How Font Awesome Broke Kickstarter Records with a Hilarious Video

00:00  Matt: Welcome to Podcast Awesome, where we chat about icons, design, tech, business, and nerdery

00:15 Matt: with members of the Font Awesome team.

00:29 Matt: I'm your host Matt Johnson, and in this podcast, we catch up with founders Dave Gandy, Travis

00:34 Matt: Chase, as well as Rob Madole, Font Awesome's principal software engineer, to talk about

00:40 Matt: what they learned launching the Font Awesome Kickstarter in 2017.

00:48 Matt: After hitting our 10-year milestone as a company reflecting on the release of Font Awesome

00:52 Matt: 6, we realized we'd never really said much about our original Kickstarter for Font Awesome

00:56 Matt: version 5 back in 2017, which was a huge milestone for us.

01:03 Matt: When all is said and done, the Font Awesome Kickstarter is the most funded and most backed

01:08 Matt: tech Kickstarter of all time, and a big part of its success was due to the video.

01:13 Matt: Since then, folks have asked us what we thought contributed to the project's success.

01:18 Matt: In this podcast, we've summarized some of the things we think worked, and a few that

01:23 Matt: didn't.

01:26 Matt: This is Dave Gandy.

01:28 Dave: But it just started getting just more and more and more popular, all organically, without,

01:32 Dave: you know, we've never paid to drive traffic to Font Awesome.

01:36 Dave: Everything has always been organic, you know, both as an open source, you know, fully open

01:40SPEAKER_05: source project, then we transitioned to, you know, being a company.

01:44 Matt: In 2017, Font Awesome founders Dave Gandy and Travis Chase tried an experiment.

01:50 Matt: Up until that point, Font Awesome was open source and free.

01:55 Matt: Once they made the decision to give Font Awesome a go in a paid version, they were

01:59 Matt: invited to Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley tech startup accelerator that's been around

02:04 Matt: since 2005.

02:07 Matt: Maybe you've heard of the little companies Airbnb, Dropbox, and DoorDash?

02:11 Dave: Yeah, they all got their start with Y Combinator.

02:14 Dave: The short answer is that everybody always asks is, you know, was Y Combinator worth

02:17 Dave: it?

02:18 Dave: My answer is yes, and it was worth it within the first 30 minutes of getting there.

02:23 Travis:: When we talk about Y Combinator, you know, they, their slogan is like, build something

02:27 Travis:: people want.

02:28 Travis:: And so we were working on Fort and we were trying different things and trying to make

02:32SPEAKER_05: that the tool we thought could really help a lot of people.

02:38 Matt: When Travis mentions Fort here, that's shorthand for Fort Awesome, an icon services package

02:44 Matt: the team was spending a lot of time trying to get off the ground.

02:48 Matt: Here's Rob Madole.

02:49 Rob: Yeah, we were so far down in the weeds, kind of looking at a completely different area.

02:55 Rob: Fort Awesome was, and you hear Dave and Travis talk about this pretty often, it was a bit

03:00 Rob: ahead of its time.

03:01 Rob: We were doing things with icons that people just really weren't, they weren't asking for

03:08 Rob: it yet.

03:10 Rob: So yeah, it was definitely one of those things where you're so far in the weeds that you

03:17 Rob: can't see what's above it.

03:19 Rob: And if we would have just thought about it, we'd have been like, oh, well, let's just

03:23SPEAKER_05: make more icons.

03:24 Matt: Though the team was getting traction, it wasn't quite enough to keep them going as a company.

03:30 Matt: So they did what only sensible people do.

03:33 Matt: They panicked.

03:34SPEAKER_05: It is my professional opinion that now is the time to panic.

03:43 Matt: Just kidding.

03:44 Matt: They didn't panic.

03:45 Travis:: They were just telling their customers what they wanted.

03:48 Travis:: And we're getting some traction, but not necessarily enough traction to support all four.

03:52 Travis:: We're just like, okay, well, how can we change this?

03:54 Travis:: And so basically, we went and asked our users, what do you want?

04:02 Travis:: What do you want?

04:03 Matt: What an idea, Travis.

