Saturday, April 23, 2011

Web entrepreneurs building 'Real Stuff'

How many great ideas have you come up with but not known where to go next to make it a reality? So many inventions never become projects or get stalled due to lack of funding. As usual, the Internet has an answer to this problem.

Let me introduce you to a pair of engineering friends, Dave and Dave, who came up with an idea to cool coffee down quicker to drinkable temperature and then leave it at this temperature longer. They invented a stainless steel coffee bean filled with heat absorbing gel that you put in your cup before adding your coffee. They call these 'Coffee Joulies' and they bring the coffee to drinkable temperature three times as fast and leave it at this temperature twice as long. Pretty cool, huh?
So, after trying to make the things themselves, they found that it was too labor-intensive a process to continue by hand. Then, they discovered a web-site called Kickstarter, which allows inventors to place their ideas up in the cloud for people to back. They needed $9,500 to buy their half of the tooling needed by their chosen manufacturer to automate the manufacturing process. So they recorded a video and pitched it to viewers of kickstarter.

You can back their project with $40 which entitles you to a pack of five Joulies when they start production, about 12 weeks from now. So far they have raised over $140,000 so they should have no production delays. I was so impressed with the project, I bought a set for my wife's coffee habit. I hope this Kickstarter website will be a great success. I signed up for their weekly update to see what else is new in their world.
For more details, read the full Times Article.

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