A mere 50 years ago, Google wasn’t a word you’d find in the dictionary, Tweets were for birds and apps came before a meal. Technology has changed our world so much in such a short time, it’s hard to even imagine life before the Internet existed.

Today, laptops, tablets and other smart devices keep us constantly connected to information and the world around us. These modern conveniences come with a lifestyle that is fast-paced and often wreaks havoc on our environment, health and wellbeing. Ironically, the future of technology is also helping find ways to reverse the effects of our demanding lifestyles, making it easier to keep our bodies healthy and happy.

Thanks to innovation, environmental stressors no longer have to negatively impact our health. Recent advancements in technology are now making it easy to avoid exposure to the silent dangers than lurk in your everyday surroundings. Portable air purifiers, like Clairy, make it easy to keep tabs on — and get rid of — pollutants in the air you breathe. Other smart devices like WaterBot draw attention to the importance of water quality and can measure it in real-time.

Equally useful are gadgets that provide a way to combat increased exposure to UV radiation, making it safer to enjoy the great outdoors. Using advanced technology, Sunscreenr shows you where your skin is covered by sunscreen and where it’s not. No more wondering if you’ve missed a spot or if it’s time to reapply — just look through Sunscreenr to see if your skin is adequately covered. With over one million cases of skin cancer reported in the United States each year, technology like this can not only give you peace of mind, it could save your life.

Technology is also making it easier to adopt healthier lifestyles, despite long hours and busy schedules. It’s no secret that achieving a work-life balance in today’s ever-connected world is difficult. Thankfully, new products are being designed to make it convenient to tend to your body’s needs no matter your schedule. Take the BlazePod for instance. This revolutionary flash reflex exercise system makes it possible for anyone to get in a good workout, from anywhere.

When your workout is finished, rehydrate with Cirkul. Not your average water bottle, it provides a personal and convenient way to stay hydrated. The best part? It can eliminate unhealthy, sugary drinks from your diet by providing a clean way to flavor your water at home or on the go.

From monitoring medication to eliminating the need for pills altogether, caring for our bodies is safer than ever before. Have trouble remembering when to take medication, vitamins or other supplements? Devices like EllieGrid, are designed to remind you what to take and when — it can even help you monitor a loved one’s medications. Thanks to technology, you’ll never have to worry about missing a dose, or taking too many pills, again.

Maybe you’re looking to eliminate the need for medication altogether. As technology advances, we’re seeing more options for drug-free pain management like Livia. This tiny, high-tech wearable uses a transmitting pulse to to provide instant pain relief for menstrual cramps without medication. If you’re a person who suffers from chronic aches and pains, modern devices like these are promising developments when it comes to managing your discomfort.

Innovation is connecting us in ways that are actually good for our health. Instead of bombarding you with stressful news and emails, what if your smart devices could connect you to a healthier lifestyle? Now they can. On Demand platforms like Conscious Cleanse are being developed to provide users with the social support they need to make positive health changes.

Wouldn’t it be even better if there was a way to turn any smart device into your very own virtual wellness coach? Creating personalized health plans in real-time, mobile platforms like Meet Shae can do just that. In fact, modern technology can be so in tune with your body, it takes all the guesswork out of obtaining, and maintaining, a healthier lifestyle.

Looking for ways to help you sleep better? There’s high-tech options for that, too!

Personal electronics can disturb your sleep, but did you know there are devices that can actually help you get a good night’s rest? Changing up your linens can help, especially if you put EverSleep on your bed first. This sleep tracker helps you understand what’s disrupting your sleep and how to fix it.

If you can’t remember the last time you had a dream or woke up refreshed, you might want to look into the iBand. Using brain-sensing technology and the power of music, innovative gadgets like these can help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep. Before you know it, you’ll be drifting off to dreamland and waking up on the right side of the bed — naturally.

From laptops to smartphones, there’s no denying that innovation has played a big role in making our lives both hectic and exhausting. Ironically enough, recent advancements in technology are also helping combat the effects of our modern lifestyle and environment. Curious to see what other products can help you live smarter? Check out Indiegogo’s collection of tech products that will help you hack your way to better health today.

Hacking Your Way to Better Health was originally published in Indiegogo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In December 2015 I was sitting at Crooked Tree Coffeehouse in Dallas, TX with the Pilot earpiece prototypes and the Android phone running our first translation software both tucked away in bubble wrap in my laptop bag. Jeremiah and I had agreed to have coffee for our first meeting, and I was going to pitch this young creative the idea of directing a crowdfunding campaign based on the technology that our small team at Waverly Labs had been working on for over two years. He was going to be one of the first people outside of our company to see what we had stealthily developed, and I was going to have to convince him to take the job on a tight budget.

I had become good at pitching and had convinced talented engineers to join this small team with no pay, a few family and friends to loan us money to bootstrap our startup alongside the personal funds we had sunk into the project, and pitched the team at Indiegogo to support our endeavor. A few days after we met, Jeremiah sent me an email saying that he shared our vision and wanted to direct the project. We met at the same coffee shop the next week to start planning.

Even in the beginning we all believed we were working on something amazing, and as such we continually stacked the team with experts trying to solve this insanely difficult problem. But despite the difficulty the engineers were faced with, I had my own challenge: how would we make Pilot’s public debut?

I had seen the success of other tech startups using crowdfunding as a launch strategy to debut their products and I was convinced that this would be our best opportunity. So I spent months, and I mean months, consuming every piece of information available online, attending meetups on the subject matter, and networking with professionals in the field, to devise a strategy for launch Pilot: Smart Earpiece Language Translator. Little did I know we would smash records and become the third most funded Technology campaign ever on Indiegogo.

Here’s how we did it.

Let me preface this by saying two main things:

First, we decided crowdfunding was best for our launch strategy based on a few factors. Backers of crowdfunding projects tend to skew high towards the “innovator” and “early adopter” segments of the product adoption curve, and technology campaigns on these platforms represent nearly ¼ of all the money pledged via crowdfunding. Based on the innovative nature of Pilot, it seemed like a good fit.

Second, we debated on which of the two most popular platforms to commit to: Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Both have their pros and cons, but in short, we chose Indiegogo for one very specific reason: of all the crowdfunding and startup events I attended, I never once met anyone from Kickstarter, whereas Indiegogo’s community team was always around and encouraging. As the days came closer towards launching the campaign, I knew I would want to lean on them for guidance, and these relationships really became indispensable for our success.

In the initial stages of planning, I decided to break up our launch strategy into three major sections: pre-launch, launch and post-launch. I knew that 80% of the success of the campaign would be based on the pre-launch strategy, and if we didn’t execute it well there would be no successful campaign.

Pre-Launch

The first thing we decided on was the financial goal of our campaign. Crowdfunding can be used for a lot of reasons, including product development testing, price sensitivity analysis, press and awareness, or attracting partnership opportunities, but most often it’s used for funding. We looked at some simple metrics internally to decide on a campaign goal near $100,000, and depending on the success of the campaign, we planned contingencies for our post-campaign strategy.

Once we decided on our funding goal, Indiegogo shared their formula for creating a successful campaign. That is to say, Indiegogo has 15 million monthly visitors, but no matter how great your campaign is to you, NONE of them will contribute to your project unless it’s already a success from the start. This is probably the biggest myth of crowdfunding: if you launch it, they will NOT come.

Here’s the equation I created based on the data Indiegogo directly provided:

Funding Goal x 30% / Average perk denomination / 3–5% = Number of backers ready to fund your campaign on Day 1.

Breakdown

Indiegogo estimates that 30% of your funding goal needs to be met within the first 48 hours of launch in order to attract enough attention from their internal community for the campaign to be a success (assuming a 30 days lifespan of your campaign). For us, that means we had to ensure $30,000 was committed to our campaign within the first 2 days of launch. If you factor our average perk size of $199, that equates to roughly 150 people backing the project. Lastly, with an average conversion rate of 3–5% (a common sales conversion metric) of people who say they will support your project versus those who will actually support it, that means we needed 3,000–5,000 people ready to go on Day 1.

