Adam Ostroff had been an industrial designer for almost 20 years. He’d flown to China countless times to oversee production and worked with major companies, taking products from concept to market.
But when it came to launching his own product, he almost made an expensive mistake.
“I tried to launch this myself,” Adam admits. “I wasted a lot of time and a lot of money paying engineering services and various other areas. If I could go back, I think the rendering part of it… putting some renderings out, spending a few hundred dollars or maybe a thousand dollars, just see what people say about it.”
That pivot changed everything.
Adam eventually launched Ark, a smart planter from his company Plant Intelligence, on Kickstarter. The campaign raised $196,482 with $92,000 coming in on day one alone.
But the exciting part of this goes beyond numbers and into the ways Adam used his design background to test his product idea before spending tens of thousands on tooling, and how feedback from potential customers completely transformed what he was planning to sell.
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From Corporate Designer to Founder
Adam’s path to entrepreneurship started with a simple observation: the corporate world does product development backwards.
“In the corporate world, you design a product, engineer it, tool it (which is the most expensive part of the process), and then you put it to market and spend a lot of money marketing and hope that somebody likes it,” Adam explains. “Maybe the product isn’t fully baked.”
After the pandemic, Adam left the corporate world and started Ark Designs, a product development service for entrepreneurs and small companies. That gave him time to focus on a side project he’d been thinking about for years: a smart planter that could automate plant care.
The concept was straightforward: Ark would let anyone grow plants indoors. You could collect plants on a hike, buy them from a nursery, or use curated plant kits. The device would use sensors and software to determine ideal growing conditions for whatever you planted.
“It has grow lights, it has five environmental sensors, and it automates the whole system,” Adam says. “It’s kind of a nice little product for your desk to brighten it up, for your home office, or anywhere you want to put it.”
Testing the Idea (Without Building the Product)
Instead of jumping straight into prototyping and tooling, Adam started with photorealistic 3D renderings of Ark.
“I was developing something that was changing on a weekly basis,” Adam recalls. “To pull the trigger on a tool is super expensive. That’s really the most expensive thing in the product development process.”
A client who’d worked with LaunchBoom recommended Adam reach out to get support as he learned how to create, design, and manufacture a product from scratch.
“What if the product that I’m developing wasn’t baked yet?” Adam wondered. “What if the consumer wants something else that I just don’t know, that I’m not thinking of?”
To answer those concerns, Adam decided to test the market before investing in tooling. He created photorealistic renderings and started running ads.
“The renderings are the easiest thing that you can put together,” Adam explains. “It’s a visual representation of the idea and people see it. I think right away people saw the vision of it.”
He immediately began seeing strong numbers.
“We had some great numbers very early on just from those renderings,” Adam says. “And I decided to take it further with providing some of the other asks and wants of what the people were commenting on.”
The Power of Cheap Testing
Most product creators spend thousands developing prototypes and tooling before they know if anyone actually wants their product. Adam spent a fraction of that on renderings and ad testing.
“It’s super cheap to do renderings, right?” Adam points out. “Even for someone that doesn’t have that background, to get somebody on Upwork or whatever to put together some renderings is way cheaper than doing a full campaign with photographs and stuff like that.”
The real value of this approach wasn’t just in saving money but the speed with which Adam could test the demand and reception of his renderings.
“When I design something, within a day or two, I can go from paper, model it, 3D print it out, show it to somebody, and kind of get all that feedback and pivot really quickly,” Adam explains.
He created multiple rendering variations to test different concepts. One image showed eight or nine different terrariums with various plants, demonstrating Ark’s versatility.
“That was actually my most successful ad out of anything,” Adam says. “I wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t just put together all these quick images.”
When Customers Tell You What to Sell
The feedback Adam received during pre-launch completely changed his product offering.
Originally, Adam planned to sell just the Ark device. But as he ran ads and built a pre-launch email list, a pattern emerged in the comments and messages.
People wanted more than just a smart planter. They wanted everything they needed to get started.
“There’s a good percentage of people that just want to get the thing delivered to the door with the plants, with the soil, with whatever they need to get the product running,” Adam realized.
So before the campaign launched, Adam quickly reached out to plant suppliers. He put together plant kits and decoration kits that included everything backers needed: plants, soil, driftwood, garden gnomes, even gloves so you wouldn’t get fingerprints on the glass.
The results speak for themselves.
“We had a really good attachment rate,” Adam says. “I think it was close to 50% for the plant and decoration kits.”