04:04 Dave: Yeah, so we posted a survey on fontawesome.com.

04:10 Dave: It was active for three, maybe four days.

04:13 Dave: We did U.S. early in our understanding how to do good surveys.

04:16 Dave: And the survey ended up taking on average 45 minutes for people who completed it.

04:20 Matt: Oh, dang.

04:21 Matt: So they're committed.

04:22 Dave: And in about four or five days, we had 7,500 responses.

04:28SPEAKER_05: So we had lots of people who took the time to do that for us.

04:31 Matt: Make something people want is one of Y Combinator's mantras, and for good reason.

04:36 Matt: You won't get anywhere if you don't have something that folks need or want to use.

04:40 Dave: And there's no way to know for sure what people want unless you actually talk to them.

04:46 Dave: We find out, Travis, what do they want?

04:48 Dave: What did everybody want?

04:49 Travis: Just want more Font Awesome.

04:50 Rob: You would think we would realize that that's something people would want more of because

04:56 Rob: Font Awesome 4, I think it had around 650 or so icons at the time.

05:01 Dave: And we had tons of icon requests in our repository, our GitHub repository, where the open source

05:09 Rob: code was.

05:11 Rob: And I think it's something that you just kind of get blind to.

05:14 Rob: You just think about it.

05:16 Rob: But yeah, we heard back during that survey, people were just like, I just kind of want

05:19 Rob: that.

05:20 Rob: And it was a lot of times it was just one or two icons that they wanted.

05:23 Rob: It wasn't like they needed a whole set or anything.

05:25 Rob: So it became really apparent quickly that, well, if we just make more icons, we'll probably

05:31SPEAKER_05: make people happy.

05:32 Matt: So armed with what they learned at Y Combinator and fresh feedback from customers, they decided

05:37 Matt: to launch a crowdfunding campaign to get a paid version of Font Awesome off the ground.

05:43 Matt: That meant in part, they'd have to tell the story about what Font Awesome is and what it

05:49 Matt: does.

05:50 Matt: But Font Awesome has been down the crowdfunding video path before.

05:54 Matt: The big takeaway?

05:56 Matt: Hire professionals.

05:57 Dave: We also recognize we had done it before.

05:59 Dave: If you go and look at it, I will be humbled for every person that ever watches that.

06:04 Dave: The original Kickstarter video we did, we'd actually already done one.

06:07 Dave: For a project called Font Awesome Black Tie.

06:12SPEAKER_01: Black Tie will be an all new commercial icon font designed completely from scratch, building

06:17SPEAKER_01: on all of the great things from the original Font Awesome.

06:20 Dave: So we learned lessons.

06:22 Dave: Failure.

06:23 Dave: Total failure there, right?

06:24 Dave: But we learned the lesson.

06:25 Dave: Okay.

06:26 Rob: Hey, don't put Dave in the videos.

06:29 Rob: Yeah.

06:30 Rob: Well, Dave likes to talk about that.

06:33 Rob: Black Tie Kickstarter.

06:36 Rob: It got funded.

06:37 Rob: And so I think for starters, you have to say, look, it was actually successful.

06:43 Rob: What bothers him is he was on camera.

06:46 Rob: He doesn't think that it worked very well, but he got the message across.

06:50 Rob: I think it's a lot better than what he likes to admit.

06:53 Dave: Right.

06:54 Dave: That's the first one.

06:56 Dave: And B, hire someone who knows that as their wheelhouse.

06:59 Dave: Who really, really knows how to do that.

07:02SPEAKER_05: And then all of that, but like know what this thing is going to be.

07:05 Matt: So they knew they couldn't tell the Font Awesome story without a great video.

07:09 Matt: So they did some research into how a great Kickstarter video should cost.

07:13 Matt: I.E. they Googled how much does a Kickstarter video cost.

07:17 Matt: And to work with a fantastic production company and get the quality they wanted would run

07:22 Matt: somewhere around 15,000.

07:25 Matt: This sounded like a lot to spend on a video, but they were pretty sure they'd be able

07:29 Matt: to make back their investment.

