We got around 123k USD pledged so far and would love for you to join us. United States IP addresses ar blocked to this site, but if you are an accredited investor you can join by emailing our CEO directly: martin@transparentspeaker.com
We also want to mention that On June 20, Kickstarter will be launching something special, and we’ve been invited to participate. We can’t spill the beans about what’s being planned until launch day, but you can look forward to new projects from some of the most inventive independent creators from the platform’s history — so stay tuned!
Best regards,
Martin and the team
Martin handing out the Transparent Speaker at Startupday. Photo credit: Akseli Kaukoranta
Hello all backers! Do you want to change the consumer electronics industry? We are now live with our equity crowdfunding and have made a new video:
With equity crowdfunding, you get a financial stake in the company you’re supporting. Due to Swedish corporation laws and since it's not a public offering you need to login in on FundedByMe see financial details. It's free and doesn't not commit you to anything.
Screen Shot of FundedByMe site
Before we launched we had already signed up more investment interest than what we reached with our kickstarter campaign. If all people that backed the speaker here on kickstarter would join in we would reach our goal and be able to manufacture and send out small transparent speakers by the end of the year. The minimun amount is extremely low so this is our chance to keep creative control of Transparent Speaker while getting assistance from a passionate community of normal people.
If you are US citizen you most likely will need to be accredited investor, so please email me, martin@transparentspeaker.com, and I will help to investigate that further. European countries have an more open policy about normal people becoming shareholders.
Additional legal note: Transparent Sound AB or it's US subsidiary People Products Co. are not a broker-dealer, funding portal or investment advisor; and neither the website nor companies participate in the offer or sale of securities.
Apart from the boring legal stuff, this is really exciting and we really hope some of you want to become part of the Transparent Speaker family! Check out FundedByMe.
We are happy to announce an exclusive opportunity to become a shareholder in Transparent Speaker. Our equity campaign will go live on FundedByMe next Thursday, 6th of April. FundedByMe is the fastest growing crowd investment platform connecting +78k international investors and entrepreneurs. We have known their great team since they started and think their platform is a perfect fit for our early stage of growth. Since the key thing we need to do is to grow a dedicated B2B sales team, we are no longer at a suitable stage for reward/project based crowdfudning here on Kickstarter. That said, our shareholders will of course get heavily discounted deals on current and upcoming products. Our goal will still be to launch a new speaker this year and ultimatly to be the best at serving you, our community.
To get more detailed information on how awesome this opportunity is you need a FundedByMe account. We will also announce here again when the campaign goes live. We are a company born online and made possible by crowdfunding so we could not be more excited about this chance to continue to democratize the way our financial systems works.
With love, Transparent Speaker Team
Ps. If you are in Stockholm we will have some limited seating speaker demo nights coming up. Email martin@transparentspeaker.com for more information.
Pps. We hope to maybe return to kickstarter once we have built up our B2B side
We didn’t make it, and that sucks. As we pointed out in a previous update we knew that we needed some small miracle to get 10x more backers per day during our final week to reach our goal.
Small Transparent Speaker Funding Progress
While we did manage to get a celebrity involved (thanks Steve Angello, you are awesome!) and even do a great special design signature edition with him, we still fell short. We only had one last card up our sleeve and that was an unboxing video of our prototype done by Lew at the youtube channel Unbox Therapy. The last review he did of our large Transparent Speaker got 2,8m views so we were somewhat optimistic that it could lead to major push for the campaign. Unfortunately screws came lose on the prototype during the international shipment to Canada which resulted in a prototype he couldn't review. Never happened with that prototype while being carried two laps around the world by us, so really unlucky!
Huston, we have a problem.
Needless to say we feel gutted that we did not make it. And really frustrated to get as far as 53% of our goal, 130k dollars is a lot of money! More importantly we feel an obligation to our 476 backers that where expecting to get something great from us.
What happens now?
First of all, no money will be charged. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing platform. So you pay nothing and we get nothing now that we did not reach our funding goal. We kind of like that, because it keeps project honest. We wanted to be super transparent in this project and have communicated a realistic but very bootstrapped budget. If we had set a 40k funding goal (like MANY hardware projects do) we might have been fully funded in the first couple of days and that could have generated more positive press so that we might have ended up with 200k or more by now. But we simply did not feel comfortable with that approach with no other financial backing available to us.
Will we ever make the speaker?
To be honest it's not a given. We need to sit down and look at our options. First step is that we will put together a survey and send in out in the next couple of days. We want to check things like how many of you would be fine with a bluetooth only version etc. We hope everyone can contribute to it. That way we will know if we can make some cuts in the development budget and might be able to do a re-launch with a slightly lower funding goal.
Thanks so much for being a backer, we love you for it!
We have befriended awesome DJ slash artist Steve Angello and made a beautiful custom all black edition of the speaker! Full black satin finished aluminium housing. Black anodized details. Steve’s signature on the front panel.
We are so very happy and proud Steve Angello wants this project to succeed, and with YOUR help we might still have a chance... This is super exclusive version is only available now, during the final 70 hours! Please note that this product will only happen if we reach our funding goal, help us spread the word!!
You can find the new 350usd pledge level available now.
