Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of February 2023, Kickstarter has received US$7 billion in pledges from 21.7 million backers to fund 233,626 projects, such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video games, board games, technology, publishing, and food-related projects.
A smartwatch is a wearable computer in the form of a watch; modern smartwatches provide a local touchscreen interface for daily use, while an associated smartphone app provides management and telemetry, such as long-term biomonitoring. While early models could perform basic tasks, such as calculations, digital time telling, translations, and game-playing, smartwatches released since 2015 have more general functionality closer to smartphones, including mobile apps, a mobile operating system and WiFi/Bluetooth connectivity. Some smartwatches function as portable media players, with FM radio and playback of digital audio and video files via a Bluetooth headset. Some models, called watch phones, have mobile cellular functionality such as making telephone calls.
Indiegogo is an American crowdfunding website founded in 2008 by Danae Ringelmann, Slava Rubin, and Eric Schell. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California. The site is one of the first sites to offer crowd funding. Indiegogo allows people to solicit funds for an idea, charity, or start-up business. Indiegogo charges a 5% fee on contributions. This charge is in addition to Stripe credit card processing charges of 3% + $0.30 per transaction. Fifteen million people visit the site each month.
Triggertrap was a company that created hardware and software products centred on triggering SLR cameras. Products included several Arduino-based camera triggers, along with mobile apps which interfaced with cameras using a device that plugs into the headphone socket of the smartphone or tablet. In May 2012, Triggertrap introduced Triggertrap Mobile for iOS, followed by a version for Android in September 2012. Triggertrap Mobile utilized the sensors and processing power of a smartphone or tablet running IOS to trigger cameras based on sound, motion, vibration, or location, in addition to timelapse, bulb ramping, and other features. Triggertrap ceased trading on the 31st of January 2017. The founder and CEO was the Dutch photographer Haje Jan Kamps.
Pebble is a discontinued smartwatch developed by Pebble Technology Corporation. Funding was conducted through a Kickstarter campaign running from April 11, 2012, to May 18, 2012, which raised $10.3 million; it was the most funded project in Kickstarter history, at the time. Pebble began shipping watches to Kickstarter backers in January 2013. Pebble watches can be connected to Android and iOS devices to show notifications and messages. An online app store distributed Pebble-compatible apps from many developers including ESPN, Uber, Runkeeper, and GoPro.
Lockitron is a device which can lock and unlock doors via remote control, typically via a smartphone. Starting with installations in 2010, it is one of the earliest examples of a Smart lock. Lockitron was made by Apigy Inc., a start-up based in Mountain View, California. Apigy was a graduate of the Y Combinator start-up accelerator.
Breathometer was a device that claimed to measure someone's blood alcohol content using their iOS and Android smartphones. However, the app proved unreliable, and was shut down by the Federal Trade Commission. Breathometer was founded in September 2013 by Charles Michael Yim, who is the company's current CEO.
The Ubuntu Edge was a proposed high-concept smartphone announced by Canonical Ltd. on 22 July 2013. Canonical was seeking to crowdfund a production run of around 40,000 units through Indiegogo. It had the highest target of any crowdfunded project to date, $32,000,000 over a one-month campaign. The Edge was not intended to go into mass production after the initial run, but rather to serve as a demonstration for new technologies for the industry. The Edge fell short of its funding goal, raising only $12,733,521 with 27,633 backers to purchase the standard model of the handset.
The Omate TrueSmart is a smartwatch designed by Omate, a Chinese company based in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. It has been funded by crowd funding via Kickstarter. The funding period was from August 21, 2013 until September 20, 2013. The funding goal of $100,000 was reached within 12 hours, with more than $1,032,000 raised by the end of the campaign. In contrast to other smartwatches, the Omate is a complete standalone telecom mobile device that can be used to make calls, navigate and use Android apps independent of the user's smartphone.
Kreyos was a consumer electronics company based in San Francisco, California. The company intended to develop digital wearable devices fitted for people with active lifestyles. The Kreyos Meteor, the company's first product, started as a crowd funding campaign from Indiegogo. Although the campaign was funded to a bit more than fifteen times its original goal, the resulting product was poorly received, many units were not delivered or were defective, and the company was closed in 2014.
Bringrr is a startup company that develops and manufactures electronic tracking systems for commonly used items, including smartphones. The company was founded in 2009 by James Logan. The company's eponymous product is a device that alerts users if they do not have their smartphone when they start their car. Asheem Aggarwal is Bringrr's CEO.
Pretail is a sub-category of e-commerce and online retail for introducing new products, services, and brands to market by pre-launching online, from creating an interest waitlist of signups before launch to collecting reservations or pre-orders in limited quantity before release, realization, or commercial availability. Pretail allows new product ideas/prototypes to be mass produced only when they have reached an initial threshold of buy-in from investors/consumers. Pretail includes pre-sale commerce, pre-order retailers, pre-launch marketing services, incubation marketplaces, crowdfunding communities, and demand chain management systems.
The Neptune Pine is an unlocked GSM standalone, full featured smartwatch developed by Canadian consumer electronics and wearable technology company Neptune. It was announced in January 2013 by Simon Tian and launched in November 2013 on Kickstarter. Within 27 hours, the campaign had reached its funding goal of $100,000, and ultimately went on to raise more than $800,000 in 30 days, becoming the highest-funded Canadian Kickstarter campaign at the time.
Nomad is a consumer electronics and lifestyle products company based out of Santa Barbara, California. Their products include leather phone cases, charging cables, portable battery packs, wireless chargers and travel accessories. Nomad began with its first products ChargeCard, ChargeKey and NomadPlus. Founded in 2012, they debuted on Kickstarter on July 18, 2012. In response to COVID-19, Nomad shifted their operations to produce PPE.
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over US$34 billion was raised worldwide by crowdfunding.
Simon Tian is a Canadian businessman, inventor, entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder and CEO of Fonus, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Neptune, and co-founder of Globle. Born and raised in Montreal, Canada, Tian dropped out of pre-university college at the age of 17 to start Neptune, and, as of late 2017, has raised around $7 million from private investors as well as a total of more than $2 million from crowdfunding sources alone. Tian is a 2015 Thiel Fellow, having been awarded $100,000 by PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel through the Thiel Foundation, and was named one of the top 30 Quebecers under 30 by Les Affaires in 2014.
Crowd Supply is a crowdfunding platform based in Portland, Oregon. The platform has claimed "over twice the success rate of Kickstarter and Indiegogo", and partners with creators who use it, providing mentorship resembling a business incubator.
Pine Store Limited, known by its trade name Pine64, is a Hong Kong-based organization that designs, manufactures, and sells single-board computers, notebook computers, as well as smartwatch/smartphones. Its name was inspired by the mathematical constants pi and e with a reference to 64-bit computing power.
Mighty Audio is an American company based in Los Angeles, California, known for its product Mighty, a portable audio player that plays Spotify and Amazon Music without a phone. The company was Spotify's first partner in the offline streaming music space when they publicly launched in July 2017.
Unihertz is a Chinese firm that makes unique smartphones and has its headquarters in Shanghai, China. The company makes niche mobile devices running Android OS, and developed its brand through Kickstarter platform. From 2017 to 2022, Unihertz has launched eight campaigns on Kickstarter and is supported by more than 30 thousand backers from across the world. The company's first release was the small-sized 4G smartphone named Jelly in 2017, which raised over 1.25 million dollars on the crowdfunding platform.