07:31 Matt: After talking with other Y Combinator startups, they found VideoPixie.

07:35 Matt: Basically, VideoPixie has you describe your project and 20 to 30 professional video production

07:40 Matt: companies will bid for your business.

07:42 Matt: It works really well and you get some excellent options really quick.

07:46SPEAKER_01: And the VideoPixie guy had an idea.

07:48SPEAKER_01: It's going to be awesome.

07:55 Dave: He was like, now this is a little bit past the budget you set for this, but what about

07:59 Dave: these guys?

08:00 Dave: And so, you know, we, we, we chat up with them, got to know them and we knew the trick

08:04 Dave: to look for.

08:05 Dave: We know we knew that when it comes to craft, that the people who are purely talking about

08:10 Dave: the hardware and the math and the science behind things, that they might be able to

08:14 Dave: be technically, technically proficient.

08:15 Dave: Right.

08:16 Matt: But if you're doing a video, it's story.

08:19 Matt: The idea was to get Font Awesome connected with a video company called Knox Avenue.

08:24 Matt: Even though working with Knox was outside of their budget, they believed in Knox's

08:28 Matt: vision and thought it was worth the risk.

08:30 Matt: Talking, you know, we're talking a good chunk of the money that we've got left at this

08:33 Dave: point, right?

08:34 Dave: Because that raise got us an extra 18 months of, of runway.

08:37 Dave: And it's been a year since then at this point.

08:40 Dave: Right.

08:41 Dave: So we don't have many quarterly experiments left to even be able to run.

08:44 Dave: So this is, but we also knew, right?

08:46 Dave: Like if it doesn't work anyway, it's not going to matter.

08:47 Mat: Let's give it a good shot.

08:48 Dave: Give it a good shot.

08:49 Rob: Dave, he was the one that came up with the idea for the Kickstarter and the idea for

08:54 Rob: doing the video.

08:55 Rob: And at the time I thought he was, I thought he was crazy because it was so expensive and,

09:00 Rob: you know, we didn't have an infinite bank account.

09:03 Matt: Right.

09:04 Rob: I was like, Oh man, that's such a huge risk.

09:05 Rob: I really didn't think he was nuts.

09:06SPEAKER_05: I thought, well, yeah, it was sort of like, if we do this video, somebody's not getting

09:10SPEAKER_05: paid this month.

09:11 Rob: Yeah.

09:12 Rob: Yeah.

09:13 Rob: It wasn't quite down to that point, but it was definitely going to shorten our runway

09:16 Rob: by, you know, however many days or months and just, just a huge risk.

09:24 Rob: Something that I probably, you know, I'm, I'm risk more, more risk averse.

09:28 Rob: I wouldn't have probably done it if it had been up to me.

09:30 Rob: So it's kind of the genius of day that he could see far enough ahead and was willing

09:34 Rob: to take the risk.

09:36 Matt: Yeah.

09:37 Rob: But yeah, it was, I was, I was kind of there for the, from the very beginning on that,

09:41 Rob: on the Kickstarter thing and went through it with everybody together.

09:45SPEAKER_05: It was quite a ride.

09:46 Matt: Dave and Travis wanted something folks would share with their friends and Knox Avenue seemed

09:51 Matt: like a great fit.

09:52 Matt: Incidentally, after they launched, they were told that comedy is very risky for a Kickstarter.

09:58 Rob: So it was probably a good thing that they didn't know that ahead of time.

10:01 Matt: Yeah.

10:02 Rob: I wonder if Dave would have heard that from somebody before we did the video, if that

10:07 Rob: would have kind of changed everything.

10:09 Matt: Right.

10:10 Rob: You talk about like, you know, butterfly wings that ended up changing the future.

10:14 Rob: Yeah.

10:15 Rob: That one thing, if he would have heard it at the wrong time, may have completely changed

10:19 Rob: the trajectory.

10:20 Rob: We may not even be here today.

10:21 Matt: Yeah.

10:22SPEAKER_05: That was the case.

10:24 Matt: It's a good thing Dave didn't hear the recommendation to avoid humor and tech Kickstarters because

10:29 Matt: as it turned out, humor was an important factor to building an authentic brand identity for

10:34 Matt: Font Awesome.

