Tag Archives: crowdfunding

Indiegogo’s Slava Rubin at CES



Indiegogo logoIn less than ten years, crowd-funding has come from nowhere to a seriously considered option for many startups and entrepreneurs. Crowd-funding isn’t only about the money, it’s about being able to engage early with potential customers to make better products.

And when it comes to crowd-funding, Indiegogo‘s right up there at the top and at the top of Indiegogo is Slava Rubin, co-founder and CEO. In a great score, Todd and Jamie interview Slava about Indiegogo’s trail-blazing approach, venture capitalists and the latest expansions into charity (Indiegogo Life), commerce (Indiegogo InDemand) and merchandise (Amplifier).

Interview by Jamie Davis of Health Tech Weekly and Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network.

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Crowdtilt Gets a New Name and Logo



Tilt logoCrowdtilt is one of the websites that people go to when they want to raise money via crowdfunding. They have announced that they are changing their name to Tilt. Naturally, this required an alteration to their logo.

Crowdfunding, as you may know, is the act in which a person raises money by asking the good people of the internet to send them small financial donations. The person typically posts a photo (or video) of himself or herself, explains why they need money, and asks for help. At Crowdtilt, the amount of money raised needed to hit a certain amount in order to “tilt”. If a project “tilts”, it means the person will receive the donations that are sent.

Crowdtilt says: Our motivation is to turn ideas into reality through the power of simple, social, collective action, and reaching that transformative moment of critical mass – it’s always been about the tilt. So today, we’re changing our name to reflect this mission.

From today forward, Crowdtilt will be called Tilt. The choice of new name is explained on their blog as follows: Tilting is about people coming together to create the world around them. Our new name reflects this broader vision. You can get a group, crowd, a community together to tilt anything. A “tilt” is that moment when you reach critical mass and unlock something amazing as a group. Our users have embraced this word to describe pooling resources and rallying their group. Now, we’re reflecting that in our brand and story.

Their blog also asks you to “stay tuned” for other big announcements that will be revealed over the next month. It also notes that you can buy a t-shirt with their new logo on it for $1.00.


Hiku on Kickstarter



Let’s say you’re a crack team at Palm who suddenly has nothing to do because HP decides to get out of the mobile device market. What do you do to follow up on the Treo, the Centro, WebOS and the TouchPad? You create Hiku, a pebble-sized gadget that “turns everyday grocery shopping into something modern, magical and fun” and fund it via Kickstarter.

What is Hiku? Basically, it’s a barcode scanner with built-in wifi that’s intended to send your shopping list to your mobile phone so that when you are in store, you can get everything that you need. And if you don’t have a box or tin handy to scan, you can talk to Hiku and tell it what you want.

Hiku Scanning

Hiku

Out of the box, it’s going to support iOS with Android coming along soon after launch. There’s also integration with Evernote and Remember the Milk. Check out some of the videos on Kickstarter or YouTube – they show what the Hiku can do and it is really cool. More advanced features include checking prices on the Net and showing where a product can be bought cheaply.

One of the cleverest things is how you program your wifi settings onto the Hiku. It uses Electric Imp‘s BlinkUp technology which uses light pulses to transmit information and the light pulses are generated by your smartphone. Amazing – there’s a video of the prototype working on YouTube.

I’m backing this project partly to support the ex-Palm guys, but mainly because it’s such a clever kitchen gadget. The Kickstarter funding round closes in about 2 days and they need another $24k-odd to hit the $80,000 target. $99 gets you on the list for a Hiku so if you are thinking of ordering one, get your pledge in now.