Archive for June 2014

Dragon Innovation: Help when you wanna launch products or scale companies

Cambridge, MA, USA-based Dragon Innovation wants to be your go-to guy for anything related to crowdfunding projects. Their east-west strategy combines pre-crowdfunding diligence & spade work, a crowdfunding platform, followed by manufacturing & project management services.

The rise of crowdfunding as a legitimate way to seek investments for all kinds of projects has led to a flourishing industry surrounding these projects. Anyone with an idea & who’s a bit of Web-savvy can get started with crowdfunding & raise bucketloads of finance. This also means that a lot of these creators don’t have the technical & manufacturing process knowledge or skills required to fulfill the orders they get, especially where hardware is concerned.

As a matter of fact, many of them don’t even know how much the product is going to cost them to manufacture, package & ship at scale. At best, they have working prototypes that get them through the crowdfunding process with a fundraising target that has little or nothing to do with the total financing required for the manufacturing process that follows.

At the end of it, they have lots of cash & lots of orders, & then start looking at the manufacturing issues. That’s just wrong on so many levels, & one of the main reasons why a lot of crowdfunded projects fail or get delayed after being funded.

Any good project would have all this sorted out way before the crowdfunding campaign is launched.

dragonThis is where the Dragon Certified program comes into the picture, providing a one-stop shop for all your crowdfunded hardware project’s needs.They charge US $5,000 upfront for a top-to-bottom detailed design review for manufacturing, along with all your CAD files & a bill of materials (BOM). You’ll get a precise COGS analysis for manufacturing in the US as well as another one for the far east (as in China).

Put simply, they will tell you how much the manufacturing cost is going to be at scale, & how much you need to raise on the crowdfunding platform.

Once the project is ‘Dragon Certified,’ investors don’t have to worry about the creator’s capability to manufacture & deliver the product to crowdfunding backers.

Creators can, if you want, also raise money on the Dragon crowdfunding platform. If you do, they’ll take another 2 percent of the funds you raise. Once you’re through this stage, they can provide all the manufacturing services you need, including factory selection & on-site project management.

Cambridge, MA-based Dragon Innovation was founded by Scott N. Miller & Herman Pang. Miller is the company’s CEO & Pang is the President.

Image Credit: Dragon Innovation

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This messaging app allows users to send selfies instead of stickers or emojis

Like we have been saying here at What’s New On The Net, messaging apps are the flavor of the season. Over the last two months or so, we have profiled several of them here on our Web pages.

But this one from Los Angeles, USA, is definitely off the beaten track. Called React Messenger, this is a selfie-centered messaging app. Yup, you heard right. No need to send stickers or emojis to friends & colleagues. Send your own selfie with your message. Thus, React can claim to be the 1st ever selfie instant messenger. It’s a new way to chat with your real facial expressions in each message. Natural is the way to go, say these guys at React, since facial expressions do say a lot about a person at that moment in time. Messaging’s pivotal moment, perhaps?

This new messaging app effectively turns selfies into sticker emoticons. No need to sift through tons of stickers, or spending time to select one. Just click your face & send it across. Stick your tongue out at a friend or show off those new pair of sun glasses. Emotions, after all, say a lot about who or what you are.

Launched in November 2013, like they say on their own blog, React Messenger was then “an unfinished, unpolished, buggy little messaging app with lots of design flaws” But the response it got apparently was staggering. Within a month itself, React Messenger was downloaded 100,000 downloads.

Using the smartphone camera, instant reactions allow users to reply with selfies at the tap of a button. They can send double-sided photos or selfies instantly. And old messages get auto deleted, making way for new ones.

From what we hear, this new messaging app is going great guns in some of the Asian countries.

For now, React is available only as an iOS app & can be downloaded on any Apple device with iOS 7.0 or more.

Click here to download Reach on your iOS device.

Image Credit: React

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