Building a brand through crowdfunding is becoming more and more common these days. Successful creators are often launching new campaigns just as soon as their previous campaigns close, keeping the fun going, and their backers engaged.

Our guest on today's episode is a veteran of 9 Kickstarter campaigns (as well as a veteran of the US Army), so he's very familiar with the ins and outs of crowdfunding. His latest product is a very cool mini-mechanical claw, that can double as a keychain, and provide hours of entertainment picking things up off the floor, or from behind cabinets or clothes dryers! It's called the Gravity XS, and it's crafted from stainless steel and made in the US.

Listen in as my guest Brent Garcia talks about starting a company, Out-Tek,  with his brother, Eldrick, to serve the active, outdoor Kickstarter community with useful products that are both high-quality and high-value, and how he was able to turn tens of dollars into hundreds of thousands of dollars through crowdfunding.

Sometimes, the press and social media don't play a part in the success of a crowdfunding campaign. In today's episode, we hear from Alex Scoffield, one of the co-founders of Rourke, who is running a successful Kickstarter campaign that has raised more than 6 times their original funding goal - pretty much all through the Kickstarter "eco-system."

His product is called True Taste, and is a set of drinking implements crafted completely from high-grade titanium, which is non-corrosive, hypo-allergenic and extremely strong. They're featuring a double-walled 8 oz. drinking cup, a titanium straw, and a set of three solid titanium cooling cubes, which allow you to cool drinks without diluting them with watery ice.

Listen in as Alex describes how he used a partnership with another Kickstarter project to find his first backers and spent time studying the Kickstarter community to learn what types of products were most likely to be adopted by backers well before he launched his campaign.

Farm-to-table has come to crowdfunding! With the popularity of fresh food being grown and consumed in close proximity, it was only a matter of time before we'd start to see this same philosophy exhibited in the manufactured-goods environment.

Aside from the positive carbon-footprint benefits from such an arrangement, it's also a very practical way to insure enhanced communication and supply line oversight - both of which result in a higher-quality product with reduced manufacturing issues.

Our product today is called the Bagl - and it's a super simple, bulletproof desktop cable organizer, built from cast iron, and available in a variety of colors. My guest, Dave Laituri, is a veteran of 6 successful crowdfunding campaigns, and has named his company ("100") to reflect the fact that they only source and manufacture their products within a 100 mile radius of their business in Boston, MA. He and his 17 year old son, Calvin, are building a brand on Kickstarter with their successful campaigns. They started with a small email list of family and friends, and have since grown it by large multiples, through delivering interesting and high-quality products over the last 2 years.

Listen in, as Dave describes how the crowdfunding environment has changed over the last 2 years and how he has worked with companies like Max Borges Agency to tackle one of the most difficult aspects of crowdfunding.

Finally, a phone case that does more than just protect your phone! Sure, the Loopy offers robust protection - plenty of cases do, but what other case goes a step further and addresses the reason most phones are damaged in the first place - the "drop"!

With the Loopy's patented silicone strap, your phone is literally wrapped around your finger, which makes it far less likely to slip or fall out of your grasp (it also lets you accomplish the cool "phone flip" you see above!).

In this episode, I talk with JT Wangercyn about how he and his brothers partnered together to solve an issue their father had when he purchased his iPhone. Since then, they've built a business around their unique design and have more than doubled their initial funding goal on Kickstarter.

Check out this episode to hear how his early preparation and attention to quality and customer service have led to success for JT and his brothers, and utilizing resources like PRMediaNow (see CFN Episode 046) have helped their team reach out to press outlets and get great coverage.

Drones are hot. Once the ability to lift an HD camera became a reality, the drone market took off (literally!), and everyone was in the mix. While many manufacturers focused on lifting GoPros or similar action cameras, a company called xCraft, based in Sandpoint, ID took a different approach - utilizing a high-tech platform that almost everyone already has - the smartphone.

After an initial product called the XPlusOne, the xCraft team developed the PhoneDrone Ethos, that brought the price point of high-end drones down into the $200 range, by utilizing the technology in existing smartphones.

In today's episode, listen in as I speak with xCraft CEO and Co-Founder, JD Claridge, about handling his three crowdfunding campaigns, using third party marketers, such as Jellop, as well as his recent experience on ABC's "Shark Tank," where he and his partner, Charles Manning, were able to pull off a very rare and amazing feat - getting all 5 "sharks" to back them with $1.5M in funding!

You open the birthday card, and the song immediately starts to play. You close it, but it still keeps playing. You try to shut it off, but it only gets louder! Pretty soon, you realize the thing is never going to stop. In fact, the song will keep playing for more than 3 hours...

