General Magic Movie Thrills Crowd

On December 11th, TechRaising held a screening of the inspiring documentary, General Magic. Members of the Santa Cruz tech community gathered at the Landmark Nickelodeon Theater to watch and learn about one of the most innovative, yet unheard of, companies in Silicon Valley.

The documentary told the story about a team, consisting of the top talent, trying to revolutionize the way humans interacted with technology. General Magic released a closed network communication device called the Magic Link, that did not sell. This product launch failure led to the bankruptcy of General Magic.

The story captivated the audience. Two 12 year old kids expressed how the film gave them insight into the start of the now ubiquitous, mobile phone. Brayden Estby, owner of 11th Hour Coffee, drew parallels from the mobile phone industry as he thought about current trends in coffee. Everyone in attendance gave the documentary glowing reviews.

Following the movie, Andrew Mueller, our moderator, asked special guests David Hoffman, Michael Stern, and Dee Gardetti to provide us with firsthand accounts of what it was like inside General Magic. David Hoffman shot all of the original footage used in the documentary, who happens to be best friends with former CEO of General Magic, Marc Porat. Michael Stern, a corporate lawyer at Cooley, was the former CFO of General Magic. And, Dee Gardetti was the first hire of General Magic and head of HR.

David Hoffman expressed how General Magic failed in part, due to lack of advertising. The only Magic Link devices sold were to family and friends. No one else understood how to use the device or what it could do.

Michael Stern taught us that the lack of structure in the company caused serious problems. The engineers wanted to build and work on their passion projects, which was not conducive to meeting deadlines and shipping products. When a product manager was hired, the engineers would find a way to make them leave by “choice”. Michael Stern thought that effective product managers could have saved the company, but we will never know.

On a more positive note, Dee Gardetti discussed the importance of perseverance in the job market. In the documentary, Tony Fadell — a recent college graduate and known now as one of the fathers of the iPod, iPad, and founder of Nest — wanted to work at General Magic so badly, he called Dee daily to get an update on his application. Dee found Tony so relentless that she felt like if she didn’t hire him, he would still be calling today.

Events like these are important for the Santa Cruz community. They bring people together, motivate them to grow, and continue to inspire people to reach their goals and build amazing things. For more events with TechRaising, please subscribe to our mailing list, join our meetup group, and like us on Facebook.

If you are interested in learning more about General Magic, it is expected to hit select theaters in San Francisco and New York in Spring 2019.

 

Santa Cruz Project Lights Up Kickstarter

With a Kickstarter campaign that fully funded in 15 minutes Zohar Wouk is not on a typical teenager’s path. He veered from that path toward the end of 11th grade when he left school to attend an entrepreneurship boot camp at Draper University.  It was there that he first came up with the idea for Futuristic Lights — and the passion to advance technology for the art of Gloving.

I had the chance to talk with Zohar and this is what. I learned.

When Zohar and his then 9th grader  coder AbeAbe Karplus attended the 2014 TechRaising weekend they had been working on the prototype for their first product for almost a year. Zohar’s mother participated at TechRaising the previous year and built Snappost. From what Zohar heard and observed, he thought to bring his idea to TechRaising to see how far they could push themselves and how much they could accomplish in the two days. They ended up getting much more out of the weekend than a bunch of code written.

This was the first time they had shared the project publicly and they gained many valuable insights from experts — from UI designers to VC’s. This helped them clarify where they were going with the project. But most of all, the most lasting outcome of the weekend was connecting with the Santa Cruz tech community that has continued to offer support, insights, feedback, and connections.

Since TechRaising 2014, Zohar and Abe added Abe Jellinek, Pawel Faryna and Michael Chubbs Marchetteto to their team and they honed their focus to a single product — The Kinetic under the company Futuristic Lights. They have plans for additional product after they launch and learn from The Kinetic.

Being young, fresh, broke entrepreneurs, they didn’t have the funds to finance the first round of manufacturing. They decided that Kickstarter would be an ideal vehicle for raising funds for The Kinetic. Kickstarter is a great way to reach groups of people that are passionate about niche products. Products that they feel they have a role in making possible and products they want to use themselves. This gives the group a reason to rally around the project. If the project doesn’t meet it’s funding goal it doesn’t happen.

The gloving community, is active and vibrant — and certainly rallied around the Kinetic. One of the reason’s for the success of the Futuristic Lights Kickstarter campaign is the active curation of, and communication with, that community.

Much of this happens on Facebook. Zohar’s team made the launch of the Kickstarter campaign an anticipated event – much like the opportunity to buy tickets to a concert that is surely going to sell out. They created videos highlighting each of the 6 modes of the gloves and two more teasers about the project. Each of these videos was rolled out over the course of a month. Soon the gloving community was waiting in anticipation for the next video revealing another feature.

When they announced the launch date and time they combined it with a give away of the product. Sharing the post was the ticket to enter the give away. The post was shared 1000 times and had a reach of almost 70,000 people.

The gloving community was so primed and excited for the launch that they were waiting with rockstar fan anticipation for the launch. Like standing on line for concert tickets to go on sale they were waiting online for the Kickstarter to begin. They were there to click as fast as they could to get one of the early bird specials. And boy did they go fast.

Still, the team wasn’t sure what would happen.  They thought the community was excited but had no idea how much. Despite the whole team’s hard work, the five were very nervous that the project wouldn’t get funded. They guessed they would raise about $5000 the first day and would consider that a win. For them, it was surreal watching the numbers climb and climb. Their initial $20k goal was the absolute minimum required to produce the basic product. With every dollar as the campaign grows they gain confidence in the quality of their ability to deliver a great product.

The Kickstarter campaign runs until Jan 11, 2015.  Click here to light up your world.

photo: FuturisticLights.com