Hey,
My name is Alex, I am a maker(I make interesting hardware products,some links at the bottom) and I would like to call myself an early stage entrepreneur. I graduated in 2012 and for the last one year I have been working on my idea of building solutions for other makers full time. I am a single founder (looking for co-founders…) . In the last one year, I have tried and pivoted from an online store for maker parts(like motors, electronics, tools etc) to a distributions system for the same to finally a search engine for maker parts. Right now I am focused on building a search engine for maker parts at www.makeystreet.com for makers around the world. The problem that I am addressing is “How do makers find and discover parts for their projects.”
In the last one year, one of the fundamental problem that I was facing was lack of a strong maker culture in India. I having a lot of trouble convincing people that something like maker culture exists – eg www.makerfaire.com. So I had a lot of trouble raising money. For raising money for Makeystreet, I am trying out a new strategy – Crowd funding.
I am taking one of the simplest product that my friend and me designed to the crowd funding platform – Indiegogo. We call it – Tangle. It prevents earphones from getting tangled. 
Here is a quick 3 min video pitch for the product
Tangle – A simple way to prevent your earphone from getting tangled from Alex J V on Vimeo.
Its the simplest solution to tangled earphones that we could come up with. It is so simple that if you are so frustrated with tangled earphones you can make one yourself – www.instructables.com/id/Tangle-prevent-your-earphones-from-getting-tangl/. Having said that we also have a US provisional patent for the same.
We have tested the product for over 9 months and is fully satisfied with the usefulness of the product and we are sure you will love it too. What we think is more awesome about this product is that since this is a card based solution, this can be customized to match the user’s style/personality. If you are F1 fan, you might want an F1 themed Tangle. If you are an A R Rahman fan you might like an A R Rehman themed Tangle. If you love the city of Mumbai a lot, maybe a Mumbai themed Tangle would be appealing to you. and so on.. In the same lines, it can also be used for custom branding for events. Tangle could be an alternative branding tool instead of a Tshirt. Maybe there can be a Rodinhood Tangle.
This is the Tangle that we did for TEDxkids@rspuram.
Now to the important point. We are trying to use crowd funding to raise some money for my startup Makeystreet, instead of going down the Angel, VC route. The deadline for the crowd funding campaign is 31st July. So take action quickly! 🙂
This is a 100% Indian product and we need your help. This is how you can help.
- If you think this a awesome product, quick take out your credit card and get a couple of them for yourself. 🙂 https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tangle/x/1767072
- If you think Tangle would be an awesome give away at your event, mail me on alex@makeystreet.com. We will give you a special Rodinhooder discount for bulk order. Earlier bulk orders will get better discounts.
- If are interested in the idea and would like to contribute to bringing Makeystreet to reality, fund us an amount of your choice on the indiegogo campaign page.
- If you are an angel investor and is into hardware products, we need to talk.. somehow.. 🙂
- If you a designer and would like to make some really badass Tangles, get in touch. If you have some theme ideas for Tangle that will appeal to others, get in touch. Check out our existing designs at www.makeystreet.com/tangle/
- Feedbacks !! Give me as much as you got !
Support this crowd sourced campaign. Choose the highest reward comfortable for you on the indiegogo campaign. Here is the link again – https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tangle/x/1767072.
For all others who might want to try the crowd funding route, once the campaign is done, I will put up a post on how that went.
PS:For some reason Indiegogo has this most random bug, while making a transaction. Get in touch with me if you have a problem with that.
Thank you,
Alex J V, Designing a maker revolution @ makeystreet.com
alex@makeystreet.com
Some of the projects that I worked on are
- Magic Karpet – Intuitively controlled electric skateboard
- Solar lanterns for kerosene replacement
- CNC foam cutter
- Instructables link
asha chaudhry
hey alex,
i really think this is a neat idea…
you’ve got 23 days to go, right???!!!
Alex J V
Hey Asha,
I am glad you liked it. Yes there is only 23 days left. I learned a ton already out of the campaign. One of our biggest problem is educating customers about crowd funding .. 🙁
Also I think the product is a push product not a pull product. I think the cards has to be dealt differently..
Alex
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
the product looks like an “interference”
use cases:
– I run often with my earphones passing thru my t-shirt and then going into my ears and the other end in my running shorts pocket. where do i use tangle?
– There is an issue with its aesthetics. why does it need to be so broad? why cant it be really really narrow and almost invisible?
Manish Nasa
hey guys
sounds like a good idea 🙂
I generally avoid earphones, and would be hesitant to shell out money on something like that… but if it comes for free with my cell phone, I would be happy! Would it be easier if you sell it to the manufacturers and not the end users ?
A passing thought.. shouldn’t it be called ‘Untangle ?’ 🙂
Cheers!
Manish
Alex J V
Hey Alok,
I am really happy you asked 🙂
A 1 – Tangle’s primary use is when you are keeping your earphone aside. When you are jogging, it has no functionality. So when I go jogging, I keep Tangle in the shorts pocket along with the music player. Having said that, we have got a lot of feedback from runners specifically that they might not necessarily have a shorts pocket. So we are introducing a small clip that can be used to clip Tangle to shirt(earphone still passing through Tangle) etc.
A 2 – There are like 100 solutions for tangled earphones that already exist. But non of them are popular enough that you can walk into landmark and get it. We thought probability is that we will end up like that. So we wanted to build a solution that is so simple that if it does not work out, people in need should be able to hack it. Hence we locked on card based design.
Once you have a card based design – the length of the card defines the number of loops that you need to make, and the breadth of the card defines the ease with which you can wrap things around. Then there are things like making sure there are no sharp corners or design elements that get stuck in your clothing. Hence we came up with this specific dimensions, after a bunch of iterations.
Also with a broader space we could make it reflect the personality of the person – like example image attached- you signal that you are a calvin fan or a Rodinhood fan… It could possibly start a conversation..
Alex J V
Hey Manish,
I am glad you liked the idea.
Well this is the first time I was trying out something like this. So my thought process was like – if I can get 1000 customers who absolutely love the product, then maybe I can convince the manufacturer easier.
Also I dont really have any manufacturer contacts-earphones or headsets manufacturers. Maybe you can help us with that.
Untangle – maybe 🙂 Thought Tangle was shorter, cooler and a positive word (like a misnomer ).. 😛
Alex
Manish Nasa
I don’t have any contacts of my own. But it can’t be too difficult to reach out to people ? especially when we live in the Linked-In era 🙂
goutam kumar
Hey alex,
I think this is a brilliant idea and i hope you raise the money through crown funding asap . good luck and all the best 🙂
Alex J V
Hey Manish,
I was trying out your approach. It seems to be working.. Linked-in can get us in touch with the right person. thanks..
Alex
Alex J V
Hey Goutam,
Thanks
asha chaudhry
alex,
any updates on TANGLE???!!!
am sure everyone would love to know!
Alex J V
A
Alex J V
I am planning to write a post about it… Coming very soon.
Alex