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 Just in time for Internet Week New York, serial entrepreneur Ben Kaufman is launching Quirky, a New York social product development company that helps take ideas from "sketch to store."Quirky is the third startup for 22-year-old Kaufman. Funky iPod accessory maker Mophie was his first. Mophie made a big splash at MacWorld 2007, when Kaufman transformed the company's trade show booth into a live community collaboration and creation lab where MacWorld attendees were invited to doodle concepts for accessories to Apple products and to vote on them. Mophie's designers and engineers developed prototypes of the winners, including the Bevy, an iPod accessory that includes a bottle opener (hence its name), a key chain and a cord wrap for the iPod Shuffle. Mophie raised $3 million in funding from Village Ventures, Fresh Tracks Capital and angels before Kaufman sold it to mStation in September 2007. He rolled the proceeds into his second startup, Kluster, a development environment for collaborative decision-making, which raised an additional $1 million from Village and is still going strong. Quirky is a joint venture between Kaufman, Jason Port, formerly of Sportsline (which was acquired by CBS Corp. [NYSE:CBS]) and Kluster, and it includes former Epic Records president Charlie Walk as an adviser. Quirky is "for all of us with great ideas and talent who find ourselves sitting at home, at work, unemployed, over happy hour, wondering how to take that killer idea and really make it happen. These are those ideas that make you think, wouldn't it be cool if ... or if only that had a. ... Most of us just don't have the time, money or know-how to do it on our own, and that's why we made Quirky." The site engages participants to collaborate on product creation -- from concept, design, naming, manufacturing, marketing, on through to sales. Anyone can participate either by submitting their own product idea for $99, or by voting, rating and influencing other people's product ideas. Thirty cents of every dollar generated from the sale of a Quirky product goes back to site participants. Quirky's first product is already available from its online store. Developed by the startup's friends and family, the Sling Back is a universal wire retractor that holds wire up to 1/8" in diameter. "That means it will suck up over 3 feet of cable in one fell swoop ... whatever you have lying around ... whether that be headphone cords, small power cables, USB cords, firewire cables or printer cords," says the company. - Mary Kathleen Flynn
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From: Johnny ,
Yes, please be very cautious dealing with Ben Kaufman. He seems to be very unwilling or uninterested in dealing with the folks that do the work for his "crowdsourcing" projects. They do take money for their projects but won't hesitate to keep the money for administrative costs and forget the people that actually work on the projects. For Ben, a promise to pay at some undisclosed future date seems sufficient to him. He accepted money from clients for the Kluster Namethis project for several months and never shared it with the community. Namethis is now shut down. Check out the descriptions he uses to describe these projects. He talks about "community," "sharing," and "collaboration." It sounds very hip and modern! The web pages are creative and innovative. However, for namethis he went months without paying anyone or even explaining why we weren't paid. He quickly moved on to some other projects and stopped his involvement in namethis, leaving the project unfinished and promised features never completed. Watch out, this boy is flaky as hell!
Posted on:
August 31, 2009 7:39 PM
From: Leigh,
I have worked on quite a few namethis projects and gotten some money, but most recently, the site refused to transfer the money I earned and now the site is closed down. I would CERTAINLY avoid any future projects with this guy!
Posted on:
September 15, 2009 7:56 PM
From: Al,
A penny for your thoughts? Literally! The great promise of crowd sourcing has created the latest and greatest power tool for drilling the shaky pillars of the creative community - and the "quirky" Mr. Kaufman is just another two-bit.
Posted on:
October 13, 2009 11:03 AM
From: Rocky,
Add me to the list of community members with unpaid earnings from Namethis. I would take Leigh's advice and avoid any future projects with this guy. Sooner or later people will know what this guy is really about.
Posted on:
October 26, 2009 7:31 PM
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I would approach any website run by Kaufman with great caution. He is also behind NameThis which is a crowd-sourcing web site. Businesses who require a name for their brand seek the help of the online community. The fee they pay is meant to be shared with the winners in each project. However, at the moment Kaufman/Kluster is taking payments from clients without forwarding rewards to the community, which finds his sheer arrogance hardly endearing. It is scandalous that NameThis is allowed to operate.