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.
This 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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