Champagne was popping at the Seattle offices of Moment on Friday morning after the smartphone lens and case maker reached a $500,000 goal on its latest Kickstarter campaign.
Founder Marc Barros opened a live video chat on Kickstarter by joking that his 3-year-old startup was selling out and had been acquired by Snapchat, with the goal of making that company’s Spectacles camera sunglasses even better.
A Moment employee then jumped in front of the camera wearing sunglasses modified with two large Moment lenses on either side.
All joking aside, Barros, with engineer RJ Lincoln, told backers watching on the crowdfunding site that three years and three Kickstarters later, “We wouldn’t be here without you. We just wanted to make your phone a better camera.”
The company met its goal with the help of 3,507 backers, with 28 days still to go in the campaign. Products being offered this time around include a new wide angle lens as well as cases for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, 6 and 6 Plus, and Google’s Pixel.
“The Moment community has been incredible,” Barros told GeekWire on Friday. “We are humbled that so many existing customers support us with new products, especially taking the risk to pre-order. We don’t take their support lightly. We have to deliver on our promises over the coming months.”
THANK YOU! ? ?
Because of your support we hit our $500K goal on @kickstarter. Now let's get to work! https://t.co/P8V5f9xxJO pic.twitter.com/H9JsL7wl3E— Moment (@moment) March 10, 2017
From the bottom of our hearts we thank you!
The new Moment products are fully funded! https://t.co/P8V5f9xxJO pic.twitter.com/zfUNvhRs8q
— Moment (@moment) March 10, 2017
Barros said tooling is already kicking off for the iPhone products and Pixel will be starting any day. He said Moment will be posting a bunch of Kickstarter updates along the way as the company works toward manufacturing and then delivering its latest gear.
“RJ and team will be in China a lot,” Barros said.
Successful Kickstarter campaigns got the company and its first generation of products off the ground in the past. In January 2014, a campaign for lenses raised $450,000. A year later, a campaign for the iPhone 6 case raised $693,000 in January 2015.
Barros said that this is the first time they’ve done a Kickstarter with a complete existing product line in the market while hosting a campaign for future products.
“We expected the sales of existing products to slow dramatically in place of the new products on Kickstarter. That turned out not to be true,” Barros said. “Sales of our existing products actually increased, proving people want what is shipping now, while our Kickstarter has grown at a slightly slower rate than we expected. The playbook for being successful on Kickstarter has definitely evolved from when we started three years ago.”
With another campaign under his belt, Barros was clearly in a celebratory mood.
“Champagne is good at 10 a.m. on a Friday,” he said.