Unfortunately for us, we remained in stealth-mode over the years and had a very small community. To build a following of at least 5,000 people ready and committed to our crowdfunding launch in a short period of time, I devised a growth strategy that would build excitement just weeks before we officially launched on May 25, 2016.

These tactics centered around a teaser video, press outreach, ad spend, and a rewards campaign, all with the purpose of driving traffic and increasing email signups to our website.

Growth Strategy

Teaser Video

I’ll only focus on the teaser video here but go into detail about the aspects of our full video development in the Launch section of this article.

The idea for a teaser video was mapped around creating awe and excitement through a very short clip, and I took some inspiration from this Lexus teaser for a hoverboard they were prototyping (see: Lexus Hoverboard). Since our full campaign video ended up being 2:41, we chopped it up into 3 different teaser lengths of 17, 24 and 51 seconds for different use cases (Youtube, Facebook, website, etc). The teaser would create curiosity without giving away too much information and would encourage people to go to our website to learn more.

Email Capture

Once the viewer navigated to our website from the teaser video, our site was optimized around getting them to signup to our email list. There were 6 email signup forms throughout the website, each carefully placed to amplify lead capture. To encourage the user to sign-up, I turned to a growth strategy that Tim Ferriss discussed on his blog regarding how a men’s grooming brand increased their email sign-ups. You can read about it here, but essentially the idea is around offering a rewards campaign to encourage people to sign-up and share the campaign with their friends via email and social media. We used Gleam.io which offered a lot of options to facilitate high engagement.

Press Outreach

As part of our communications plan, we made a conscious effort to build relationships with press that primarily covered wearable tech or new gadgets. It’s important to build these relationships far in advance of launching a campaign, and especially helpful if you find that one key writer who falls in love with your work and is ready to excite the world by publishing a story of your campaign the day it goes live. This is usually through an Exclusive, but another option includes an Embargo, where multiple press outlets have an article written in advance and all are released to publish it at the same time. Although this reach is more extensive, it is usually done by a press agency and therefore has high associated costs. It was beyond our shoestring budget so the best I could arrange was a couple of press contacts that I had persuaded to write about us. As a final hail-mary, I had compiled a deep press list to pitch quickly via email.

Advertising

As I said, press can be a powerful tactic if you have a pr agency hustling for you, but even still it’s very difficult to have enough outreach to leverage momentum on its own. Therefore, we allocated a few thousand dollars to ad spend on multiple platforms, including Youtube, Reddit and Facebook. Broad demographic profiles were created and we ran the various teaser videos across these platforms during a test phase until we could gauge the profile of users who were most interested. In the end, we found that Facebook was by far the best platform in terms of creating outreach, engagement, social sharing and narrowing down to specific users.

In all, these four tactics combined were the crux of our pre-launch strategy. Jeremiah and I had sliced the original video into a powerful teaser that we felt created excitement for the product launch, our rewards program was in place to amplify email signups, the advertising campaign was running our video on several platforms, and I had convinced a couple of writers to publish an article of our work the day before we went live. It was a bootstrapped company with a shoestring budget of a marketing plan, but three weeks before the launch of the campaign we pushed the GO button on the pre-launch campaign, then sat back and waited.

… and we waited, and waited, and waited. After, six days of the ad campaign running, the needle was barely moving. Our teaser was getting very little traction and we were only seeing a few signups. I was thinking how I would break the news to the team, until something very interesting happened around the seventh day.

The ad with our teaser video was being shared across Facebook very slowly, but gradually you could see the numbers compounding. Eventually, a writer in the UK picked up the story and wrote about it over the weekend. That moved the needle a bit and we saw the number of shares jump from a few thousand to 20,000. I got on a call with the team to share the excitement but by Monday morning the video took on a life of its own.

Press all over the world were emailing, calling and sharing the story. The number of social shares began to climb RAPIDLY: 100k. 500k. 1m. 5m. All of a sudden we had achieve viral status and the teaser video, along with the referral campaign, was performing phenomenally. By the end of the two weeks, we had captured 175,000 email signups and had our video shared over 40,000,000 times on social media and by the press. A week later, we launched the campaign and hit our funding goal in 15 minutes. By the second hour, we had secured $1 million, and eventually $2.4 million over the 30 day campaign.

I credit the success of our pre-launch strategy to a few things. First, we had a really interesting product. The stuff of science fiction. It’s an exciting piece of technology, and although I recognize this helped our traction, I absolutely believe this isn’t enough to achieve the virality we had. I say this because before Pilot there have been other teams working on similar technology with very little public traction, however you never heard about them because they didn’t understand the power of storytelling.

This is the second thing we did very well — tell a beautiful and simple story in our teaser. One that resonates with people and is incredibly easy to follow. Often times, product launch videos describe all the use cases of how a product works and use the video to promote its features. For our campaign we brainstormed on a lot of ideas but eventually settled on keeping the story and message as simple as possible to highlight its effect: boy meets girl.

Lastly, the referral campaign worked tremendously well and encouraged people to share and like our content online. The referral campaign offered a chance to win a free Pilot earpiece, and people could increase their entries into the drawing through social sharing and getting other people to signup as well. You can’t have virality without sharing.

Launch

Once the campaign was officially live on May 25, everyone would be able to see our work in detail, and since all information about the company was kept purposely hidden (our website was an exaggerated landing page), people would only learn the details of Pilot from the campaign page and video.

Campaign Video

The video is the first thing people are going to want to see once they are on your campaign and we invested a lot of our resources to make it perfect. I wanted the video to feel like an indie project to convey the small bootstrapped nature and grit of our work as a small team. Jeremiah had a good eye for this perspective and we spent a few months distilling the idea of Pilot to a simple message that would resonate well in video.

It took a few attempts to get the story perfect and after we had a reading of the first script we realized the story came across too much like a sales pitch. Jeremiah and I knew we would need to make major changes, so that evening I stayed awake writing a new script from scratch. The years of working on the project culminated in that writing session, and relying on a real experience from my past about meeting a foreign girl, I sent Jeremiah a new script at 2am in an email that simply read “I think I’ve written my opus.” Jeremiah’s response was “This is fantastic! I love it. I’ll read over it a few more times today, but I don’t really have any notes right now. It’s solid.” 5 days later we began shooting the video and completed production in 48 hours.

Because we bootstrapped production, I had to quickly learn how to manage a shoot, including writing film treatments and planning a production schedule. Jeremiah (who I had hired to do the job) brought with him the technical background of filmmaking, and you can read his case study on how he tackled the project here: Waverly Labs Indiegogo Video

In the video, we wanted to cover three main points:

1. What is Pilot?
2. How did we do it / Who is the team?
3. Why are we on Indiegogo?

The focus of the video was always product, team, and traction. Anything else would only convolute the story, which was suppose to be simple and beautiful. We intentionally did not include any technical details about Pilot in the video because we would outline this and everything else in detail within the campaign page. Again, the simplicity and flow of the storyline was always paramount.

Campaign Page

When planning how to construct the campaign page, I studied multiple successful and unsuccessful campaigns to understand the similarities of popular and well funded projects. I also relied on this great online resource, http://artofthekickstart.com/, which was extremely helpful at developing a campaign strategy. Based on my research, I compiled a 12-point outline for designing a winning campaign:

1. Have an exciting thumbnail and enticing headline
2. Emphasize social media shares
3. Showcase media/press for social proof
4. Show how it works w/ detailed product pics and walkthroughs (copy, photos, video)
5. Simplify the idea for the average person to understand
6. Testimonials of real people, especially social influencers
7. List the features and specs of what it does
8. Reveal technological magic of how it works as proof
9. Call to Action — lay out company history and difficulties/hard work put in, and ask for help to make the dream a reality
10. Compelling Rewards — infographic with clear/concise reward tiers (a) small $1 tier for an easy pledge, (b) pricing tiers of high, medium and low rewards — price anchoring, (c) humor and intrigue into right panel pricing tiers to show personality, (d) scarcity & FOMO of limited rewards without running out of rewards, (e) photos and samples of what each reward tier includes, (f) infographic and “map” of reward tiers, (g) quality of reward tiers vs quantity of reward tiers — don’t make it too, (g1) simple menu including featured rewards, favorite of creators/backers and easiest choice, (h) consistency of reward tiers with overall product
11. History and Roadmap/Timeline
12. Showcase Team

Once we had an outline for what to detail on our campaign page, we hired a designer to help us layout the page. We only focused on the points which were most crucial and relied on feedback from Indiegogo’s team (their community was really helpful) for guidance. It took us several days and very late nights, but we worked on it all the way up until 6am, 1 hour before it launched. This was a time consuming project and Edgar, the young designer I had worked with on a past project, was extremely helpful: https://www.behance.net/edgarrios.

