El Dorado Hills startup MuteMe, which has sold thousands of its illuminated mute buttons through Kickstarter and direct sales off its website, is now listed on Amazon, which is driving even more sales.
The wired device was born of the pandemic, when suddenly many people and their kids had to work from home, and online meetings became a norm.
“When other people come into the room, they can see you are on a call,” said CEO and co-founder Parm Dhoot.
MuteMe’s founders have young children, and they experienced that their kids made noises while everyone was at home in the first months of the Covid-19 closures. The founders couldn’t hit the mute button fast enough.
So, they chose to invent a fast mute button, and then they started adding features, like multiple colors and a variety of controls.
The company went from concept in August 2020 to shipping product less than a year later. The initial funding came from a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo that raised nearly $300,000 and then a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $150,000.
MuteMe has shipped 30,000 units in 18 months, said co-founder and Chief Financial Officer Tye Davis. The company reached profitability last year and has had over $1 million in sales over 18 months.
It may seem like a simple button, but it is programmable for customizations, and it is able to interact with all the major videoconferencing platforms, including Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, which requires quite a bit of software, Dhoot said.
Dhoot sets his button up to be green when it is safe for anyone to talk in the room. It is yellow when he’s in a meeting, and it pulsates red when the computer’s mic is hot.
Davis sets his up the opposite. Red is off and green is live.
The button can also alert you to the changed status of your mic if it is changed by the meeting organizer.
There is even an option to make it work like a walkie-talkie, where you have to touch the stainless-steel faceplate to activate the mic.
“It gives you more security and control,” Davis said.
The wired button sells for $39.99 on the company’s website and on Amazon. A smaller USB stick version for laptops used on the go, called the MuteMe Mini, sells for $19.99.
The founders went on "Shark Tank," the reality television show where entrepreneurs pitch investors for funding, in October. They were seeking $200,000 in exchange for a 10% stake in the company. They were offered a deal, but it was for far more equity than they wanted to give, so they turned the money down, Dhoot said. The television appearance did spike sales for a while, he said.
All engineering for the buttons was done in house, Dhoot said. The company has five employees, and hires some part-time people as needed. It uses a contract company for fulfillment and shipping.
In addition to the basic button, the company offers custom engraving on the stainless-steel plate, which has been popular with big corporate customers, tech companies and some law firms.
While the pandemic created the market for the button, it also brought challenges, mostly related to supply chain delays, inflated costs and high shipping costs. MuteMe has had to configure the device to whatever chips are available at any given time.
The chip the company uses started out at $1 apiece. At some times the price was double that, and they have even seen them offered at over $10, Davis said.
Hardware margins are slim, so the company can’t pay more than a couple dollars. It also ended up spending money on air freight because it couldn’t wait for ships to deliver products in months instead of days.
