Freitag: A look at Indiegogo

It’s Freitag and the weekend is upon us. Each week this column will focus on light hearted musings of the wireless industry and all of the moving parts that make this industry work. Claudia Bacco, Managing Director – EMEA, has spent her entire career in telecom, IT and Security. Having experience at an operator, software and hardware vendors and as a well-known industry analyst, she has many opinions on the market. She’ll be sharing those opinions along with ongoing trend analysis for RCR Wireless News through daily contributions.
Last week I looked at Kickstarter, so in fairness Indiegogo should get a look also. I have to say I struggled a bit with Indiegogo, as it seems the number of personal causes and small ideas has increased.
I’ll stick with the same high-level categories as last week.
Interesting stuff I’d like to buy

1. Ritot. A projection watch. At first glance I wasn’t sure, but this is really cool. You wear a Fitbit style bracelet – only more stylish looking – and it projects information onto the back of your hand for 10 seconds at the touch of a button. You can choose the color of the projection and the information projected. It includes the time, incoming call notifications and meeting reminders. Amount raised: $175,000. Goal: $50,000. Days remaining: 15.

2. TouchPico. Wireless portable interactive touch screen. You can create an 80-inch interactive touch screen on any surface for any Android application that you have downloaded. A stylus pen enables the “touch” functionality. Amount raised: $438,000. Goal: $55,000. Days remaining: 19.

3. Leo Fitness Tracking. There are so many fitness trackers on the market, yet many require that you input a lot information, connect to additional peripherals or move the tracker around your body. You wear the Leo around your leg and it not only measures your overall performance, it can also look at your hydration level and muscle usage. To me, there seems to be a lot of potential for this product. Amount raised: $121,000, Goal: $50,000. Days remaining: 19.

4. Cross-Planetary Brewing Company. OK, this one is really more fun, but hard to not include as they’ve been widely successful to date. Although I initially imagined brewing beer with Martians when I read their title, the cross-planetary locations include Germany and the U.S. OK, having lived in both you could say they are different worlds. Two brewers teaming up to create “joint venture” beer for lack of another term. They are both established and are not raising funds but “pre-selling” their brews. Amount raised: $1.3 million. Goal: $1 million. Days remaining: 9.

On to the next category, items that I’m just not sure about. Granted some of these are being well funded, but I struggle to see the ongoing business models. You be the judge.
Things that make you go hmmm?

5. Jibo – Family Robot. This robot can tell you stories, take family “selfies,” enable a Web-video call like Skype/FaceTime. It can connect to your home and will evolve over time. It has an Apple form factor, very attractive. It’s marketed as a member of your family – OK, that’s a little creepy. And the prices are really high: $500 to $600. So not likely to be a member of all families. Basically it’s Siri in a robot. Based on the funding a lot of people are excited about it. Amount raised: $1.5 million. Goal: $100,000. Days remaining: 9.

6. TrackR Bravo. Here’s another one that has done a great job at fund raising, but I feel is missing a major requirement – security. Maybe it’s in there but just isn’t explained in the Indiegogo material. But I’ll come back to that. So the cool part is you can connect to anything and if you lose that item find it with the location services of your smartphone. And conversely find your phone with the device. Definitely a market there. Where I think there could be a security flaw or two is the following. If you lose your item – phone, purse, keys etc. It sends out a notice to other TrackR users in the area of your item to help you find it. Not sure about you, but I’m not that trusting and can see this being a new market for smart thieves to find things to steal. The other concern is there are many photos of the device slid into things and not attached or mounted on a key chain-type device. Again, seems to me thieves can easily dispose of these items. Granted it’s billed as finding lost things and not a security device, but this could reduce the appeal. Or be an opportunity for differentiation if resolved. Amount raised: $1.2 million. Goal: $20,000. Days remaining: 1.

7. The Defender. Honestly, this one is just silly to me. But again, funding is going well so I will include it here. The Defender is a billed as “smart personal protection.” It is a small device that when you are threatened you hold it up to your potential attacker and push. It sprays their face with pepper spray, takes their picture and sends your location and the picture to the police. What about the cardinal rule of thumb – run. And if you are being attacked are you really going to be able to be this before it gets knocked out of your hand. Definitely a hmmm. Amount raised: $217,000. Goal: $100,000. Days remaining: 29.

8. Occles. Here’s a problem that we’ve all had, but not sure many of us would spend money to solve it. Raccoon eyes at the beach from wearing your shades in the sun. Or those pesky stripes on the sides of your face from the same. Well these help the eye problem, but not the sides and to me they look a lot like tanning bed glasses. Amount raised: 12,000 GBP. Goal: 10,000 GBP. Days remaining: 18.

 
Last but not least, the category of – I just don’t get it.

9. Bistro. This one has gotten a lot of press and a lot of funding. Actually if it really works, I agree it’s cool. But my issue is in believing that it will really work. It’s “cat facial recognition”. Your cat sticks its head in the feeder, it’s able to distinguish one of your cats from another and knows whether or not to feed it. I just don’t buy the cat facial recognition part – I know how it works for a human face and am not sure I believe it can work on a feline face. Amount raised: $180,000. Goal: $100,000. Days remaining: 8.
10. Oto-Tip. Solving the age-old problem of ear swabs – they hurt, they cause waste, they give you itchy ears, etc. To me this is a solution without a problem. And carrying an ear cleaner around in my purse is just a little gross. But some people obviously like it. Amount raised: $38,000. Goal $30,000. Days remaining: 11.

 
Crowd-funding is great. But it seems that many good ideas get passed over and many silly ideas get funding. I guess it all comes down to who you know and good marketing. Just like in real life.