Lastly, customer service was an incredibly important component during the launch phase. Unfortunately we were inundated with emails and messages and struggled to keep in constant communication with our backers, press and others who were reaching out to us, which leads me to my last point.

Post Campaign

Based on the overwhelming success of the campaign I knew we needed to meet two main objectives during our post-campaign phase:

1. Maintain momentum
2. Stay in communication with our community

The first thing I did was move our campaign into InDemand, which is Indiegogo’s platform for campaign’s after the initial 30 day funding period. This allowed us to keep the campaign running to raise additional money and continue building our community. Again, another great reason we chose Indiegogo.

Secondly, we hired a Director of Marketing and Communications. Up until that time I was trying to manage it all myself, but overseeing product development and other projects was extremely time consuming. If we wanted to keep press engaged and maintain our momentum, we would need someone on board full-time to oversee our global press and marketing strategy, which was vital as we began scaling our company.

Finally, combined with another support team member, we actively stay in communication with our supporters. The feedback we receive from them helps us shape our product development goals and as our first backers they’ve become some of our strongest evangelists. Whether through social media, blogging, updates on the Indiegogo page, or an email newsletter, we’re constantly keeping our community engaged and responding to their questions.

With all of these post-campaign tactics combined we’ve been able to secure an additional $2 million since the campaign first moved to Indiegogo’s InDemand platform, and it would have been practically impossible without having the right team on board during this stage of the company’s growth.

Conclusion

When we started this project a few years ago we were really inspired by wearable technology and wanted to solve a global challenge, and although I was confident that our campaign would be a success, no one is ever prepared for that kind of virality. Looking back I would have done a few things differently, such as building stronger press relationships well in advance and preparing the team to dedicate 100% of their time during the campaign to customer support. But all in all we managed to break records and become one of the most popular technology crowdfunding campaigns to date.

Hopefully our success is helpful for other companies preparing a crowdfunding campaign and inspiring for anyone thinking about launching their own startup.

The past few months have been some of the most exciting for our team, and as we celebrate our 1 year anniversary and reach a milestone of $5m in pre-orders this month, we can’t wait to see a world without language barriers when we begin shipping Pilot later this fall.

We now closed the campaign (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/meet-the-pilot-smart-earpiece-language-translator) but you can visit us on our website to find out more about us!

www.waverlylabs.com

How We Used Crowdfunding to Raise Over $4m and Pre-Sell 23,000+ Units was originally published in Indiegogo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We started Indiegogo for a very simple reason: we wanted to eliminate the gatekeepers to finance. During our whole lives, my co-founders and I saw worthy ideas fail for the simple reason that they lacked the connections to access funding, and we wanted to change that. When we first came up with the concept of “crowdfunding” almost 10 years ago, we hoped to create a platform that allowed anyone to invest in and help build the companies they believed in. After trying to secure funding for this idea, and getting rejected 93 times by venture capitalists, we realized that a platform like this was needed more than ever. Because of the Securities Act of 1933, unaccredited investors (the general public) couldn’t invest directly in a company. Instead, we came up with the perks-based model, where individuals offer backers incentives in exchange for their support. Through this perks-based model, backers have funded over $1B to date in support of entrepreneurial and creative ideas.

Among these incredibly inspiring companies is Misfit Wearables, which not only surpassed its goal and raised $846,675 on Indiegogo, but went on to raise $64M in VC funding. It was ultimately acquired by Fossil for $260M after proving the demand for its beautiful wearable fitness tracker. MUSE, the brain-sensing, brain-training headband went on to raise $17.2M in VC funds after an $287,677 campaign, and is now found in retail stores.

From the support of our backers to the success of our campaigners, we see potential everywhere on our platform. We want to continue to support our campaigners’ success beyond crowdfunding, as their businesses continue to grow and scale. Because of our work to accomplish this mission, we were invited to the White House for the signing of the JOBS Act in 2012, and in the last four years since we’ve worked hard to help the SEC develop guidelines to expand investment opportunities to unaccredited investors. Today, we are excited to finally announce something we’ve been working hard on since 2006: our equity crowdfunding platform.

Starting now, entrepreneurs and investors will be able to build businesses together in an unprecedented way by allowing anyone to invest, regardless of their income, net worth, or their connections to the overwhelming and confusing world of traditional investing. Starting today, people like Pia and Rachel from Republic Restoratives can make their dreams of building an all women-owned, small-batch whiskey distillery into reality without having to ask VCs, banks, or any other gatekeepers for permission. Instead, family, friends, and even strangers who share their vision can help this new business thrive and potentially benefit financially, if the company goes on to greater heights.

To help make this happen, we’ve partnered with MicroVentures, leaders in the equity crowdfunding space, to give entrepreneurs a new way of bringing their ideas to life. They’ve helped companies raise over $100M through 200+ deals since 2010, and 95% of the equity crowdfunding campaigns on their site have been funded. Together, we are giving Indiegogo backers the chance to be investors, and get more than a perk and the satisfaction of contributing to an amazing idea. Of course, their are risks and investors could potentially lose the money they invested if the company fails, but now, for the first time ever, they can potentially profit from their support. From a tech startup, to a neighborhood coffee shop, to the next hit documentary, we’re making it possible for anyone to join the crazy journey that is entrepreneurship.

You can read more about our plans via this New York Times article from today’s business section of the paper.

As capital markets in the United States change, we are thrilled to be at the forefront of creating both funding and investment opportunities for anyone who is passionate about an idea. If the perks-based model has done everything from helping entrepreneurs raise $13M for a revolutionary way to harvest honey, to making the first crowdfunded baby possible, I can’t wait to see what equity crowdfunding has in store. Now you, and I really mean any of you, can be part of the team that builds something big.

Important Disclosure: Indiegogo.com is a website owned and operated by Indiegogo, Inc., which is not a broker-dealer, funding portal or investment advisor; and neither the website nor Indiegogo, Inc. participate in the offer or sale of securities. All securities related activity is conducted through First Democracy VC, a registered funding portal and member of FINRA or MicroVenture Marketplace, Inc., a registered broker-dealer and member FINRA/SIPC. No communication, through this website, email or in any other medium, should be construed as a recommendation for any securities offering.

This article was originally published on Linkedin.com.

Indiegogo Launches Equity Crowdfunding was originally published in Indiegogo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Entrepreneur Louie Gong grew up in the Nooksack tribal community just north of Seattle. As a child, he was surrounded by wool blankets in tribal patterns and motifs — but most of them were not designed by Native Americans.

“Wool blankets are cultural items that are used very regularly by tribes all around the country, and the only source for those blankets for the last 160 years has been companies like Pendleton that usually just copy cultural art instead of working with cultural artists,” Gong says. “This kind of cultural appropriation has real economic consequences for Native artists and tribal communities.”

So Gong decided to flip that narrative, from appropriative “Native-inspired” products to truly “inspired Native” artwork. Through his business, Eighth Generation, he created the Inspired Natives Project to connect Native artists with paying outlets for their work.

The idea clearly resonated with his online community: last year, his Indiegogo campaign raised more than $60,000 in fewer than three weeks. This August, after eight years of growing his business online, Gong opened up a 1,300-square-foot storefront at Pike Place Market in the heart of Seattle, making history as the first Native-owned business in this historic landmark.

