What’s a Town Meeting, you ask? During this live broadcast, Ben Kaufman, Quirky’s founder and CEO, will bring the community up to speed on what we’ve been up to and where we’re going. Also, we’re just closing our books on the 2014 fiscal year, so we’ll update you on our performance and forecast our goals for the coming year.
From the NYTimes article.
Investors are betting that Quirky can build a sizable business. The company has raised $185 million to date. General Electric, the nation’s largest manufacturer, has put in $30 million, as part of a partnership to experiment with faster-paced models of manufacturing.
…Quirky takes 90 cents of each dollar of product sales. The other 10 cents is distributed among the inventor community. The person who came up with the product idea typically pockets 4 cents of that. Lesser shares go for contributions like enhancing the idea, choosing the price or coming up with the name.
…Quirky, with nearly 300 employees, is growing fast. The company is private and does not make public its financial reports, but Mr. Kaufman says Quirky’s revenue more than doubled in 2014, to $100 million.
In NYC we see Quirky ads all over the place (include at TV ad!) Adafruit was almost in the same building so we’re always interested in what this company is up to, $185 million is *a lot*. And it’s an interesting marketplace for ideas since KickStarter and other crowdfunding sites have come up since Quirky’s launch. One thing we do not know is how the Quirky vs XOXO dustpan war ended. If we’re around we’ll ask, they’re both in NYC, would be cool to know they’re getting along now. Recently Quirky started a microfactory in San Francisco, we’d like to hear what they’re up to and what machines they’ve chose to use and why.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