10:36 Dave: As a company, like we like humor, right?

10:38 Dave: This is actually a core piece of who the company has become, right?

10:41 Dave: Is that we value this so much.

10:44 Dave: And so we're like, okay, so humor seems a clear way that we can, we can try to try to

10:47 Dave: make this more interesting, but also what if we have nothing overtly digital in us?

10:53 Dave: What if we tell this in the real world?

10:55 Dave: What if we tell the story of, you know, Font Awesome 5, what we want to build?

10:59 Dave: What if we tell this story in the real world?

11:00 Dave: And so what's the biggest parallel, right?

11:02 Dave: And so right away you're like, oh, let's do, what about a lab, right?

11:05 Dave: A science lab, right?

11:06 Dave: Because you've got all the tweaking, it's very visual.

11:09 Dave: You've got the white coats and you've got the, you know, the Erlenmeyer flask and you've

11:12 Dave: got the beakers and you've got all this little fungoli.

11:14 Dave: There's just, you can fill them with colors and you can do some fun stuff there.

11:17 Dave: But ultimately, and that's a great idea, but ultimately we're like, no, no, no, no, it's

11:21 Dave: too cold.

11:22 Dave_05: It's too sterile.

11:24 Matt: And this is when Brian Talbot came up with the idea explaining Font Awesome in the context

11:27 Matt: of a bakery.

11:29 Matt: So as an aside, let it be known that Mr. Talbot bakes the most amazing chocolate chip cookies

11:35 Matt: you have ever tasted.

11:37 Dave: Brian is, is one of the best bakers I will probably ever know if you ever have a chance

11:41 Dave: to have one of his chocolate chip cookies.

11:44 Dave: Like I'll leave it there.

11:46SPEAKER_05: It's heavenly, heavenly.

11:47SPEAKER_05: Yeah.

11:48SPEAKER_05: So good.

11:49SPEAKER_05: Every, every one of those cookies is worth it.

11:53SPEAKER_05: 24 hour process, if not longer.

11:55 Matt: Yeah, the time, like the dough has to cure for the chocolate.

11:58SPEAKER_02: It's crazy.

11:59 Dave: A little bit of salt on the top.

12:00 Dave: Like it's a craft.

12:02 Dave: If we haven't, if Brian hasn't shared his nerd about baking, that would be it.

12:08 Dave: We should do that.

12:09 Dave: The parallel we come up with is a bakery, right?

12:12 Dave: Because a bakery is, you know, we think of Font Awesome as this intersection of art and

12:16 Dave: technology, right?

12:17 Dave: We think of it as how do we make these awesome assets, right?

12:21 Dave: You get your icons.

12:22 Dave: How do you make these real?

12:23 Dave: How do you get these where they need to be in the way people want to use them so that

12:27 Dave: you know, everything can be better what you're trying to do.

12:29 Dave: And baking is so similar, right?

12:30 Dave: There's so much about bake baking that is so visual.

12:33 Dave: And then not only that, but like the science of how you do it, all the hard work that goes

12:36 Dave: into the craft and the science and all the pieces that underneath it, it was just, it

12:41SPEAKER_05: was the right tone of the right field.

12:43 Matt: The filming process was super fun and super quick.

12:46 Matt: They found this amazing little bakery in Burbank called Half Baked and was absolutely perfect

12:51SPEAKER_04: for what they wanted.

12:53SPEAKER_04: It was just Dave and I remember him.

12:55SPEAKER_04: It was very furious.

12:57SPEAKER_04: He would be sending us notes and things and emails at like two thirty eight a.m.

13:02SPEAKER_04: in the morning because they were doing the shoot over because it was an actual bakery.

13:06SPEAKER_04: They didn't want to interrupt a business for the actual for the real thing.

13:10SPEAKER_04: Right. They did it all through the night.

13:12SPEAKER_04: And it was just it was crazy.

13:14SPEAKER_04: The. You could tell from his emails and responses and pictures he was sending

13:19SPEAKER_04: Travis and Brian and I that.

