Boston-based manufacturing consultancy Dragon Innovation piqued the attention of manufacturing-oriented entrepreneurs in startup hubs around the country back in August when it landed a $2.3 million of private investment to launch its own crowdfunding site for early stage startups.
For the past 22 days, 11 companies have digitally displayed their respective projects. Now, with a little over a week left to go, the majority of the participating entrepreneurs are crossing their fingers, hoping to meet their funding goals and move into production.
But not Tessel. The Needham, Mass.-based startup reached its financing goal of $50,000 within the first few hours the site was live. With nine days left to go on the campaign, Tessel has $121,656 already in the bank from 635 backers who believe in the future of the startup's WiFi-compatible and JavaScript-programmable microcontroller.
Tessel's microprocessor is the first of its kind giving web developers and "anyone who can create a basic website" a chance to break through from the Web to the physical world, Tessel Co-founder Jia Huang told BostInno. Tessel's technology enables developers to push code completely wirelessly to the device, which can then be controlled through a mobile application. The product is compatible with Node.js and leverages the Node Package Manager to make the Tessel model easy to install, program and use.
“It takes a lot of time, money and risk to develop a physical product,” Huang said. “Now, all of a sudden, that one idea you had in the afternoon and wanted to build takes you three months later, and you’re still not done. We want them to have Tessel and do it in that one afternoon, right when you have that idea.”
Jon McKay, Tim Ryan and Huang came up with the idea in September 2012 at Olin College of Engineering. They were struck by the notion of Internet-connected devices, and how products that were once just on the Internet–or in the physical space–could be conjoined.
"We thought a lot of people who had the great ideas were the people who were the web developers, who knew the power and value of the Internet. They understand what the Internet can bring to the product and are in the best position to make a new-gen physical device that is connected to the Web," explained Huang. "We thought, 'If the real issue here is the hardware, then why don't we just make hardware for developers? Keep it within their own skill set, and they can just get started right away making something cool.'"
With their vision established, the three students banded together with electrical engineer Eric Kolker and neural engineer Kelsey Breseman to create the first Tessel model, which they finalized in April. When the school year was over, the team moved into Highland Capital's incubator in June to refine their product, coming up with six different versions.
Then, one fortuitous summer afternoon, Huang ran into cofounder of Zeo Ben Rubin in the lobby of the Cambridge Innovation Center; he recommended that she get in touch with Dragon Innovation's Scott Miller. A few weeks later, the Tessel team ran into Miller in person at a meetup at Bolt, Boston's new hardware accelerator. Miller then gave Huang a ring and invited Tessel to participate in its one-of-a-kind crowdfunding platform, specifically for manufacturing projects.
The Tessel team agreed.
"One of the best things about Dragon is that before you're on the platform, they do a cost analysis and check out everything you need to manufacture," said Huang. When startups use self-managed crowdfunding sites, like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, they are often gambling on their own calculations; there is no way to guarantee that, if they meet their goal, they will have raised enough money to get them through the production process.
"But because the numbers [Dragon Innovation] gives you are feasible to actually deliver a product with, it got rid of a lot of risk for us," explained Huang.
Manufacturing costs depend on volume, so Huang could not provide a potential market price for the Tessel; however, she noted that they would love to make the Tessel as cheap as possible to empower those without hardware experience to create their own machines.
Huang herself has programmed the microprocessor to let in some light when her alarm goes off each morning. "I'm back at school now, and waking up has been a problem for me," Huang said with a sheepish laugh. "I've attached [Tessel] to a motor, so it will open the blinds for you."
"[Tessel] is not our end goal," Huang said. "It's the very first step toward building and shipping a physical product that should be as easy as deploying an app on your iPhone. The funds we get from Tessel will get us further down the road."
The startup is already in discussion about potential partnerships with corporations on both the East and West Coasts that are interested in incorporating Tessel into their products. Huang said Tessel had inbound interest with around 10 to 15 companies, and had gone into further discussion with three or four.
The first batch of Tessels will be shipped by the end of November.
