Paul Blomfield, better-known for his work in public relations with the fashion industry, has teamed up with an IT specialist in start-up Jucebox, a company they hope will become a lynch-pin in the fast-growing Internet of Things (IoT).
Browsing: Kickstarter
Craft beer drinkers can be a fairly precious bunch. If it doesn’t have a weird name and hints of passionfruit or coffee or goat meat, it’s basically not worth drinking. But one man is hoping to solve the problem of tasteless beer forever.
The Kickstarter fundraising initiative has given a platform to some delightfully weird ideas over the last few years. Following on from a bizarre catalogue that already includes crystal bacon, combat kichenware and meat soap, a pair of Kiwi entrepreneurs have now announced Poopins via the crowd-funding-based website.
Up until relatively recently, Kickstarter had rules and a degree of vetting to try and keep out the scams and fakes. That meant there was no funny business like that seen on various auction sites. The rules have changed, however, and now it’s basically a free-for-all as long as “it’s not illegal, regulated or dangerous”. And one of the first major beneficiaries of that has been Zack Danger Brown, who asked for $10 to make his first ever potato salad and currently has over $30,000.
Meow Mix, a US petfood company, has come up with a new website designed to appeal to the creative investor and cat lover. Catstarter has three products available to support, including a food dispenser powered by tweets.
Entrepreneur and Snow Park founder Sam Lee is hunting a US$50,000 kickstart for MeMINI, new wearable tech designed to record the moments we don’t want to miss.
A collaboration between product design and development company Blender Design and miniature video camera provider Teknique to create a camera in a cube has hit Kickstarter with a funding target of US$100,000.
David Bell, ex-creative director at Media Design School’s creative advertising course and the recipient of the 2011 lifetime achievement award at Axis, has been on a mission to get his book The Dog Hunters in front of as many people as possible since it was published in July. Sales are building slowly as word spreads, he says, and so far he’s been spreading it via social media and at shows like Armageddon. And now he’s harnessing the power of Kickstarter to help fund an illustrated version.
The launch of Kickstarter in New Zealand has attracted a range of creative and kooky projects, including recreating a cooked onion and a retro game in which a drag queen apparently searched for her alien-abducted mother.
Imagistory, an app that encourages kids to use their imaginations to create stories from picture books, is among to first to use Kickstarter as the site gets set to launch downunder today. Founder Nick Barrett won the top award in AUT’s Venture Fund for the app concept in 2011, which provided a $7300 boost. He’s now seeking $15,000 on Kickstarter.
Given the size—and growth—of the pet industry, and the increasingly close relationship humans have with their animals, it’s not unusual to see strange new products being launched (I’m looking at you cat soufflé). Not surprisingly, most of the products are aimed at pets that are still alive. But ‘cardboard engineer’ Mat Bogust and his wife Jane have seen a gap in the market and launched a Kickstarter campaign to try and give their cardboard casket business Rest in Pets a leg up.