It's safe to say that Sphero's first Kickstarter campaign was a raving success.
The campaign for Sphero's new RVR robot closed late Thursday night, raising $1,006,252 from 3,453 backers, far surpassing its initial goal of $150,000
"Thanks for supporting, sharing, and talking up our campaign. We’re thrilled that other people are just as excited for RVR as we are. This robot is going to be a game-changer and you guys made it possible," the Boulder-based Sphero team wrote in an update on Kickstarter.
The Sphero RVR is a programmable, all-terrain tank-like robot that allows users to drive and program a robot, while learning to code.
https://youtu.be/ip28n_prmbY
The RVR will retail for $249 once it gets to stores, but Kickstarter backers could purchase the robot for $199.
Despite the company's obvious monetary success, Sphero co-founder Adam Wilson told Colorado Inno in a prior interview that the company's primary goal for the campaign was to gather feedback from customers.
"We said, ‘we’re going to make this, help us raise the funds to make sure we know how much to make and what do you want?’ You get to tell us what you want before we make it,” he said in an earlier interview.
With nearly 3,500 backers and 233 comments on the campaign, the company certainly has a captive audience.
In addition to feedback on the campaign, Sphero organized a hackathon this month to bring eight backers in to test out the RVR over a series of challenges.
Backers were paired with Sphero employees to code the RVR through a series of challenges that utilized Sphero’s technology portfolio. One challenge involved coding the RVR to navigate through a colored tile maze using the color sensing technology from Specdrums that allows the robot to sense and react to certain colors it rolls over.
In selecting the eight backers, Sphero opened an application process, complete with a series of questions. Overall, 661 people applied to the hackathon and the list was eventually whittled down to the final eight.
With the close of the Kickstarter campaign, Sphero hopes to ship out the first set of RVR's this fall. For those that missed out on the Kickstarter, RVR's are available for pre order on Sphero's website.
This is the third most funded Boulder Kickstarter project ever, trailing behind only two campaigns by fitness startup monkii.