Before Gong reached these heights, his childhood was far from the urban life of downtown Seattle. Until the age of ten, he grew up in British Columbia, in a house without running water. Then, he moved with his grandparents to the Nooksack tribal community. “It was like moving into a mansion,” Gong remembers.

Throughout his young adult years, Gong continued to grapple with his mixed-race identity of Nooksack, Chinese, French and Scottish. At the age of 20, inside the Ethnic Student Center at Western Washington University, Gong stumbled upon MAVIN, a magazine about the mixed race experience. “It was tremendous validation for me, someone who a lot of times felt isolated because of my mixed heritage, to see that there were so many people who were having the same experience.” He eventually become a volunteer with the nonprofit MAVIN Foundation, then went on to become president of its board.

After college, Gong guided low-income, first-generation college students as a Child and Family Therapist. At the University of Washington’s Educational Opportunity Center, he led a workshop with students to explore and talk about their racial identity. They were stumped. But when he asked them to draw their feelings, they opened up a wellspring of insights. “These kids, who were too scared to address those questions verbally, … had done a really good job of expressing complex ideas through drawings.” At that moment, Gong realized that images have a unique power to reveal layered identities.

Gong’s next job as an administrator at Muckleshoot Tribal College led him further along the pathway to his future business when he helped create “giveaway” items for the Tribal Canoe Journey, a large celebration of 70 different tribes from the Pacific Northwest to New Zealand. During the preparation for the event, Gong’s colleagues noticed he could paint a straight line, so they asked him to decorate drums as gifts. It was his first experience creating art.

“That experience of painting all the hand drums in preparation for the canoe journey unlocked a passion for creating cultural art,” he says.

It was at this time in his life that Gong treated himself to a luxury he had always longed for as a middle schooler: Vans sneakers. “When I got to the store, I noticed there was not one pair that reflected who I was,” he says. So he bought a gray pair. “I just started doodling on them with a Sharpie. What came out of it was a mash-up of Coast Salish art, animal motifs and influences from my urban environment. So I felt like that pair of shoes was a really organic and honest reflection of who I was as person, more so than the hand drum.”

Before he knew it, Gong was getting commissions for custom shoes, and founded Eighth Generation as a way to sell his work. He chose the name to acknowledge the creative collaboration with people who came before, and because “Eight” sounds like “prosperity” in Cantonese. Within four years, he had a social media following of about 40,000 people. But he wanted to aim even higher: to enter the global blanket market and raise awareness about Native art and the tangible impact of appropriated artwork on cultural artists.

“I’m looking to plant that seed among consumers so that next time they stand in front of a shelf forced with the decision to buy a product produced by a non-Native company that has no artist name attached to it, or a product featuring cultural art that includes the artist’s name and made by a Native-owned company, they start thinking about how their dollar either supports or undermines the cultural art forms that they are drawn to,” he says.

Even with Gong’s passion, the global blanket market was a high bar to reach. “I had to save up for years and years.” His initial investment, beyond the crowdfunded resources, was between $80,000 and $100,000. With his savings, he was able to produce the first blanket for the launch of his Indiegogo campaign.

Crowdfunding has helped the company prosper and reach new markets. “The highly visible crowdfunding campaign helped remove, as a barrier, that idea that this market was off-limits,” Gong says. “Because of the legitimacy of the Indiegogo platform, a lot of media outlets were interested in supporting us. We got a lot of exposure from key blogs and newspapers and that kind of thing that we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.”

After raising $63,190 on Indiegogo from 362 backers, Gong expanded his product offerings and collaborated with new artists. Now, the store sells products in 12 categories, featuring artwork from five different Inspired Natives Project artists.

This summer, he opened his storefront at Pike Place Market — the only place he was willing to manage a brick-and-mortar location. “Having the store at Pike Place Market is not just about business opportunity, it’s about the ability to reach the 10 million people a year that visit Pike Place Market and help control the narrative that they get about contemporary Native people,” he says.

“What people are getting from media and from non-Native companies selling cultural art is this idea that Native people are symbolic of ancient history, that we’re symbolic of the natural environment or that we’re charity projects,” Gong explains. “And when you visit Eighth Generation, you recognize that Native people are alive, and we’re thriving, and we’re real people just like you, and that’s because we carry forward this tradition of putting art on utilitarian things.”

Instead of traditional drums, today, that utilitarian thing might be a phone case. By linking Native art with products that consumers want, Gong breaks stereotypes inside his store. “We want people to recognize Native artists as being kickass professionals who would make great business partners.”

To pay back the community for its stellar growth, Eighth Generation has supported artists-in-residence in the Pike Place Market store, hosting six Native artists a year. They’ve spread the wealth even farther, donating nearly $40,000 to local nonprofits and community events, including over $8000 in wool blankets to the water protectors at Standing Rock.

Gong has turned a national spotlight on the strength and vibrancy of modern-day Native American culture at a crucial time. Appearing in international headlines, the Dakota Access Pipeline would carry crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois, threatening Sioux burial grounds and the environmental safety of the tribe’s lands and water supply. To help protect Native lands, Eighth Generation donated 60 blankets to the community gathered in Standing Rock as the weather turned cold. Gong encourages his community and Indiegogo supporters to continue to follow along and learn more about Standing Rock and the Pipeline.

Part business, part kickass stereotype-smasher, Eighth Generation is shaping Native history in its image. “We are breaking down barriers to economic success that have been in place for hundreds of years,” he says. “Overall, we simply represent what is possible when people work together for a common goal.”

At any given moment, thousands of innovative, life-changing projects are taking flight on Indiegogo. Discover more of the inspiring stories behind our projects through the Collections page.

Native-Owned Business Makes History in Pike Place Market was originally published in Indiegogo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We have an important tip for your next visit to San Francisco: Shop locally. As you’re perusing adorable stores and restaurants that could exist nowhere else, you’ll really get a sense of the Bay Area’s spirit and charm. Not only that, but your valuable dollars will help small businesses stay in the city with ever-rising rents.

Here at Indiegogo, we help entrepreneurs bring their ideas — and their business — from concept to market. Our company was born in San Francisco, the thriving center of creative entrepreneurship. We know firsthand that there’s nowhere else more fun to shop locally.

On your trip, follow this itinerary to support unique small businesses that were funded on Indiegogo.

Friday

4 p.m.: Literary landscape

Start off your trip with a visit to a local bookshop and art gallery, all in one. Adobe Books has live music shows and readings, contributing to the creative vibes on the Mission District’s 24th Street. The store is such an important hub that, when the store’s rent increased by $4,000, art and book lovers on Indiegogo raised money to keep its doors open. Now, the store is still going strong. Go see what makes this local shop so special and worth fighting for: Peruse the free gallery and pick up an affordable, used book!

5 p.m.: Sidewalk museum

If it’s nice out, walk up to the hustle and bustle of Market Street and towards the Ferry Building to tour the Living Innovation Zone. Fun, interactive sculptures make hands-on education accessible for all, giving adults and children who are passing a way to get interested in the arts and science. The public installations keep San Francisco stimulating for everyone — including those who can’t afford to visit museums. Check out Whispering Dishes, two parabolic dishes that make it sound like the person whispering on the other side is right next to you.

6 p.m.: Dinner with a mission

Tired? No problem: Cab over to the Bayview, an area sadly overlooked by many tourists, even though it’s rich in SF history. The jazz-themed Old Skool Cafe employs at-risk youth, giving them marketable employment at a well-respected restaurant — 92 percent of its young workers have gotten their high school diploma. Try the restaurant’s delicious “comfort food from around the world” while listening to the soothing sounds of jazz.

7 p.m.: Wine not?

If you want to understand the hype about California’s wine, grab a nightcap at a wine bar! Wine Down started off as a project between two friends who couldn’t find exactly what they were looking for: an affordable wine bar downtown with a friendly atmosphere and quality drinks. So, with the help of Indiegogo backers, they created the place of their dreams. Wind down your evening by tasting some of the best wines California has to offer.

