Lumawake

In the past month our team has been working around the clock to make Lumawake a reality. As transparency is a top priority for us, we feel it is important to bring you the most complete and unbiased update. In 2013, nearly all of our focus has been on tackling our two major hurdles:

1) Raising capital to finance the first manufacturing run

2) Interviewing and negotiating manufacturing partners

We selected this crowdfunding platform because we were confident that raising over $150,000 in pre-orders would open us up to a world of investment opportunities which meant we didn’t need your money upfront to make it happen. Ultimately this takes the risk off you (the backer) and puts all of the ownership on us (the supplier); the way it should be. From the beginning we made the promise to not charge your credit cards until we ship and we plan to keep that promise (in addition Amazon has legalese that actually prevent us from collecting prior to shipment). The good news is that we have been successful in identifying two highly qualified manufacturing partners but the bad news is we do not have the necessary capital to turn them on. The truth is we need to raise at least a $260k investment to bring Lumawake to market. Could it be done cheaper? Would it lack a fluid user experience? Would you be disappointed as a customer? The answers to all of these questions is a resounding YES. We are committed to making Lumawake a reality but we refuse to cut corners to do it.

Beyond building something that we think is cool and has the potential to change the way people live 1/3 of their lives, we are highly focused on creating a sustainable solution. This requires that the design be iterated, tested and improved along the way, all of which requiring money we don’t have YET. Our team has poured more than 2 years into this product, countless hours and more than $50k of our own money. Trust us, we don’t take this situation lightly. We are confident we will find a solution and ask that you remain optimistic but realize the bottom line: until we find a $260k investment, Lumawake may never make it to manufacturing. Even at that point we are still months away from shipping as it typically takes 90 days to get our manufacturing line tooled up. For this reason, and with a heavy heart, we must advise all of our backers we will be unable to meet our Early 2013 ship date. Until further notice, our production schedule and ship date are ON HOLD.

What does this mean for you?
Sit back, hold tight, and rally on. As a backer you have helped us prove that there is a viable market for Lumawake. For now your pledge remains just a pledge and you will not be charged until the product is ready to ship. If anyone is interested in canceling their order, we will certainly facilitate this process, please send us an email to hello@lumawake.com. In the meantime we promise to keep pounding the pavement in search of investors willing to take this journey with us. We also promise a firm answer on the fate of Lumawake by the end of March. We will do our very best to keep you up to speed with any breaking news.

This update was tough to write, no one likes ambiguity and we certainly don’t like having to share it. We appreciate your support and we promise to keep this train moving full steam. Go Lumawake!

Love,
Lumawake

Happy New Year from Lumawake!

We hope your holidays were filled with good food and even better people :)

Ours were filled with late nights and early mornings but we wouldn’t have it any other way!

For the most part we have been focused on our first major hurdle - filling the financial void inherently created by the selfstarter.us model.

As many of you know, we have committed to charging our backers only when Lumawake is ready to ship - not when we met our funding goal as is with the more traditional Kickstarter model.

From day one we planned to launch on Kickstarter so the short term cash flow issue that we are up against isn’t something we had originally planned for. That said, we’re weighing several options and moving as fast as humanly possible.

Once we have locked down our short-term financing we can move full speed into manufacturing and finalize our ship date.

In the mean time, look for another update in the near future that will include a backer survey to confirm which connector / finish you would like, etc.

As always, thank you for strapping in and taking this journey with us. It’s sure to be one hell of a ride!

Love,

The Lumawake Team

Down to the wire but we did it together: 1,013 backers, $150,937 raised, 30 days.

We can’t thank you enough for backing Lumawake and helping us spread the good word. We’re absolutely blown away by the love you guys have shown us over the last 30 days.

Enjoy the holidays with your loved ones and be sure to stay tuned! We will continue to keep you in the loop.

Thank you again for believing.

Love,

Lumawake

What’s cooler than a Lumawake?

A Lumawake with a brand new iPhone 5 docked in it!

We’re excited to announce we will be giving away a brand new iPhone 5 to one lucky winner.

Every time you share our page (https://lumawake.us) AND tag us (@Lumawake) in the same tweet, you are automatically entered to win!

The more you share the better your chance to win.

We will announce the winner next week at the end of our campaign.

Help us spread the good word by heading back to the homepage and hitting the tweet to share button!

Love, Lumawake

We’re excited to announce that as of today, we passed the halfway point!  With more than 500 backers and more than 2 weeks left, we’re right on track to make Lumawake a reality. 

The glass is definitely half full!

To thank our beautiful believers, we will be announcing 2 new integrations in the coming weeks. Stay tuned :)

Love, 

The Lumawake Team

Lumawake is the perfect gift for the person who has everything. After all, no one has a smart dock for their iPhone because Lumawake is the first :)

For a limited time, we’re offering complimentary “coming soon” gift cards that will arrive just in time for the holidays.

