The Rise and Fall of Quirky: The Startup That Bet on the Genius of Regular Folk

Less than a year ago, Quirky announced a "hackathon" where people could come to their office and hack on their products. We had to sign an NDA before attending. I went, as did several dozen others - most of the attendees being programmers.

We arrived, in the midst of a massive downpour of rain, and had to stand in their hallway for about 15 minutes. Then they told us that the hackathon had been cancelled, but they would try to throw together a little presentation for us.

So what I know of Quirky is this - they announce a hackathon so programmers can try their products, then cancel it that day. They take this person's money for some merchandise, then ship it out weeks after it is expected. Now we learn, without much surprise, that the company is failing.

This goes along with another point which I've come to believe from my experiences over the years - that a company that just does its job is already ahead of a significant number of its competitors. Just do what you say you'll do - and you're already way ahead. If you announce a hackathon so programmers can try your products - don't cancel it the same day. If you take someone's money to ship merchandise out - don't ship it five weeks after they expect it.

I called a medium-sized server colocation facility in New York in 1998, because our company was interested in hosting a cage with server racks there. I called the sales team and did not get a call back that day, nor the next day, nor the next day. I also called a number of other colocation facilities, all of which got back to me, and one of which we chose and gave however many thousands or tens of thousands of dollars a month to. About a month after I made the initial call, and a few days after we had made our selection and were closing a deal with one of their competitors, the unreachable colo company calls me back up finally. I told them we had already selected a competitor and they hung up. Then a few months later they called back and asked if we needed colo space. I said we already had our machines elsewhere and were happy with their competitor. Then they called again a few months later, really laying on the thick sales talk and pot sweeteners.

Just call me back in the first place! If they had called me back the next day, or the next week, we very may well have given them the contract for tens of thousands. If you get a hot lead (we called them), because we want to sign a contract giving your company tens of thousands of dollars a month - just call us back! By the next day, or at least within a few days. Amazingly, some companies don't do this. Not surprisingly, the company which did this went bankrupt in early 2002.

I agree. Just out of curiosity ,at what price the egg minder will sell well (if possible) ?

Haha, so true. Have an upvote

exactly! Guess they weren't George Carlin fans

Friend, you just described most of the Internet of Things.

I think the problem is a bit more complex than that. Anyone with an idea that actually has real market potential is probably going to want more than 10% of the profit. And with Kickstarter/Indiegogo generating millions of dollars in idea funding, it's a lot easier these days to build a product yourself. In order for this kind of platform to work financially, you would probably have to alter the model so that 1) inventors can get out of it as much as they put in, 2) it only promotes products that can actually make it in the market at a realistic price, and 3) it doesn't depend on a black box of expensive engineers and product people.

Something more like a rapid fab company to prototype possible products and vet them with the community, probably integrated with a crowd interest platform like Kickstarter.

Replacing my workstation with a high-end laptop removed all but the power cord for me ;)

The answer isn't to make everything wireless. It's to go to Home Depot, buy a dollar's worth of cable ties, bend over, and clean it up.

Funny enough, this is a stark lesson for why Quirky failed. They made exactly the sort of thing you asked for and nobody wanted it.

iMac?

I have found that wireless is not as good as it seems because you can't have efficient wireless power at the moment or batteries that last decades.

So you don't have the cable anymore but now your devices randomly stop working until you change the batteries and if you run out of charged batteries it's really annoying.

Proving that it is secure and avoiding interference are also problems that are currently impratical to solve.

how about screwing hooks into the underside of the desk and hang it all up?