13:24SPEAKER_04: Something special was happening.

13:26SPEAKER_04: That's what this it was.

13:27SPEAKER_05: You could really tell that there was some some good going on.

13:30 Matt: They spent 12 hours on site filming at night from 6 p.m.

13:34 Matt: to 6 a.m. and they had a blast.

13:37 Matt: Then Knox worked their magic and edited the whole thing together.

13:41 Matt: But the big question was, would the video translate to the audience?

13:46 Dave: And so we had so much fun writing that and shooting it.

13:50 Dave: We've got it all ready to go. We've got the Kickstarter.

13:52 Dave: You know, it's already ready to flip the button and we don't know what's going to happen.

13:57 Dave: Right. We have no idea what's going to happen.

13:58 Travis: Not a clue.

13:59 Dave: And I'll say this. So so Travis, I mean, you tell me what you said.

14:03 Dave: So Travis had never seen a full cut of the video by the time we had color sound

14:07 Dave: effects and all the stuff done and really close to final.

14:10 Dave: And Travis watched it.

14:11 Dave: And Travis, what was your comment?

14:12 Travis:: Yeah, after laughing throughout, I kind of stopped and I paused.

14:18 Travis:: I said, you know, this may be the best thing we ever do in this company.

14:22SPEAKER_05: Yeah. Was this video.

14:24 Matt: Do you remember seeing it for the first time?

14:28  Rob: I do. I was shocked at how much personality and how professional it was.

14:35  Rob: Because when you read the script and we all kind of worked on the script

14:39  Rob: a little bit, the four of us, but Dave and Dave and Brian, I think primarily.

14:46  Rob: They went back and forth and you read the script and it sounds OK.

14:51  Rob: Right. But everything is really dry on the page.

14:53  Rob: And until you see it in action, you just really don't have any idea.

14:56  Rob: Yeah. And they had and they ad libbed and changed some stuff as they went,

15:00  Rob: which was kind of part of that frenetic energy that he was so excited about.

15:05  Rob: And just to see it come together, I was.

15:07  Rob: I kind of agree with Travis in one of the comments

15:11  Rob: he said was this is probably the best thing we've ever made.

15:14  Rob: Yeah. And yeah, it was it was seriously good.

15:17  Rob: And it was at that kind of moment that.

15:20  Rob: I guess I let hope come in that, OK, this this actually could really

15:24  Rob: this could really be awesome. I'm excited for people to see this.

15:28 Dave: And so you're looking at looking ahead, right?

15:30 Dave: We have no idea this is going to hit. Right.

15:32 Dave: But we we think this is hysterical, right?

15:33 Dave: This is like we thought it was funny.

15:36 Dave: We thought it was funny. So we launched the video.

15:39 Dave: We did a few things right with it.

15:40 Dave: We did a lot of things right.

15:41 Dave: And we still got an article out there somewhere about all of the

15:43 Dave: we think are good ways to run a Kickstarter.

15:45 Dave: And it's a few years old, but most of it's going to be evergreen with that.

15:48 Dave: And we set a goal for ourselves for thirty thousand dollars.

15:52 Dave: Right. And we knew that was low.

15:54 Dave: But we also knew that if at the end of it, we still had a product we could sell.

15:57 Dave: Right. Even if the Kickstarter really only does 30 grand.

15:59 Dave: OK, we're going to go ahead with it. Right.

16:01 Dave: That was our real. That was our really go or no go number. Right.

16:04 Dave: If it didn't hit that even.

16:05 Dave: OK, we probably won't.

16:06 Dave: We may not even bother to try to commercialize this at all.

16:08SPEAKER_05: We'll just keep it keep it going the way it was.

16:10 Matt: So what happened when they flipped the switch?

16:13SPEAKER_05: We blew through that thirty thousand dollars in.

16:16SPEAKER_05: An hour, maybe.

16:18 Matt: If you can believe it, the Font Awesome Five Kickstarter

16:21 Matt: raised one million seventy six thousand nine hundred and forty dollars

16:26 Matt: with thirty five thousand five hundred and fifty backers.

