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