Saturday

10 a.m.: Cultural infusion

A historically Latino neighborhood, the Mission District is home to a vibrant fusion of cultures, local businesses, and arts movements — including some gorgeous murals. After strolling around the open-air artwork on Clarion Alley, take a breather at one of the many coffee shops in the Mission, like Four Barrel Coffee or Ritual Coffee Roasters. Then, find some inner energy by visiting Against the Stream, a meditation center. Discover the meaning of California zen in a space that has worked hard raising money to engage with the local community. Breathe deep at the peer-led meditation, offered seven days a week!

1 p.m.: Charming charcuterie

What do you get when you mix a cheese shop, cafe and a wine bar? A uniquely San Francisco style of multitasking. Mission Cheese is a hub for all of the region’s best cheeses, allowing you to indulge in charcuterie and wine, all while getting a proper meal. Indiegogo backers were so inspired by the founder’s story of love for cheese that they helped Mission Cheese become a reality with 106 percent of its goal raised. Help its doors stay open with your dollar, all while enjoying California’s world-class cheeses.

3 p.m.: Play in the gutter

Work off that dairy fat by climbing up Dolores Park, with its magnificent view of the San Francisco skyline. Then, keep up the pace with a round of bowling! Mission Bowling is an adorable, one-of-a-kind bowling alley that could only exist in San Francisco. The owners transformed a concrete driveway into a cozy space for dining and bowling. Stay for a round or two, and don’t worry if you forgot your socks — they sell cute pairs for $4!

6 p.m.: Worldly dining

Amble south to the hip bars and restaurants of Bernal Heights. Then, settle in at El Buen Comer. The owner infuses her Mexico City upbringing into each dish, with hand-rolled enchiladas and organic masa. Surprisingly, Isabel could hardly believe that she could open a restaurant before she found support in her food community and among Indiegogo backers!

Taste her signature red and green sauces to learn why it’s so important to encourage budding entrepreneurs.

7 p.m.: Mixers in motion

Made by friends who love to refurbish VW buses, Old Bus Tavern serves up the culinary lessons this crew learned by roadtripping across the Southwest — in their bus, of course. Along their journey, they learned how to incorporate chili in food and cocktails. In addition to their beers brewed in-house, fourteen taps feature a rotating selection of other local craft beers. This brew pub started with support from Indiegogo backers who helped raise $33,571 to make it happen. Make it an evening to remember with one of their unique cocktails.

8 p.m.: Show business

End the evening with a show at The Lost Church, founded by a creative couple who wanted to host musicians and theatre in the neighborhood. Housed inside a building designed by sculptor David Ireland, the unique space will give you a sense of the Mission’s daring creativity. See a reading, a play, or some live music!

Sunday

10 a.m.: Kinky breakfast

Learn what pride means in San Francisco at this kinky coffee shop. As long as you’re away from work, you might as well take advantage of it with some NSFW activities! Wicked Grounds will wake you up with a combination of delicious caffeinated beverages, a full breakfast and lunch menu, and bondage toys.

12 p.m.: Shoppers’ union

In Pacific Heights, Union Street offers block after block of quaint boutiques. Give yourself a few hours to peruse its many shops. Juicy News is a family-owned business full of periodicals, books and even stationery. It’s so near and dear to the city’s heart, that Indiegogo backers helped to save it!

3 p.m.: Peace, love and touring

Now that your legs are worn out, give yourself a break by continuing to tour — in a VW van! In the City of Love, the San Francisco Love Tours will transport you to a time of peace and togetherness, all from the comfort of a hippie van with a psychedelic paint job. The smaller vans can weave around the city, hitting up the less-traveled roads that bigger tours can’t. See the real San Francisco on this relaxing ride!

6 p.m.: Toast to the memories

If you enjoy knowing where your food comes from and how it’s made, then you’ll appreciate knowing more about your beer! Toast to a wonderful trip in San Francisco at Black Sands Beer, where the focus is on sharing the recipes and the process of brewing the beer. Watch as beer is made, talk to the fermenters, and even pick up a homebrewing kit.

Enjoyed your trip? Learn how you can continue to support some of the Bay Area’s most popular entrepreneurs.

36 Hours in San Francisco: Small Business Edition was originally published in Indiegogo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Founder Matteo Franceschetti left the life of a lawyer to change the world through successful business ventures. This meant a change in scheduling, a faster paced lifestyle, and unfortunately, a loss of sleep. During seven years of being an entrepreneur, Matteo learned that he had lost approximately 900 hours of sleep due primarily to restless legs syndrome. This not only impacted his daily life but also compromised his health, which forced him to finally make sleep a top priority.

At the time, there was nothing on the market that actually helped improve the quality of sleep. Matteo noticed that everything was becoming smarter and smarter, but his bed wasn’t improving. The technology on the market wasn’t solving his problem for three main reasons: there were sensors that had to be worn at night or placed on the bed’s surface, the trackers were not accurate, and most importantly they were not proactive. Because of these limitations and the lack of actionable information, he neither understood what exactly was disturbing his sleep nor how to finally fix it.

Like a true entrepreneur, he figured that if it didn’t exist he would build it. So he set out with a mission “to help people sleep better.” Matteo dreamed of a product that would consistently track sleep, help people actually understand their sleep, and implement solutions to improve it. Thus the idea for the Eight (hours of sleep) smart mattress cover was born.

The Eight team would go on to raise over $1m funds in crowdfunding, join the Stanford Accelerator and Y Combinator programs and ship their product to thousands of customers worldwide. The feedback and engagement of their backers on Indiegogo provided the crucial validation required to bring the Eight product to market.

Taking their idea to Indiegogo

Once the Eight team built their prototype, they decided to turn to crowdfunding for market validation rather than immediately seek angel investors. This decision would ultimately play a crucial role in the success of their product and the growth of the company.

“We decided to crowdfund because we had no idea if people really wanted our invention,” Alex Zatarain, Eight’s CMO and co-founder says. “If they did, and funded our campaign, then we would have the funds and the validation to take it into production and make it a reality.”

It took the Eight team a year from ‘concept-to-launch.’

Eight launched with Indiegogo in January 2015, with a wildly successful campaign that reached its goal of $100k in the first six hours of funding. In just a few months, the company sold over 7,000 units of the Eight Sleep Tracker to backers in more than 70 countries. As they continued to run their campaign, they began to use the Indiegogo platform for more than just fundraising.

They harnessed the power of their backers, not just for validation of their product, but to also help them develop Eight into the best product it could be. The Eight team asked them to participate in user testing and provide feedback to the team on the existing product and features they’d like to see.

Alex says that, even today, their backers continue to be a helpful resource, “we continue to reach out to them requesting feedback and we even invite them for product testing at our office.” This gives backers a chance to see the product in person, test the app and play an integral role in the development of the product throughout the campaign. “We have truly enjoyed these moments with our backers, because they have helped us shape the product into what it is today.”

To help move the feedback process along during the campaign, the Eight team decided to engage their backers through a forum that would allow them to share, view and vote on their favorite ideas and features. With each milestone of funding reached, Eight would release some of the most popular features. This not only activated a community of enthusiasts, it encouraged backers to share the campaign through a referral contest and raise further awareness for the product.

The backers were not the only ones on the platform that were willing to help Eight on this journey. Through Indiegogo, the team was able to tap into a large network of entrepreneurs and create partnerships. Eight reached out to other campaigners that had compatible products that could integrate with Eight. These partners included Flic, Oomi and Cujo: all with similar missions to provide a seamless smart home experience.

Market validation provided Eight with access to additional funding

The overwhelming success of their campaign also allowed Eight to explore other opportunities for funding. Four months after their campaign launch, Eight was accepted into the Stanford Startup Accelerator program, a rarity for non-Stanford graduates. Three months later, they joined Y Combinator, a leading incubator for early stage startups, where companies receive seed investment, advice, and connections from professionals in the tech industry. “Before we crowdfunded, we had applied to go into Y Combinator a few times, and we hadn’t gotten in,” says Alex. “Our crowdfunding campaign was a validation of what we were doing.”

