There we were, circled around a bachelor party campfire and drunk on keg beer, discussing the viability of using Kickstarter to fund a sex toy startup. My buddy Dan (he goes by Dangerous D at karaoke) had designed and handmade a compact speed controller for small vibrators (pic below). He was selling them at $75 a pop and apparently – I have yet to see or try one – they were getting rave reviews. → Read More
Much like it is for entrepreneurs, being an inventor isn’t easy. From the moment that magic light bulb appears, product developers have to navigate a bumpy road of financing, engineering, legalities, patents and more. As a result, many great ideas never see the light of day. Quirky is on a mission to help the Idea Men and Women of the world bring their ideas to life. In fact, the startup aims to… → Read More
Back in early May, Quirky and GE announced a contest that had users pitching ideas for everyday objects that could be improved by adding software to the mix.
The eventual winner was — surprisingly enough — a smart milk jug that could tell users when their milk was going bad as well as when to buy some more. It may not have been the sort of project that most of us had expected, but Quirky… → Read More
For just about a week now, GE and product development network Quirky have been running an interesting contest — they’ve challenged people to come up with ways to improve everyday objects by making them “smarter with software”. Unlike the traditional Quirky production and development process though, the winning concept will be fashioned into an actual working device by the end of the month.
The… → Read More
Quirky, a social network for product development, has raised $16 million in Series B funding led by Norwest Venture Partners with RRE Ventures participating in the round. This brings Quirky’s total funding up to $29 million (Quirky quietly raised $5 million earlier this year).
Quirky, which is brainchild of serial entrepreneur Ben Kaufman (he’s behind mophie and kluster), is a platform for… → Read More
In this week’s episode of Fly or Die, we cover two big launches—Amazon Cloud Drive and Color—and a Quirky DIY pocketKnife called the Switch. Just yesterday, Amazon launched its Cloud Drive, which is a general storage service in the cloud which is being pushed as a media locker, starting with music
Color is the $41 million photo app nobody can figure out. Is it the future or is it a dud on… → Read More
We’ve been dreaming of the Quirky Switch for months now, ever since it was first announced back in April, 2010 and now that dream is a reality. The Quirky Switch is basically a modular pocket knife that lets you create three sizes of knife using various pieces. I got a unit and discovered that this thing is truly DIY with a full complement of add-ons including a pen, a bottle opener, and various… → Read More
The Quirky Contort is basically a four port USB hub with a trick: it also acts as a cable organizer so after you plug in all your goodies you can keep them all wrapped up and neat. The device costs $29.99 for pre-order ($35 when it comes out). → Read More
So you’re traveling through the airport, and you’ve got your backpack loaded up with all your gadgets. You get through the security checkpoint, and now what? Well, how about if you could just plug your backpack in, and have it recharge all of your USB devices? What if that same backpack had a built in battery to recharge your devices whenever you need it too? Sounds cool, right? → Read More
One of the greatest problems facing the world today is knowing when your pot of water is boiling. You can’t watch the pot for obvious reasons, and if you don’t listen carefully you might miss when the water starts to boil and accidentally boil the pot dry. The solution? The BoilBuoy. A simple device that floats in the pot of water and then chimes when it starts to boil. The best part… → Read More
The quickest and easiest way to make your gloves touchscreen friendly. Too bad it’s spring. → Read More
Say you’re going on a picnic and don’t want to bring a huge bulky pocket knife. What would you bring? Maybe a knife, a bottle opener, and a corkscrew. Or say you’re planning on dismembering and eating a baby seal? What would you bring then? Probably the same stuff. But the Switch from Quirky makes picnics and ritual seal dismemberment easy and fun! The product is a modular knife. → Read More
Daily Grommet, a curated online marketplace and video review site for quirky inventions and products, has raised $3.4 million in Series A funding from a number of investors, including John Landry, Launch Capital and Gerry Laybourne, founder of Nickelodeon and Oxygen Media.
The site features one creative invention or product per day, with an in-depth video review. Daily Grommet will also sell the… → Read More
Quirky, a social network for product development, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by RRE Ventures, with Village Ventures, Contour Venture Partners, Lowercase Capital and a small group of angel investors participating in the round. Prior to the closing of this round, Quirky had raised $1.6 million in seed capital from friends and family.
As we reported in our initial review of the… → Read More
Wait, before you write these things off, hear me out. Cable Caps are actually kind of cool in a quirky sort of way. They are cable organizers that are designed to protect the male ends of USB cables, while also keeping the cables neatly wrapped and organized. Neat, eh? The only thing is that the product is just a few years late for most people. → Read More
We’ve been hearing for what feels like decades about the “paperless” revolution, wherein everything will be written on computers. The problem is that computers — even smartphones and tablet PCs — still make it unnecessarily complicated to jot down a quick note. You know, the kind of thing that doesn’t have any lasting permanence but something you’re going to forget in the next five minutes… → Read More
Fresh on the success of their SplitStick double-sided USB stick, the cats at quirky now offer DigiDudes: a keychain with a built-in camera tripod. Unscrew the DigiDude’s head, pull out his feet, and voila! Instant tripod! → Read More
Have you ever thought of a quirky but innovative product that might be useful to the masses but didn’t follow through with the idea? Sometimes these flashes of genius get lost in the shuffle. Startup quirky is hoping to be the platform for product ideas that are born on napkin doodles and in other unorthodox ways. The site then tries to use crowdsourcing to develop the product, by engaging… → Read More
Whether it’s a blue screen of death, a kernel panic, or even just a lag in Firefox, sometimes we just want to smash our computers. It’s perfectly OK to want to do so, but to actually do it takes some iron balls. A German man in Hanover had the iron pair and actually managed to get angry enough at his PC to chuck it out a window, smashing to pieces on the ground below. When police… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
San Francisco
