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.