16:29 Matt: That made it the most funded and most backed software

16:32 Matt: Kickstarter of all time.

16:40 Matt: And if you haven't watched the video yet, really check it out.

16:43 Matt: It's genuinely funny.

16:46SPEAKER_05: Oh, come on, Terry.

16:48SPEAKER_05: You can always add more sprinkles.

16:50SPEAKER_05: It's a life lesson.

16:52SPEAKER_05: Oh, I didn't see there here at Font Awesome.

16:54SPEAKER_05: We're always cooking up something new.

16:57SPEAKER_05: For years, we've been the leading resource of website friendly icons

17:01 Matt: since then, Font Awesome has continued to grow and has been profitable every year.

17:06 Matt: But there are always a naysayers who think Font Awesome is sold out.

17:10 Matt: The thing is, though, as the company has grown,

17:12 Matt: they've had more opportunities to give more away and continue to support open source.

17:19 Dave: So because we are a company that is that we believe in open source

17:24 Dave: and because we now have a model to sustain it,

17:27 Dave: Font Awesome, the free version is now

17:31 Dave: two hundred and fifty percent larger than it was before we did the Kickstarter.

17:38 Matt: In February of 2022, Font Awesome launched version six.

17:43 Matt: As of this recording, Font Awesome six includes nine thousand plus more icons

17:48 Matt: in five styles, thirteen thousand plus pro icons and over two thousand free icons.

17:56 Matt: The company has continued to be profitable and has grown the staff

18:00 Matt: from just a few people to 17 since their humble beginnings.

18:05 Matt: I've heard Dave say lots of different ways that, you know,

18:09 Matt: icons aren't going to change the world and that Font Awesome

18:12 Matt: figured out a way to monetize something that's really fun.

18:15 Matt: So what would you attribute that success to?

18:18  Rob: So part of it is that the timing of everything was was really good

18:23  Rob: whenever Dave started Font Awesome, when he first kicked off that very first version one.

18:29  Rob: The ability to create your own site, especially if you were a developer.

18:34  Rob: There were tools like Bootstrap coming about, and we were starting to democratize

18:40  Rob: this creation of projects and sites and putting stuff on the Internet.

18:45  Rob: It wasn't just, you know, you have a site on AltaVista

18:50  Rob: that you hand code to the HTML with that looks like crap.

18:53  Rob: You could actually build something that was decently functional and

18:58  Rob: was using, you know, frameworks like Bootstrap.

19:01  Rob: So we started we entered into this area where all of a sudden

19:06  Rob: people are unable to build stuff and they need it and they need icons.

19:10  Rob: I need to be able to put this on my website, because as soon as you do that,

19:15  Rob: there's something about from a developer, especially there's something really fun about

19:20  Rob: starting and making something.

19:22  Rob: And then as soon as you put the icons on there, all of a sudden it looks

19:26  Rob: 10 times more professional than what you like.

19:29  Rob: For me, I'm not a designer, but I can put some icons and land on the page.

19:33  Rob: And it looks 10 times better than what I should be able to do.

19:37  Rob: Just because I've got these these things on there.

19:39  Rob: So the timing for all of that and the democratization of

19:44  Rob: site creation and developers being able to to use those.

19:48  Rob: I think it was just perfect timing.

19:50 Rob: And I think we just we just hit that perfect time.

19:52 Rob: And Dave's right. We're not going to change the world with icons.

19:56 Rob: Yeah. But man, can you think of a website today that doesn't have icons on it?

20:01 Rob: Right. I mean, everybody needs them.

20:03 Rob: So you can make that as easy as possible.

20:07 Rob: You probably got something cool and something that people will want.

20:12 Matt: Thanks for listening in to podcast. Awesome.

20:14 Matt: A special thank you to Dave, Travis and Rob for coming on the show.

20:19 Matt: If you like what you've heard, please give us a rating and review

20:22 Matt: and share this episode with your friends.

20:25 Matt: This episode was produced and edited by yours truly, Matt Johnson.

20:30 Matt: The font awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin.

20:34 Matt: And audio mastering was done by Chris Ends at Lemon Productions.