The team behind this annoyingly genius viral hit is called Joker Greeting, comprised of brothers Travis and Nick Peterson (Travis is pretty clear about doing 95% of the work, BTW), and this is their second successful Kickstarter campaign (the first campaign raised more than $90,000 earlier this year).

Listen in as I speak with Travis about how he shelved his MBA to pursue prank greeting cards, and as he dives into the difficulties involved in licensing music and fulfilling thousands of orders from his living room.

When it comes to options, men's underwear has been basically limited to the very basic brands - Haynes and Fruit Of The Loom, and the very high-end brands, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Hugo Boss, etc. Not much new has been offered in terms of fabric quality or design comfort in many years.

Enter the disruptive ability of crowdfunding - taking what might be considered a very mundane market and designing in comfort and finish at a very reasonable price has been the goal of The Comfortable Boxer Company since it's first successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year. Following on it's earlier success, the company is now launching its second product line, "The Bliss Collection," on Kickstarter.

In this episode, I speak with Mike Madrid, who is the one-man show behind The Comfortable Boxer Company, about how he had a personal need for high-quality, high-value underwear, and figured he could make what he needed, and it turned out others shared the same sentiment and backed his campaigns into the six-figures. Mike also shares how he used resources like Funded.Today and Fulfillrite, to build the company and bring a second successful product line to market, building the Comfortable Boxers brand.

It's about time someone took a close look at travel bags. Sure - there are hundreds of different roller-bags, but they're all basically knock-offs of each other, with little or no innovation or improvement in functionality, not to mention looks or design.

It took my friend Ken Hertz (a top LA-based entertainment attorney whose clients include Mark Ronson and Will.i.am) and his co-founder, Netta Shalgi (who discovered he had designed Ken's favorite coffee table!) to put their heads and resources together and create a sexy piece of luggage that not only looks great, but will improve the way you travel. I've talked before about how crowdfunding is making rock stars out of industrial designers, and Netta is another great example of this.

Their product is the G-RO, and it's designed to be the most efficient and ergonomic carry-on there ever was. Patented large-diameter wheels handle rough surfaces and stairs with aplomb, and aircraft-grade polymer panels and large YKK zippers mean this bag can stand up to years of use. The Lifetime Warranty confirms the confidence behind the build quality and makes the G-RO a great value.

The Kickstarter campaign just passed the $1M mark this morning, and is at about 10 times it's original funding goal, with just under 3,000 backers. (It helps that some of Ken's celebrity clients have mentioned and backed the campaign themselves).

Listen in as Ken and Netta describe how they came together to disrupt the carry-on luggage market, their thoughts on Kickstarter as the Uber of the crowdfunding space, and used their combined skills and resources to build a super successful $1M + campaign.

With the increasing use of technology in the car, distractions are plentiful, and safety is more easily compromised. We've all know our eyes should be on the road, but how many of us are distracted by glancing at a smartphone screen to read a text or to get driving directions?

Our product today, HUDWAY Glass, solves much of this problem by placing the smartphone screen directly in your line of sight, through the windshield. That means you can see information like your speed, direction, navigation - and even texts and other notifications - without having to look down or away from the road.

On this episode, I speak with Irina Slavina, who is general counsel and the spokesperson for HUDWAY Glass, about her team's experience in launching a very successful Kickstarter campaign (almost 4,500 backers!), with no prior experience in the crowdfunding space.

Is crowdfunding turning product designers and mechanical engineers into rock stars? Over the past 60 interviews, one common theme has become more evident than most to me - a majority of the successful crowdfunding creators have product design or mechanical engineering backgrounds.

These are people who may have toiled away at large companies for years, making products for others, and are now using crowdfunding platforms to launch their own products with tiny teams and budgets. Not all of them succeed, but the growing number of six and seven figure raises seem to be elevating the status of these designers and engineers in the latest facet of the tech boom.

On today's episode, I speak with Matty Martin, who (of course!), was an industrial designer at Google X, about his product, The Pint. He's invented a novel way to turn what at first looks like an ordinary stainless-steel, insulated, water bottle into beautiful drinking cup - which can be very handy to hikers and campers who want to enjoy their coffee or beer, without having to pour it into another cup. It's aesthetically clean, and also easy to clean, as the removable bottom allows you to thoroughly clean it without a bottle brush.

Listen in, as Matty tells me how he wrote personal emails to about 60 bloggers and journalists, (including a personal email to Gear Junkie, and taking a product shot, specifically tailored for Uncrate.com) which resulted in the early press coverage that brought him his first backers and launched his campaign to more than 300% of it's initial funding goal on Kickstarter. He also mentions using Fulfillrite as his fulfillment partner, and wants to send a shout out to his girlfriend, Kristen, for tolerating the long hours he's putting in on the way to becoming a rock star!