Nail House

“We knew when it was time for Nail House, we needed to call in true domain experts – people with the experience to run every aspect of a crowdfund campaign. Normally, that’s us, but we’re busy people who are trying to make a movie. Vala are busy people who know everything there is to know about crowdfund campaigns. They handled everything – graphic design, customer service, custom integrations, product design, and so on. The results speak for themselves.”

-Freddie Wong, (RocketJump, Dungeons & Daddies, Video Game High School)

How We Helped Launch a $1M+ Crowdfunding Campaign for Nail House

When Freddie approached us about a Nail House crowdfunding campaign, he had an ambitious timeline: A launch in just 2 weeks. What happened next was not luck or an accident; it was a dedicated creator who was given the time and space to focus on their end product, deliberate strategy, turn-key execution built for exactly the kind of busy creators that the RocketJump team is, and a strong partnership between Backerkit and Vala Marketing.
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The results, as Freddie said, speak for themselves.

• 10,621 Backers | +39.8% increase over their previous biggest campaign
• #1 Most Funded Film of 2025 across all platforms
• #1 Action Film of All Time across all platforms
• #1 Biggest Crowdfunded Feature Film of the Past 3 Years
• Lightning-fast prelaunch activation with 9,000+ leads and ~30% conversion rate
• 7.05x ROAS on Live Ads
• 10,000+ new followers gained
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Bringing Big Ideas to Life

Nail House is an action-comedy feature film about two brothers, a high-strung waiter, and a fast-talking chef, who hole up in their late mother’s beloved dumpling shop to stop a sinister tech executive and his army of goons from tearing it down for their corporate HQ.

Freddie built an entire restaurant set, underwent a rigorous eight-month training regimen as a boxer to prepare for the fights in this film, and had already begun pre-production when he made the decision to return to crowdfunding. He wanted to finish the movie the way it deserves… with creative control, zero compromises, and no Hollywood middlemen.

A nail house is a Chinese term for a home or business that refuses to sell out during a property development… the buildings become surrounded by construction. Freddie wanted a dumpling shop on a mound of dirt in the middle of a construction pit. We didn’t ask questions, we got to work: crafting the hero imagery and logo from scratch using only some mood images from real-life nail houses and Freddie’s original pitch deck for the movie. This, along with all of the other graphics for the campaign, were done in-house by Vala Marketing and used zero generative AI.

What’s a crowdfunding campaign without loot? We ideated, created, strategized, designed, pitched, and then created photorealistic mock-ups of dozens of items for the crowdfunding rewards, and brought a few really unique ideas to life, like the Dumpling Dice by FanRoll and Mama’s Secret Gift… real MSG by our new friends at The Spice Guy.

We then designed and built the full campaign, unlocking the Nail House team to focus on what matters most: their own end product.

Marketing that Works

No corners were cut in Nail House’s marketing. The timeline was truncated… not the efforts! Using BackerKit’s creator-focused tools and prelaunch ecosystem to their absolute max, Vala ran a full pre-launch campaign in record time. Days 1-5 were spent on design, and Days 6-14 were spent a/b testing, crafting content, writing emails, messaging, strategizing, and building up over 9,000 (ay) leads.  

But we were just matching Freddie, the king of not cutting corners, in energy. He had gone deep into Chinese American Restaurant Lore and the Los Angeles Public Library’s extensive database of actual ’80s Chinese restaurant menus to recreate more than just a prop! We immediately identified this as the perfect pre-launch incentive.

So we had our story. A feature film about two brothers defying sinister tech executives, by two best friends, Freddie Wong and Matt Arnold. We had our campaign, our tiers, and we’d spelunked, borrowed, begged, pieced together, and stole (not actually), every asset we could scrounge from the internet, photoshopped the rest, and got to work.

• We A/B tested Audiences, Copy, Creative, and Placements, crafting high-converting super-ads for each audience
• We provided the BackerKit team with tested and proven creative for their ad efforts
• We crafted communications for a wide variety of audiences… from Dungeons & Daddies listeners to RocketJump Patreon subscribers. Posting over 100 different variations of written & designed content across a dozen channels
• We gathered leads on a BackerKit teaser page and emailed them using BackerKit Launch… offering a free set-accurate print of the menu for their email address

It had to be Vala Marketing

A two-week runway does not allow for learning, assumptions, or error. When Nail House needed to launch in just 14 days, it required a team that already knew crowdfunding inside and out and could move at full speed from day one.

Vala Marketing was built for exactly this kind of moment. We live and breathe crowdfunding. We listen to Dungeons & Daddies. We grew up watching RocketJump’s youtube. Just as important, we hustle, and we’re independent. RocketJump didn’t have time for creative briefs and 100 questions.

Vala Marketing is a team of fans providing fully managed marketing for creators. A project like this could only be Vala.

It had to be BackerKit

A campaign like this needs a platform that can keep up. With only two weeks to launch, there was no room for clunky tools, manual workarounds, or fragmented tech stack of eight different softwares.

BackerKit delivered. Additionally, their Patreon integration was a critical advantage that BackerKit built just for us. It allowed us to activate existing, highly engaged audiences and convert long-time supporters. This is the kind of hands-on support and collaboration that brings us back to BackerKit again and again.

We couldn’t run blind lead collection. We needed good tools, clear insights, transparency, and speed. We needed a single source, all-in-one platform run by a team that cared. A project like this could only be on BackerKit.

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