Monthly series
Welcome to the December edition of Kickstarted in LDN, our monthly series that keeps you updated on the latest successfully funded projects from the capital.
Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform where members of the public can pledge different sums of money to help new hardware and software projects get off the ground and even be the catalyst to start booming new enterprises.
Review the best of December 2012
December was a busy month for some of London’s top Kickstarters. Two of our featured campaigns last month have been funded way beyond the target, and the third is well on its way to being fully funded before its deadline.
Projecteo
Up to the end of November 2012 only 30 of the 407 British campaigns have been successfully funded, but December boasts one of the most wildly successful London based Kickstarter projects so far. Projecteo, the tiny Instagram projector, is already 471% funded and at time of writing there are still 48 hours to go.
It’s difficult to stand out amongst the vast swathes of Instagram spin-offs but Benjamin Redford from London has managed to do just that with his interesting take on the classic slide projector.
Physical Instagrams have been a huge hit across the web with stickers, fridge magnets, poster boards and negatives all making a success and Projecteo builds on this by offering a service that will ‘develop’ the 9 images you select from your Instagram onto a single 35mm piece of film.
The service will then turn this into a miniature slide wheel, and send it to you ready to be played on your miniature Projecteo.
The operation is run from London, the printing happens in New York and the projectors are built in China making this a truly international start up. A recurring theme with all of this month’s featured items is their slick design, their glossy videos and their clear vision. Future Kickstarters take note – attention to detail when it comes to user experience tends to garner a hugely positive response.
2,708 Backers – $84,924 Pledged of a campaign target $18,000
Completed Wednesday December 19th
Vi Wallet
Slick design is certainly a strong selling point for our next featured project from Anderson Gammon. The Vi card holder, whose campaign finished on the 7th December with funding of 206%, is a beautifully crafted product that successfully solves an existing problem. Flimsy card holders that confuse near-field technology and fishing around in your wallet at the Oyster tap-ins are to be problems of the past if the Vi card holder continues its success.
Anderson and his brother run the entire project by themselves. The design, the production and the business have all been looked after by the duo, who split themselves between London and the West Country.
468 Backers – £10,349 pledged of a campaign target of £5000
Completed December 7th 2012
myLED
The third and final startup of this month’s round up is a little gadget that at the time of writing has over 800 backers with 9 days still to go.
Everyone who has ever owned a Blackberry will know about LED notifications, and Federico Nitidi, a Blackberry user himself, became frustrated when using his new iPad that he couldn’t be notified of emails, tweets and Facebook posts. The idea for myLED was born.
The device slots into the headphone socket of your iPhone or iPad, and once combined with the myLED app you can choose to be alerted of incoming messages, missed calls and more.
myLED have announced full compatibility with the iPhone 5 and the latest iPad range. The huge number of Backers already suggests there is a market for this and people are keen to avoid Apple’s rather unsatisfactory use of the in built flash as a notification system.
With over a million iPhones in London alone and millions more across the world, myLED could really be a Kickstarter startup that becomes a mammoth success.