NYT Magazine / Consumed: Groupthink, Inc.
A few months ago, Kaufman, who is 23 and lives in New York, started a business aimed squarely at the armchair inventors among us. Quirky.com is meant to bring “community developed” products to the marketplace. For example: Marc Julian Zech, an advertising copywriter in Hamburg, Germany, had an idea for a double-sided mini hard drive (one USB plug might hold personal data, the other work data). He submitted his notion to Quirky.com, and now, a few weeks later, the Split Stick is being manufactured.
Quirky & Ben Kaufman featured in Donna Fenn's upcoming book: Upstarts
Donna Fenn's upcoming book about Young Entrepreneurs rocking the world of business follows Ben Kaufman from high school & mophie, all the way through quirky. It's out in stores on September 15th, but you can grab it now over at Amazon.
Lightbulb-shaped clock tells watt time it is
Good thing the lightbulb-shaped Watt Time alarm clock(Watt Time, geddit?!) isn't made of glass or it could pose a hazard when annoyed sleepers roll over to smack the snooze button located on the top of the socket.... Watt Time comes via Quirky, a relatively new collaborative design community that also conceived of the super-cute DigiDue tripod we told you about recently. The Watt Time is currently on presale at Quirky's online store for $24.99.
DigiDude camera mount shows Joby what style's all about
Oh sure, Joby may have reinvented the camera mount with its now-iconic Gorillapod lineup, but we're giving DigiDude the edge on personality and pizazz. From the same Quirky Community that brought us the delightfulSplit Stick comes this, a zany new camera mount that's easily portable (via keyring, y'all) and even easier to love.
Ben Kaufman and His Quirky Toy Factory
Got a genius idea for a product? How about a tofu press? An iPhone holster to perch on bike handlebars? A fashionable sling for broken limbs called an “Ouch Pouch?” Ben Kaufman, a 23-year-old entrepreneur and college dropout, wants you to dish out $99 and put it in his hands, or shall we say, Web site, along with an entire community of nitpickers to mold your product from scratch to store shelf.
Split Stick Double-Headed USB Drives Separate Your Work and Personal Lives
Whether you want to separate work from your personal life, his from hers, or your stuff from that other personality you call "Bad Charlie", the Split Stick gives you two separate flash drives in one USB device.
Quirky: A Crowd-Sourced Way to Produce Your Designs
The creators of Kluster--an online tool that allows designers to collaboratively workshop their ideas--have just announced another foray into crowd-sourced product design: Quirky. The site is an interesting mishmash of a bunch of concepts that have been floating around in social media.
Crowd Based Design Produces 2 New Products
Crowd-powered product design site quirky has generated two finished products that are up for pre-order on their site. The first, a universal wire retractor, named the Sling Back, is a stackable cord management device that can roll up and dispense up to 3 feet of cable. So far they have 103 of the 500 pre-orders necessary to make this product a reality.
Quirky - design products online from sketch to store
The team that brought you kluster, the design-centered social network tool, just released quirky - a collaborative online tool that enables you and your pals to design and manufacture a product in no time at all. Sounds like a good venue for a summer project, right?
Unlocking everyone's ideas for the next big thing
Seasoned entrepreneurs know there’s a big difference between a great idea in the mind and a successful product in the hand. Here to bridge that gap is Quirky, a service that uses a collaborative process to actualize killer ideas that might otherwise go to waste.
BusinessWeek: Kluster's Ben Kaufman: On to "Quirky"
Ben Kaufman came in today. He’s the 23-year-old entrepreneur I profiled a year ago when he was launching a startup called Kluster. Some would call Kaufman a serial entrepreneur. (He missed much of his senior year in high school while getting his first manufacturing line running in China.) I might call him hyperkinetic.
Reader's Digest: Dreamers: Got Ideas?
"Everyone has an idea," says 21-year-old serial entrepreneur Ben Kaufman. "Every day, people walk around going, Wouldn't it be cool if...I want to harness those ideas and let people have a forum."
gizmag: The mophie Bevy – the first Illuminator-built product
Mophie today announced the US$15 Bevy, the first product to be released from the highly successful Illuminator project. The mophie Bevy is a multifunctional case for Apple's iPod Shuffle that features a bottle opener and key chain and was designed by a 17-year-old from California. The Illuminator project at MacWorld Expo transformed mophie’s booth into a live community collaboration and creation lab where, over a four-day period, 30,000+ MacWorld attendees were invited to doodle a product concept that enhanced any of the newest Apple products. Concepts were voted on by MacWorld attendees at the show and on mophie.com. Finally, mophie designers and engineers took the winning concepts and developed prototypes in the booth.
