The Crowdfunding Formula x Bristly: The Most Funded Dog Campaign
We hit the funding goal in under 24 hours and raised $1,000,739 on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
May 10, 2026
Overview
Let me tell you about the last day of Pico’s crowdfunding campaign and how a quarantined team of 80 joined together in one massive push to cross an unbelievable threshold.
10:00 am — $1,463,561
One by one, our team’s tired faces show up on our video chat.After a month-long campaign with many insane achievements and lofty goals, we’re still not quite there… with only 10 hours left, we’re still $35k off the perfectly round magic number—$1.5 million. We're so close, but… $1,463,561 really doesn’t look that good.
The challenge
What are we going to do?Our wonderful Project Manager, Ruzanna, gathers us all for a morning pep talk. She’s at her grandmother’s. After a 1-hour nap at 8am, she realized the internet wasn’t working at home, and quarantine aside, she decided to find a new temporary office.She starts the conversation, “Team, it’s the last 10 hours, sorry, 600 minutes, 36,000 seconds—yes, I’m counting—and I want you to remember this day for the rest of your lives. We’re going to do it! We need to hit $1.5 million. That’s $3,643 per hour to get to our goal or $60 per minute. It might seem impossible, but we’re going to find 2 Pico backers per minute. And we’re not stopping until the clock hits zero!”It seems impossible, but from the nods on the screen, you can see that the desire to overcome this challenge is stronger than ever before.Others begin to chime in with their new tactics.Astghik has discovered some new Facebook Ad audience insights.Norayr and Gag discuss some potential automations to reconnect with backers who had canceled their pledges.Sona excitedly interrupts; she has a new strategy to reach out to influencers in the final hours. Mary chimes in, “That could work for PR as well!”Zhenya from SMM comes up with ways to incorporate that into her strategy. But she doesn’t feel well… I hope nothing happens…Despite the heavy stress, there were some amazing ideas that we agreed to try.Is this possible?We need to do it. We must do it. We will do it!Meeting adjourned!
We’ve canceled all other meetings. Including the weekly Retrospective (which had never been canceled before)! Our team is all working at the absolute edge of their capacity.Our Sales team has put their tactic into action. They’ve contacted everyone who canceled and brought them back to the campaign. Norayr alternates between chat windows and Kickstarter’s messaging tools, creating new automations to engage the latest backers and inspire them to share the hype with their friends.By raising the commissions for her affiliate partners for her influencers, Sona pushes hard on her end. Many of them are excited to participate in the final hours with their audiences. With custom posts overlaid with final countdowns—24 hours left, ending soon, last hours—and tapping into audiences that are already familiar with the product, her conversions are really peaking!Double the visitors and a 2x higher conversion rate. Sona for the win!The Ads team hasn’t stopped implementing new strategies either. Astghik sets her coffee aside as she discovers new cold audiences with Google Analytics, learning about their interests and tailoring the existing ads to them. Valeri flips his cap back, cracks his knuckles, and retargets warmer audiences who still haven’t converted with friendly messages to bring them back. Meanwhile, Arsen reaches out to those who visited the page in the last 72 hours.But still… 2 hours have passed. And we’re only up $5k…
6 hours left, and we’re still $29k away.Albert directs his team of SMM experts to engage with commenters and followers. Mushegh reaches out to those who have liked and commented on Pico’s Facebook page, and Zhenya has come up with an even more out-of-the-box tactic!She’s still not feeling well, as she fires off messages to people who have commented on our influencers’ posts. Many of these are excited about Pico and might even check out the page but then forget to commit to the backing. And with only 6 hours left, we really need to remind them!The influencer marketing team is at it again! Margarita reached out to all the Facebook group admins they knew and convinced them to share admin access. Now that Pico is being featured across all these channels, traffic is really going up.
TCF's approach
What are we going to do?Our wonderful Project Manager, Ruzanna, gathers us all for a morning pep talk. She’s at her grandmother’s. After a 1-hour nap at 8am, she realized the internet wasn’t working at home, and quarantine aside, she decided to find a new temporary office.She starts the conversation, “Team, it’s the last 10 hours, sorry, 600 minutes, 36,000 seconds—yes, I’m counting—and I want you to remember this day for the rest of your lives. We’re going to do it! We need to hit $1.5 million. That’s $3,643 per hour to get to our goal or $60 per minute. It might seem impossible, but we’re going to find 2 Pico backers per minute. And we’re not stopping until the clock hits zero!”It seems impossible, but from the nods on the screen, you can see that the desire to overcome this challenge is stronger than ever before.Others begin to chime in with their new tactics.Astghik has discovered some new Facebook Ad audience insights.Norayr and Gag discuss some potential automations to reconnect with backers who had canceled their pledges.Sona excitedly interrupts; she has a new strategy to reach out to influencers in the final hours. Mary chimes in, “That could work for PR as well!”Zhenya from SMM comes up with ways to incorporate that into her strategy. But she doesn’t feel well… I hope nothing happens…Despite the heavy stress, there were some amazing ideas that we agreed to try.Is this possible?We need to do it. We must do it. We will do it!Meeting adjourned!
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