Each aluminum card is hand made with love by the Lumawake team.

We will send out an email as soon as our campaign has come to a close to confirm your shipping information (free within the United States). 

Let your loved one’s know that this holiday season you’re giving the gift of innovation. 

Happy Holidays!

Lumawake

This Thanksgiving, Lumawake has A LOT to be thankful for.

Two short weeks ago to the day, we were turned down by Kickstarter. With no backup plan in place, we sat in the office staring at each other in disbelief.  More than a few hours of feeling sorry for ourselves passed before the mood shifted.  We’ll never forget that moment. 

In a heartbeat, the mood changed from defeated to determined. We had simply come too far to quit.

Our family, friends and loved ones rallied around us. We worked 15 – 20 hours a day and they were understanding and supportive to no end.

We can’t thank them enough.

We ultimately decided to leverage selfstarter.us, which was recently open-sourced by the Lockitron team.

We can’t thank them enough.

We called in a friend to build it. That friend was James Dullaghan. A talented web developer and jack-of-all-trades, James was more than up for the challenge. I’m pretty sure he didn’t sleep for the next week. He taught himself Ruby on Rails and put together a crowdfunding platform as we all watched in amazement. His dedication and ability to learn on the fly is mind boggling to me.  Lumawake.us was up and running as of last Monday and has worked flawlessly ever since.

We can’t thank him enough.

We officially launched on Monday, November 19^th and in 3 short days have been featured in Tech Crunch, Venture Beat, CNET, The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), The Next Web, Cult of Mac, Ubergizmo, Matters of Grey, Crowdfunding.org and Crowdfund Insider.

So far, 300 awesome people have opted to join us on this adventure.

We can’t thank them enough.

Win, lose, or draw, we are forever humbled by this experience and will never forget those that have helped and supported us along the way.

We can’t give enough thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Love,

The Lumawake Team

We have big news.  Hopefully good news.

As of Thursday, Novemeber 8^th Lumawake was rejected from Kickstarter.

A pioneer in the crowdfunding space, Kickstarter set out in 2009 to allow people to bring creative projects to life through the direct support of others.  To date, over $350 million has been pledged by more than 2.5 million people, funding more than 30,000 creative projects.

Hardware projects quickly became a crowd favorite and innovators flocked to the Kickstarter gold rush.  Projects like Pebble and OUYA raised millions and blew their funding goals out of the water.

However, Kickstarter wasn’t created for pre-sales.  They don’t vet or track projects after funding is met and have no way to monitor or enforce refunds when projects fail to deliver.  It has been reported that up to 75% of Hardware and Product Design projects missed their projected ship date.  Stalled projects led to unhappy backers and things began to unravel quickly.  In an effort to stop the bleeding and reinforce their original mission, Kickstarter announced some big changes to their project guidelines on September 20^th.

Our team had originally planned to launch Lumawake in late September using renderings and simulations – a common practice on Kickstarter that is now prohibited.  We spent the entire month of October feverishly polishing up and finalizing our working prototypes, finishing our video and taking product shots.

When we finally submitted our project plan last week we were confident that we had successfully navigated through the roadblocks and were fully compliant with the new guidelines.

Our prototypes were done and worked as advertised.  We did not use any photo-realistic renderings or simulations.  We had identified our “Risks and Challenges” and our manufacturing plan was in place.

What happened next took us all by surprise.

We received a form email from Kickstarter informing us that we been denied for not meeting their “guidelines and focus”.  Our initial reaction was that there must be a misunderstanding and we could easily clear it up.  Since we had put so much additional effort into meeting the new requirements , we didn’t expect any problems.  We immediately sat down and began the appeal process.

Limited to only 500 characters, the equivalent of just 3 Tweets, we did our best to explain the situation and asked for clarification.  We even linked to a heartfelt letter which we posted on our website, and as a backup sent the same message in an email to their support team.

12 hours later a final decision was made.  Here is the response we received from Kickstarter:

Following a brief stint of depression, we emerged more driven and inspired than ever.  We had come too far to let this stop us.  We rallied together, locked ourselves in the office, and vowed to overcome yet another setback.  We ultimately decided to follow in the footsteps of app.net and more recently, Lockitron, who created their own crowdfunding platform after being denied by Kickstarter.  They famously raised $500,000 in the first 24 hours and have amassed a whopping $2.3 million to date.  The makers of Lockitron then open-sourced their funding platform, selfstarter.us and put it on GitHub.

We can’t thank them enough.

We’re scrambling to put the pieces together and will be self launching Lumawake early next week.

Since we won’t be taking the pre-order money until Lumawake is ready to ship, we will be minimizing our backers’ risk and will have extra incentive to ship a quality product as soon as possible.

We’re nervous.  We’re excited.  But more than anything, we’re fired up and ready for the challenge!

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