Half of all backers purchased add-ons in addition to the Ark planter. Those add-ons represented roughly 25% of the total campaign revenue, nearly $50,000 in additional sales.
“If I look back to where I was a few years ago when I was just trying to launch this myself, I would have wasted so much money going into tooling,” Adam reflects. “The project wasn’t as good as it could have been at that time.”
Building a Pre-Launch Email List
To set his campaign up for success, Adam followed LaunchBoom’s pre-launch strategy:
He ran Facebook and Instagram ads that drove traffic to a landing page where people could sign up for updates, becoming a part of his campaign’s email list.
But there was another option too: people could put down a $1 deposit to become a VIP and unlock the best discount.
“We had 1,200 VIPs going into the campaign,” Adam says. “We had an email list of, gosh, I think it was like 17,000 people that just saw the thing on one of my ads and liked it and gave us their email.”
The pre-launch phase lasted about four and a half months. Longer than average, but Adam used that time strategically.
“I was refining my message, refining my images, what resonated with the consumer, refining the overall concept,” Adam explains. “Spending that amount of time really helped not only collecting but refining what the campaign was going to be.”
That included adding the plant kits and decoration kits based on customer feedback. It also included another feature people kept asking for: mist.
“Originally I wasn’t going to have mist, I was just going to water it,” Adam says. “But then I realized it was such a cool thing. Everybody wants mist, right? We got to keep it. And there’s actually a use for it as well. It helps with the humidity when you need it.”
Launch Day: $92,000 in 24 Hours
When Adam finally launched Ark on Kickstarter, those 1,200 VIPs were ready.
“It was literally day one,” Adam remembers. “It was almost automated. I was just getting all these Kickstarter notifications, one after the other, after the other. And I was watching 10 grand, 20 grand.”
By the end of day one: $92,000.
“The rest of the campaign was pretty successful, but it was just kind of a slow rate of people that were buying it,” Adam says. “But that first day was… that was the icing on the cake really.”
After day one, Adam continued running ads using the same approach from pre-launch. He also worked with Gelato (a company he’d met at CES) to run additional ads throughout the campaign.
In the end, Ark boasted $196,482 raised from backers who believed in the vision of a smart planter that makes indoor gardening accessible to everyone. All because Adam followed Launchboom’s proven steps and tactics to launch a successful campaign, and they led to his success.
The Lessons: Test Early, Listen Closely
If you’re creating a product, Adam’s story offers a clear roadmap.
Start with the cheapest possible test. Don’t invest in tooling or even prototypes until you’ve validated demand. Photorealistic renderings can show people your vision for a fraction of the cost.
“If anybody has an idea for a product, put it out, put some renderings out, learn the method and just see what people say about it,” Adam advises. “Until someone is ready to put down a dollar or $10 to reserve your thing, that’s the best indication of if you’re doing it right.”
Listen to what customers are telling you. The plant kits and decoration kits weren’t part of Adam’s original plan. Neither was the mist feature. Both came directly from customer feedback during pre-launch.
“They’re also just giving you that feedback about what your product needs,” Adam says.
Think about complementary products early. Having add-ons that make sense for your main product can significantly increase your revenue. In Adam’s case, those add-ons represented 25% of total campaign revenue.
Give yourself time to refine. Adam’s four and a half month pre-launch period was longer than average, but he used that time to improve the product, the messaging, and the overall offering based on real market feedback.
What’s Next for Plant Intelligence
Adam is now focused on delivering Ark to backers by April 2025. He’s finalizing the software and app development while preparing to showcase the product at CES.
“This particular product, you really get to see it in person,” Adam says. “The renderings and all the other photos are great. But once you see the brightness and the beauty of it in person and just the plants, the beauty of it, it’s really powerful.”
Looking ahead, Adam sees opportunities to expand Plant Intelligence beyond the initial Ark product. He’s thinking about AI integration for plant care monitoring and identification. He’s considering different sizes. He’s exploring markets like corporate gifting.
“There’s so many different directions that I want to go,” Adam says. “But we obviously have to focus on MVP, getting one product out, having it be successful.”
It’s an approach that’s worked for him so far. Test the idea cheaply. Listen to customers. Refine based on feedback and build the thing people actually want.
Ready to Launch Your Product?
Adam’s success with Ark shows what’s possible when you combine smart product development with strategic pre-launch marketing.
If you have a product idea and want to explore how crowdfunding could work for your launch, our team at LaunchBoom would love to chat. We’ve helped hundreds of creators raise millions on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
Book a free call with our team to talk through your project and see how we can help you build momentum before launch day, just like Adam did with Ark.