As Eight wrapped up their program at Stanford and began work in the YC incubator, they continued to work on every tiny detail of their product, from prototyping the smartbox to testing the washability of their mattress cover. Their success on Indiegogo enabled them to make these improvements.

Utilizing InDemand for ecommerce

Although Eight had far exceeded their funding goals, the company decided to transition its campaign into InDemand, a feature on the Indiegogo platform that allows entrepreneurs to raise funds long after their campaign deadline. Through Indemand, Eight continues to take orders, update backers on the manufacturing process, listen to feedback and run their business.

During InDemand, the increasing number of orders allowed Eight to work with the best manufacturers in China as they slowly ramped up production of their mattress cover. The team was challenged with balancing diligent quality assurance and user testing while scaling manufacturing to fulfill over 7,000 orders.

In the first batch of user testing, Eight encountered a slight hiccup. They noticed abnormal levels of noise in the data collected from the mattress. The team had to temporarily halt production in order to fix the issue. Entrepreneurs can experience obstacles at any stage of the journey from product to market. Indiegogo offers the flexibility to communicate these issues to their backers and the tools to help them update their realistic shipping dates.

While the Eight engineers worked on the hardware changes, the rest of the team made sure to communicate this clearly to backers and thank them for their patience. They updated their campaign page to state, “We deeply appreciate your continuous support throughout this journey because, without each of you, this wouldn’t be possible. What we are doing at Eight is so new and so challenging, and knowing that there is this amazing group of people expecting the result of our work is what continues to push us forward.”

Once Eight resolved the hardware issue, they slowly resumed manufacturing and production.

Where is Eight today?

The Eight team could not have brought their idea to life if it weren’t for their backers on Indiegogo. The feedback and engagement from backers provided the crucial validation required to bring their product to market.

And ultimately, this is why they chose Indiegogo. They needed a platform that would validate their idea, through a community of enthusiasts, and allow them to develop their prototype to the product they have today. They pointed to this validation when applying to accelerator programs and utilized this awareness to create partnerships.

From sleep problems to prototyping, market validation, partnerships and investments, the Eight mattress cover is now solving sleep problems worldwide. What started as a three-person team has grown to a company of 17 people: data scientists, back-end engineers, designers, product managers, marketers, and customer support. They are all bound together by “the belief that sleep is crucial to good living.”

Eight raised $1,228,079 from 5,975 contributions on Indiegogo to create a mattress cover that makes your bed and your sleep smarter by tracking your sleep patterns, and allowing you to customize your nighttime experience. They raised $6M in seed funding in March 2016 and another $5M in a Series A round in January 2017 to to keep helping people sleep better. Eight will open the doors to its first showroom in downtown Manhattan.

If you are an entrepreneur, like Matteo, and thinking about launching an idea, check out some of these helpful resources.

How Eight’s Backers Helped Turn a Prototype into a Product was originally published in Indiegogo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On any given day, you can find dozens of young kids, from all neighborhoods and socio-economic backgrounds, skating up and down the ramps of Ethiopia’s first skatepark. The large skatepark stretches to about 625 square meters, and offers a public and free-of-charge communal space for local and visiting skateboarders that was previously lacking in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.

“Everyone comes together here,” says Sean Stromsoe, co-founder of Ethiopia Skate, the organization that oversees the park. “so a lot of friendships are created that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.” The kids at the park are not only discovering a new sense of community, but a passion, and talent, for skating.

“They are so fearless,” says Sean, “They found a different purpose in skateboarding, and as an organization, we’re trying to help guide that. And these kids are just diving right into it, it’s really cool.” The staff provide incentive opportunities to help the kids eventually own their own gear, by working around the park and training other skaters.

And while the park enjoys notoriety around Ethiopia, and parts of Africa, funding it and building it took some trial, error and collaboration across many years. What started as a bunch of kids skating around a vacant parking lot, grew to become a local community of hundreds of young skaters that come together through their passion of skateboarding.

The skatepark was born from the grassroots initiatives and collaboration of two groups passionate about community and skating: Ethiopia Skate and Make Life Skate Life.

To make it happen, Ethiopia Skate, under an enthusiastic group of volunteers, kicked off an ambitious Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to get the money for the costly construction. With a goal of $60,000, they only raised $14,900. “The mistake we made is, we did the flex funding,” Sean says. “We didn’t raise enough to build a skate park at all. We left with some money — so we ended up building some ramps and smaller scale stuff.”

Taking one step closer to their dream park, the team decided to focus on building community momentum and awareness. They made ties with local community organizers and began to build their social following. Through these efforts, their project appeared on Anthony Bourdain’s show, CNN and Vice.

Then, an international non-profit organization called Make Life Skate Life reached out to them. Make Life Skate Life works with local skateboarding communities around the world to construct community-built concrete skateparks. Their projects have been successful through local community involvement from start to finish, providing local skateboarders with the tools, materials, knowledge, and inspiration to create their own projects.

Make Life Skate Life put the power of its resources and connections behind Ethiopia Skate’s idea. “Make Life Skate Life projects become outdoor spaces for creative community use, broadening their impact beyond the daily skate scene found there, housing concerts and events that bring entire communities together.” says Jon Chaconas, Director of Make Life Skate Life.

“Youth involved in creating their own skatepark take ownership and pride in building an environment that supports healthy activities while breaking down social and economic barriers.”

Within two years of the first campaign, Ethiopia Skate and Make Life Skate Life launched a new Indiegogo campaign for Addis Skatepark that reached 120 percent of its goal. Sean says it wouldn’t have happened without the first, less-than-stellar campaign. “It was necessary and helpful,” Sean says, “and we wouldn’t have been successful the second time if we didn’t have those initial funds to get where we were.” Their community efforts really paid off after the second campaign and their backers started to support them in more ways than just funding.

Upon reaching their campaign goal, Make Life Skate Life organized a team of 20 professional skatepark builders to lead construction, and an additional 40 volunteers showed up in Addis to lend a hand. “The local skaters, community and community members built the park,” Sean says. “Sixty volunteers from over 20 countries came to help build it, a lot of them were backers from the campaign.”

They were able to use their funds highly effectively, thanks to the enthusiasm of the skate park’s community, both locally and globally. For starters, the volunteers paid for their own airfare and accommodations. “The building team worked around the clock to pour over 120 cubic meters of concrete and create a world class skatepark in just 3 weeks” according to Jon. “Local skateboarders were always present on the build site as well, and had the opportunity to learn about concrete skatepark construction from experienced builders and help create their own skatepark”.

“You had 60 people getting sunburned in March, one of the hottest months in Ethiopia, doing construction day and night,” Sean adds. “The volunteers are honestly really inspiring, they paid money out of pocket to go somewhere far and do hard labor all day because they were so passionate — I’m so grateful they were able to do that.”

“And for the kids to see this, to see if you believe in something, you can make something out of nothing — the kids feel ownership over the park and learned so much just by seeing these [volunteers] do what they did,” Sean says.

In April of 2016 the team of volunteers completed construction of the Addis Skatepark. Today, it’s a bustling public space bringing skaters around Ethiopia, and the world, together to socialize, learn and skate. “Based on economics and social circles, things are generally segregated [in Addis],” Sean says. “But with the skatepark, the beautiful thing is, you see people from all walks of life that get together and they just want to skate.”

Indiegogo is a platform that brings people together to fund the projects and products they love. Find your next inspiration on Indiegogo.com.

Ethiopia’s First Skatepark Builds Community and Breaks Down Economic Barriers was originally published in Indiegogo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As a senior in college, Abe Matamoros spent many hours bent over a 3D printer, waiting for it to crank out prototype after prototype. He’d bring his homework to a makerspace after soccer practice, and watch the machine for hours, hoping that this time it wouldn’t fail on him. He had an idea for a product that couldn’t wait until after graduation to make.

Abe’s spirit of entrepreneurship and determination was inspired by his parents. Although Abe and his family moved to the United States from Mexico at the age of 8, his Mexican heritage stayed with him throughout his young adult life.

