I interviewed Sandy Diao, Director of Strategic Programs at Indiegogo. She works with companies to help them bring their hardware projects to life.

You might know that Indiegogo is one of the two major crowdfunding platforms. But you might not know that It stands out as one that brings out more and more special support for hardware projects.

Sandy started her career incubating an ads auction system at Pinterest, then moved into music technology at The ONE Smart Piano. After she learned piano through the Smart Piano product and raised half a million through crowdfunding, she joined the Indiegogo team to share her learnings with more entrepreneurs. Her hobbies include learning musical instruments spanning from Erhu to acoustic guitar, and practicing her ambidexterity in writing languages, like Chinese and Korean.

Please have a look at the highlights below and enjoy listening. Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

• Back to the roots of Indiegogo – [2:17]
• When was Indiegogo created? – [3:33]
• What does Sandy actually do at Indiegogo? – [4:30]
• Why did Sandy join Indiegogo? – [5:04]
• The three ways in which Indiegogo and Kickstarter differ from each other – [6:13]
• At which stage of product development should a startup turn to Indiegogo? – [8:30]
• What is the situation with successfully crowdfunded projects and their exits? – [11:24]
• What kind of companies turn to Indiegogo? - [14:00]
• Major recent initiatives by Indiegogo and the shift Sandy expects in the future for crowdfunding – [14:25]
• What’s the engagement of the startups with the new offerings by Indiegogo? – [16:54]
• If you could go back in time and meet your earlier self, what kind of notes would you give yourself? - [17:54]
• Books which had the biggest impact on her entrepreneurial career – [18:43]
• Sandy’s productive habits – [19:36]
• Critical cultural differences that one might encounter in a global environment – [20:46]
• The best way you can reach Sandy – [22:11]