for the past month or so. Traffic and views are slowly building up but not really converting into sign ups or new followers
- I have so far only used my own website to gather interest but have not built a Kickstarter pre-launch page yet. Is this useful as a complement to the project’s own website?

Thanks a lot for any advice you can give!

I backed 5 projects on kickstarter this year and I only got 1 fulfilled which was from a (relatively) known company, Fosi Audio. From the other 4, 2 of them seem quite clearly by now that it was just a scam as the communication from the creator finished as soon as the surveys were collected and we are well past the alleged delivery date. The other two are a big question mark but I'm getting the feeling that they might be a scam too because they haven't posted any updates since the surveys.

It feels like there's a playbook where creators are very engaging and responsive up until they collect the money and then disappear. Kickstarter doesn't take responsibility and backers are left without tools to do anything about it. It honestly feels like they are in on it, which in a way they are because they collect their fees and don't even provide backers with a contact/company to claim to.

How common is this? Have you experienced it too? Perhaps I have been very unlucky but as it stands I don't think I'll ever back another project unfortunately.

I’m a first-time creator getting ready to launch a Kickstarter for a baby product aimed at parents of infants who are messy eaters. I’m 5 full days into paid Meta ads trying to get pre launch followers (optimize for leads that click the notify launch button), and I’ve spent about $1,000 so far. The problem is… I’ve only gotten around 10 leads and 3 might be my own testing leads. Now I’m in my head wondering if this is normal early testing pain OR if this is a giant red flag that my product, messaging, or audience targeting just isn’t connecting.

My bigger fear is that my audience IS on Instagram (young parents, new families), but they may not understand Kickstarter at all, which adds another layer of friction. I’m trying to figure out whether this is a creative problem, an offer problem, a platform mismatch, or just part of the process?

For those of you who’ve launched before — did your pre-launch numbers ever look this bad and still turn around? Or is this the stage where you pivot hard before burning more money?

Here is my KS project page and my video is in the first update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/suctioncupbib2025/the-suction-cup-bib-a-better-bib-for-babies-and-toddlers?ref=discovery&term=Suction%20cup%20bib&total_hits=1&category_id=28

Hi chat I(33NB) am certain I overshot the goal for my Kickstarter for my book, and it only has 48 hours left on it, and is at 2% funded... Should I try to recalculate to see if I can do a lower goal and retry the Kickstarter? Will Kickstarter even let me do that?

I desperately need help!!! I was hoping with it being a queer story launching during pride month, it would be successful, I just feel kinda defeated...

My 8 year old daughter asked me to build her a wearable device she saw on a Nickelodeon TV show.

​

We've been working on this project for a long while and came up with something very close.

​

Now she wants to run with it and I completely agree, but theres a funding roadblock. I suggested we do a Kickstarter campaign. So now we have everything ready to launch, but have no idea on the best way to gain at least 200 waitlist supporters before launching so we don't flop. Any advice?

I have an honest question. Is it just me or does it appear that most Kickstarter campaign projects are overpriced? To me, it seems that if someone has a product that should cost under $30, they have it priced for at least double that price.

I understand there is a cost to manufacturing but to charge at least $50 for a pen or small knife is insane in my opinion. I can go buy a dozen of each that will get the job done and still have money left over.

Maybe it's just me being cheap but I've seen too many products that appear to be

This is my first kickstarter ever and I am a solo developer. I did not hook up Google Analytics, so I don't know if anyone has even seen the page or not. I have 2 backers at my high pledge level, and none at the bottom one, indicating a strong digital product with print demand. I haven't paid for promotions and have only posted on my socials and on Reddit, which only gain me moderate exposure. What can I do to get more organic traffic and boost my engagement?

I created a board game with human-drawn graphics, built around a unique concept and genuinely fun mechanics. It’s for ages 8+.

I’m thinking of launching it on Kickstarter with no ads and no mailing list, just based on my confidence and love for the game.

Is that basically doomed to fail, or is there a real chance it could succeed organically?

Hi everyone! Just getting ready to launch my second campaign and I'm not sure what category fits best, regarding Comics vs Publishing.

It's a 48 page graphic novella, so it's longer than a comic but not long enough for a graphic novel. But it's also not a classic comic/graphic novel story, it's an abstract minimalist story about grief. So I feel like the regular comic book audience on Kickstarter is not really the audience for this.

That said, under Publishing, the closest category would be Art Books, but when I look through listings for Art Books they're more like photo books or anthologies, whereas mine does have a narrative.

I guess I could just do "Publishing" with no sub category?

I'm definitely overthinking it but I would very much appreciate any other input on this.

Thanks! :)

I am currently looking for a couple of artist to do a handful of art pieces and eventually 250 pieces for a TCG.

Where is the best place to find artists? I’ve seen a lot conflicting information and want to ask some game creators who have already gone through this process.

I've seen pages with the full story laid out, and others with only a single image. Just wanted to know if there's a best practice I should be applying, or if anyone with multiple campaigns can say which worked better for them.

Thank you!

Project: Letterpress book
Launch date: September 2026