Gadgetory

hi I'm Nick stout with the verge and we're here at our booth on the CES show floor i'm here with slava rubin CEO indiegogo thanks for coming down to us yeah thanks for having me last few years CES has been inundated with crowdfunding or crowd funded projects a lot of consumer like technology but IndieGoGo doesn't actually make any of these products they just help get them funded so what brings you out here this week yeah you know became actually three years ago now the first time and I think we could count the IndieGoGo funded projects at that time on like one or two hands and now at IndieGoGo at CES 20 2016 we actually have a hundred and ten companies that are funded on indigo which is super exciting and so we just you know look to support all of them and also there's a lot of inbound in terms of people that are interested to learn more the other thing is we're super excited we're making announcement this week at CES which is we're launching our enterprise crowdfunding offering which is we've always been working with smaller players entrepreneurs individuals but now the fortune 1000 the big companies GE anheuser-busch Harmon are all coming to indy gogo to really do RND market validation to bring these amazing new products out to the market right and so crowdfunding has always seemed like this this thing for scrappy smaller startups who want to just propel something to the masses and get it out there and help them you know make thousands of thousands of units why does this now make sense for a company like GE I mean what do they get out of crowdfunding that they can't just do through the normals their normal channels absolutely so IndieGoGo when we created it it's an open platform where anybody can raise money perhaps see any idea so we have generosity com for the personal fundraising we also have lots of films and creative and theater and artists but definitely gadgets and hardware and tech is a hotbed of what's happening on IndieGoGo like you mentioned a lot of that is these smaller earlier stage entrepreneurs but really what it's about is just an open space a place to experiment to engage with your audience to use social to get feedback to actually understand how is your idea or product resonating with the market what are some of the other products you expect large corporations will you know take to a crowdfunding platform yeah it's going to vary so has boro used us so they're gay toy and gaming company to be able to find different innovators to come up with new games so they actually had a challenge and they were able to then fund one of the five games that were the top five games also you have Harmon was coming out they announced yesterday they'll be coming out a probably within a month with new headphones that will have noise specific cancellation qualities there is no concern within IndieGoGo that this might kind of quash out the little guys or I give them give the larger companies an unfair advantage I mean if IndieGoGo is an crowdfunding was designed for you know the small player if they have to compete with maybe a similar product with a company like you know G or Hasbro does that create any kind of concern over what's fair and what's not fair it's the opposite actually so it's an open platform where anybody can use it no matter what so we've already had larger companies using it for the last couple years but what actually is happening is the larger companies are actually looking for the new hot entrepreneur on IndieGoGo so they're actually collaborating with shock top they actually want to stop the drought so they have their campaign as part of analyzer bush where they're actually identified like drop a brick and ava which are two different entrepreneurs to be able to have technology to help stimulate better environmental practices with water so drop a brick is like I prac plastic brick you put in your toilet it disseminates water away so you have less water per flush this is an example where the larger companies are actually working with the entrepreneurs so it's actually creating a hotbed together and where else is is crowdfunding Benna untapped like wherewhere can crop phone and go for from here if there are some specific items to highlight for example like shift where this is a sneaker that has epaper as part of its actual material so it connects to your phone and you can actually change the look of your sneaker by color or artistry or whatever it looks like on your app so you actually don't need to have different sneakers or different any changes on the fly or you have something like both bikes so bolt is a equivalent to a motorbike but it's actually an electric bike so it can drive up to 40 miles an hour has the thrill of a motorcycle but has the ease and the legal requirements of just a bicycle super cool but there's tons of other like you said internet a thing means personal devices but I do think the next round is gonna be more AI more robots you have like jebo on IndieGoGo or buddy you also have chip just came out yesterday which is a robotic dog for anybody who doesn't want to actually clean up the poop or actually look up for the work you can actually have a robotic dog that will actually follow with robotic ball that plays fetch what sets IndieGoGo apart from you know competitor like Kickstarter right is you don't necessarily need a working prototype it can be an idea I can just be something small that you have the ambitions to carry out and you you want to raise some money and try and do it I guess what is IndieGoGo doing right now to make sure that you know a shoe like the shift where can actually you know happen down the line so they don't take in all this money and then they discover well you know what we can't make an e ink shape-shifting shoe yeah so one of the beauties of an open platform is there's nobody in digo goes that's going to judge you there's a nobody sees out there there's enough bankers out there there's another government constituents there's another enough high level you know corporate types and there's enough other platforms that will judge you I didn't go go it's totally open where you get to put up your idea you need to be transparent about where you're at are you a idea stage a prototype stage or your manufacturing are you already selling and then it's up to the funders the backers if they want to support you sounds pretty cool Thanks slava rubin