“A lot of being an entrepreneur isn’t just about being smart, it’s about being relentless, and hard working. When it comes to work ethic, it’s hard to compete against the Mexicans, and how hard we work. We will be there no matter what. It doesn’t matter if it’s the worst job or the best job, we’ll take it and we’ll work hard at it,” Abe says.

In those long hours between classes, Abe couldn’t have known then that in the coming year he would create a health product that would go on to win awards from IBM and Takeda, become certified by Arrow Electronics and raise almost $80,000 on Indiegogo, opening the door to future investments.

A jarring life experience becomes his next product idea

When Abe discovered his grandfather bedridden in his apartment, shivering and unable to move because he forgot to take his medicine for three days, he started looking into what happened and how it could have been prevented. Abe discovered a systemic problem with anyone who takes multiple medications a day. Traditional pillboxes made managing prescriptions cumbersome, and Abe’s grandfather had fallen behind and couldn’t track which medication he forgot.

Abe turned to his childhood friend, Regina Vatterott, for answers. Regina had advertised for a lot of independent pharmacies and was able to confirm Abe’s suspicions: 106 million people in just the United States have multiple chronic illnesses and 50% of patients don’t take their medications as prescribed. They forget to take it, take the wrong one or at the wrong time and this results in direct costs of $300 billion a year to the healthcare industry as a whole (insurance providers, patients and more).

Regina and Abe saw a huge problem in this industry and a potential for a marketable solution. And although many companies were trying to solve it, their products were missing the mark. Abe and Regina decided that by targeting the baby boomers, between 50 and 70 years old, who largely used technology, they could create the next health product.

“We thought, what if we target this demographic instead, they are open to technology, and we can grow old with them, instead of trying to force ourselves to this older demographic,” says Abe.

This shift in target audience would set both their marketing strategy and product design on the path to success. “We built a product for them that didn’t look like a pillbox,” says Abe.

“It has a nice design without be stigmatizing and, at the same time, helps them organize much more quickly, reminding them to take their medicine and track compliance.” The Elliegrid pillbox was born.

Building the product post-graduation

From this inception, making Elliegrid a reality became a collaborative effort across a team of young classmates and friends. Abe brought together his childhood friend Regina and his friend from college, Nicolas Dhanam, a mechanical engineer, to execute on it.

“We all wanted to help people and make a positive impact on the world. And we were fascinated with the idea of doing it through entrepreneurship.”

Nick and Abe took advantage of the nonprofit makerspace next to their school to use their 3D printers. “At the time, there were these makers bots that would work about 20% of the time. So I had to sit there and just watch it print, and 5 hours later that print would fail, and I’d have to start over. I probably have over 100 wasted hours in front of a 3D printer because I really wanted the part to print. I would bring my homework and just sit there, and go back and forth between my homework and this printer,“ says Abe. His determination paid off.

Upon graduating, the group had a few workable 3D models and were ready to take their idea to the next level. Abe moved in with his parents in Houston to save money and continue to pursue his dream. “They’ve been extremely supportive of everything. A lot of parents would rather their kids go to medical school or get a job. I might have been able to get a six-figure job out of college but I got a zero figure job. They trust me and the decisions I make, whether it’s becoming a professional soccer player or a poor entrepreneur,” he says.

Abe, Regina and Nick decided to focus their time after college in building this product and learning as much as possible. “We tried going to a couple investors early on, and it felt like we were too early. The investors saw kids who had just graduated college, never manufactured anything in their lives, who are pitching an idea with a raggedy prototype,” Abe says.

“The investors saw kids who had just graduated college, never manufactured anything in their lives, who are pitching an idea with a raggedy prototype.”

Instead, they focused their funding efforts on business plan competitions, which also helped build credibility and recognition from big brand names, such as IBM and Takeda. “We won things like the IBM hackathon and the Hardware Cup in Austin, that gave us free access to a really great prototyping facility,” says Abe. As their prototypes grew and evolved, so did their team.

At a Hardware Meetup, they met their newest member and current CTO, Hieu Nguyen, who essentially builds the technology inside Elliegrid.

Once the team had a good idea of what their customer was looking for, knew what the final parts of Elliegrid were going to be, secured their manufacturing partner and had the prototypes done, they decided to turn to crowdfunding.

The team launched their product on Indiegogo to gauge interest with customers. Without putting any money behind marketing, they were able to sell over 500 units in two months.

Moving forward, they are on track to ship in May of 2017. “We aren’t naive to the fact that things can come up and sometimes, little things cause huge setbacks, but we haven’t hit those little things yet,” Abe says. Backers get a behind the scenes look at how the product is made, how to build a mold, where to manufacture and what setbacks can happen. “We want to keep them updated so they feel part of the process, they’re not just a customer, but they’re almost like a part of the team,” he says.

Elliegrid was born from a team of hardworking, young entrepreneurs, all from immigrant families, ranging from Mexico to Hungary, Vietnam and India. Together, this diversity of cultures and experiences shaped the Elliegrid team and business into what it is today.

Join Abe, Regina Nic and Hieu’s journey of entrepreneurship by following along on the ‘Updates’ tab of their campaign page and preorder your Elliegrid today!

How This Mexican Immigrant Became an Entrepreneur Right Out of College was originally published in Indiegogo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The theme of this International Women’s Day is #BeBoldForChange and we couldn’t think of women who are more bold and pushing for more change than female entrepreneurs.

As we wrote about last year, more women are getting turned down for investment opportunities even though women-led venture-backed companies earn 12% more revenue than male-led companies. Only 2.7% of venture-backed companies from 2011 to 2013 had female CEOs. Despite these hurdles, we have countless women on our site being bold to make change happen in their businesses. Here are just a few of their stories:

On being a woman in business:

“When you’re sitting in front of an investor that is likely going to to be a man, you have to convince them that this is a thing that women want. Then they want to ask their wife or their assistant or their daughter what their opinion is, which doesn’t necessarily equate to a fair evaluation of what you’re building as a product.”

Aniyia Williams is the founder of Tinsel and the Dipper Audio Necklace, a fashionable, audio necklace. Check out her full interview in this weeks episode of GoTime.

“I usually find myself to be one of the only females in a room when I’m invited to give a talk or a presentation in the technology industry. I’m ok with it, but I wish there were more female entrepreneurs in tech. I’m sure many other female entrepreneurs have had similar experiences, I hope together we can build a stronger support system for each other.”

Rain Wang is cofounder of Falcon 1, light and fitted 3D printed sunglasses that are custom tailored to the shape of your face.

“I am a female CEO in an IT start-up, people mention that all the time, that is what is most surprising for me. The most important challenge is to keep confident in this context. I have stopped worrying if people will treat me differently in business because of my gender.”

Gisele Belliot founded the company behind Hayo which creates a virtual remote control around your home with the wave of your hand.

“Society’s expectations tend to roadblock our own unique paths and that’s a shame. Empowering women to do what they love should come without judgement. I think we should empower and support women to do what they’re passionate about without question.”

Mira Torres is the cofounder of the JUNO Mirror, a smart makeup mirror with auto-sensing technology.

On building your business:

“It was really hard, but with grit and perseverance, and 27 prototypes made by hand in clay and paint at my moms kitchen table, I made it from an idea to a patent pending working hardware prototype and a registered Delaware inc. in 100 days.”

Elin Elkehag, founder of Stilla Motion, wanted to create a trackable device that would blink and alert her when something moved so she didn’t have to constantly watch her purse.

“I’m a 21-year-old acid attack survivor, now turned entrepreneur. For me, a dream to be a designer seemed far-fetched at one time. But instead of hiding my scarred face behind a scarf, I went public and started living my dream: a fashion designer.”

Rupa is the shop owner of SheRoes Hangout, but she is raising funds to expand her clothing line through an online store.

“In October 2014, I came across a petition to help save my borough’s Barnes & Noble from being displaced. I lived at that store, so I signed it, got some friends to sign it, and I then became aware that it was the only bookstore in my borough… then I got pissed enough to do something about it while everyone else was complaining and arguing over it with the property owners for 2 years.”

Noëlle Santos is the founder of the Lit Bar, an indie bookshop/wine bar that speaks to the needs of an unique, thriving, and often stigmatized community in the Bronx.

On staying proud:

“I am proud that I can show my daughter that women can do anything — including start businesses. I want her to feel like she has endless opportunities. I find that people underestimate the perseverance of female entrepreneurs, especially moms. Moms are superheroes, moms are tough. We can pretty much do everything. It is empowering.”

Natalie Rebot is the inventor of Moonlite, a mini-projector that can be attached to any phone with an app of different stories that reflect on the wall.

“The thing I am the most proud of is making the shift to becoming a full time entrepreneur. I think we all have dreams, ideals and aspirations that keep us alive. It’s probably the hardest yet the most fantastic thing to be fully devoted to nurturing, shaping and making sure these come true.”

Nancy de Fays is the creator of LineDock, the most complete portable battery with a universal hub and active cooling.

“We wanted to tell inspiring true women’s stories of adversity to triumph. We featured females who are doing extraordinary work in the world to inspire others to do the same.”

Catherine Gray started 360 Karma to empower women through conferences, video tools and a web series.

“Our goal is to bring people together through our craft and business ethos, and celebrate the creative talent and passion of hard-working fiber folks. Being able to give back to the community while at the same time building our business based on our values and making decisions that we feel proud of is just wonderful.”

Hanna Lisa & Verena​ Cohrs are the creators behind WOODS — making stories, a book that shares their passion for local, breed-specific European yarns, beautiful knitwear design and helping people expand their knitting knowledge.

“I am so proud of how many people’s lives we have touched. When you have chronic pain, it’s sort of like a black cloud hangs over your life. We get love letters all the time from people who are back playing with their children, getting off of pain killer addictions, restarting their meditation practices and broadly enjoying life again because of BetterBack. There aren’t words!”

Katherine Krug is the inventor of BetterBack, an ergonomic device that helps ease back pain and improve posture.

Are you feeling inspired from these women? Don’t stop there, check out more innovative projects created by female entrepreneurs around the world.

Happy International Women’s Day!

12 Inspiring Quotes From Female Entrepreneurs This International Women’s Day was originally published in Indiegogo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Like most kids, Anine Kirsten played frequently with LEGO bricks growing up. In addition to the toys’ obvious appeal to childhood fun, her engineer father had blessed them as educational and thus a worthwhile way for his daughter to spend her time. It was around then that she began to think that she might follow in her father’s footsteps, in a way, by becoming a toy designer.

A few decades later, Kirsten had accomplished exactly that, and part of her job was making the annual trek to the American International Toy Fair in New York City. Like a kid in a toy store, the Toy Fair is a place of inspiration and wonder for adults like Kirsten to find the inspiration to conceive and develop these treasured playthings. Since 1903, toy makers and marketers have convened every February for this industry trade show, and one of the mainstays at the event is LEGO, the Danish-born company whose plastic locking building blocks have enthralled children and adults alike for generations.

Over the years, the sets have evolved from remedial construction toys to increasingly elaborate and sophisticated collections that allow you to construct models of anything from the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House to just about every character, vehicle, structure, or weapon that’s ever appeared in a Star Wars film. During her 2016 visit, Kirsten and her friend and fellow designer, Max Basler, found themselves drawn to the numerous LEGO displays. When they returned home, Kirsten dug out some of her old LEGOs and, with Basler, began conceptualizing the innovation — and doing the many hours of research and trial-and-error prototyping — that would become Nimuno Loops.

Despite LEGOs’ impressive history, the globally popular blocks have always had one flaw: They don’t bend. (Any parent who’s ever accidentally stepped on one while shoeless will affirm this with a knowing wince.) No matter how curvilinear you want your LEGO creation to be, the arcs you build with these sharp-cornered and rigid-edged bricks have to be locked in such a way that inevitably leaves your project with a pixelated look.

Not anymore. Nimuno has a patent-pending product for its Loops, a sort of LEGO-compatible tape that can be cut, bent, twisted, and swirled into any shape, and then built upon with traditional LEGOs. (Some of the blocks in Nimuno’s Indiegogo video came directly from Kirsten’s childhood collection, and Nimuno’s marching orders for the tape couldn’t be simpler: Cut. Stick. Build. Play.) After the Toy Fair, Kirsten’s and Basler’s objective revolved around thinking of ways to make an iconic product even better.

“The fair was crucial in playing a role in discovering this idea,” says Kirsten, who is partnering with Basler to develop Nimuno products for Chrome Cherry Design Studio, which is probably best known for its work on the line of Ybike balance bicycles for toddlers. “We love going to the show because you get to see what’s new and innovative — you’re just walking around the complex being hit from all sides by lights, colors, people — all things that inspire you. It really helps us designers expand our minds. After the fair we came across the idea and took it back to Capetown to start working on it.”

This involved what Chrome Cherry designers call “Mad Hatter Mondays,” brainstorming sessions that can unfold at the beach, in a park, or anywhere that isn’t the office. “We take our minds out of our regular space to expand our creative thinking,” Kirsten says. “That’s when we came up with and really grew the idea. We were convinced it would be great product, and we spent the rest of the year bringing it to life.”

The reason Nimuno Loops are even possible is that LEGO’s patents mostly expired by the late-1980s; since then a kind of open source platform for LEGO-related development has emerged, resulting in complementary toy building block companies such as Brixo, which completed its own highly successful Indiegogo campaign in May, 2016. “We’ve already met with Brixo about doing some cross-pollination with Loops, and they’re really excited,” Basler says.

Nimuno is awaiting imminent feedback from the United States Patent Office, which will either green-light Loops as-is or instruct the company to refine its concept so it doesn’t encroach too closely upon other existing patents. Kirsten and Basler are confident that their design — which uses flexible plastic and a strong but reusable double-sided adhesive similar to 3M’s VHB tape — is close to approval, and they’ll likely know for sure within weeks.

They’re also quite certain that demand for the finished product will be strong: Nimuno used the Indiegogo platform to request a mere $8,000 to help pay for tooling and casting the tape, and with just under three weeks left in their campaign, the project has attracted almost 37,000 backers who have pledged $1.43 million and counting.

During its campaign Nimuno heard from a wide variety of backers, including (according to the comments they left) an inordinate number of grandparents who shared things like, “I’m going to be the coolest granny ever when I give these as gifts!” Kirsten says she also was struck by how creatively people — children and adults alike — planned to use the Loops tape. “I’ve seen utilitarian suggestions such as sticking your cellphone on the wall next to your bed if you use it as an alarm,” she says. “And another backer mentioned creating an Inception/Doctor Strange scene of a world wrapping back into itself, which I thought was awesome.

Nimuno plans to use all that pledged money to manufacture enough Loops to meet demand by its targeted August shipping date. (“The quantities make me a little nervous,” Basler says, “but that’s a good problem to have.”) Any leftover profit will be put toward attracting repeat backers for future add-on products; Nimuno’s first announced innovation is “receiver tape” that essentially has holes instead of plugs, so it can adhere to toys, keys, or other objects — such as the aforementioned cellphones — which then can click onto the Loops tape like the two sides of a Velcro strip.

With its campaign rolling toward completion and its patent likely soon to be approved, would-be backers (or re-backers) might be curious about just what “Nimuno” means. In a word, nothing. The inspiration for the name was yet another product of Mad Hatter Mondays, though in this case the brainstorming bled across so many other days of the week that they all started to blur together. “After not being able to come up with names that reflected what we were after, we turned to drawing shapes that represented the flexible nature of Loops, to make it clear that it isn’t a strictly square block,” Kirsten says. “We started drawing half-moons and other rounded shapes, they turned to letters, and eventually we landed on Nimuno. We just loved the way it has a beautiful ring to it that really echoes the softness and flexibility of the product.”

Get your Nimuno Loops Block Tape today and show us your creations with #IGGNimuno.

These Two Toy Makers Found Innovation (And Success) Using LEGOs and Tape was originally published in Indiegogo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.