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CE Manufacturing Specialist PCH International Launches Its Hardware Incubator, Highway1
Electronics manufacturing specialist PCH International is looking to find new clients just as they start. To do so, it’s creating an incubator called Highway1 that will help young hardware startups build new products.
PCH International is run by Irishman Liam Casey, who has been dubbed “Mr. China” by some. The company is best known for sourcing, manufacturing and distributing good for some of the biggest consumer electronics companies out there.
With Highway1, PCH International will have early access to some of the most promising hardware startups as they’re building their businesses. When it comes time for them to start mass-producing and shipping products, the company will be right there to help them.
Heading up the incubator will be Brady Forrest, advisor to startups and former member of Khosla Ventures. Forrest joined earlier this year to start the program, which will run for four months and is expected to have two classes a year.
PCH will choose about 10 startups per class to participate in the program. According to Forrest, they’re looking for participants who want to build a company, not just a single product. With that in mind, the selection process will run through its engineering team to determine technical capability, as well as retail partners to asses the viability of products the startups are looking to build.
The incubator will be focused on educating startups about supply chain, inventory management, and actual manufacturing. That will help those startups go from the prototype stage to a company that can build and deliver products on a global scale. Participating startups will get $20,000 in seed capital in exchange for 3-6% of equity, as well as access to one-on-one engineering and design expertise, as well as access to mentors.
They will reside in PCH’s new U.S. headquarters in San Francisco. where participating startups will have space next to the folks at Lime Lab, the design firm that PCH acquired last year. In addition to the curriculum in San Francisco, the incubator will also spend two weeks in Shenzhen to check out the local supply chain there.
There’s an emerging class of hardware-based startup accelerators emerging, which include Lemnos Labs, Haxlr8r, and Bolt. Highway1 is trying to differentiate itself in part with its location: Being in San Francisco puts participating startups close to where tech talent is. Meanwhile, PCH still has strong ties to the supply chain and hardware ecosystem in China.
For startups that might be interested, Highway1 is taking applications for its inaugural class now. The program will begin in October and go about four months, with a demo day early next year.
Brit + Co. Nabs $6.3M Series A Led By Oak Investment Partners To Go Big On Its Tech Media Hub For Makers
It’s become crystal clear over the past couple of years that Brit Morin, the former Googler who has been dubbed Silicon Valley’s answer to Martha Stewart, is not just another 20-something woman operating a pretty lifestyle blog. Since its late 2011 launch, Brit + Co. has emerged as a full-fledged technology and media company, complete with a staff of 16, more than 100 editorial contributors, its own suite of mobile apps, big name brand partnerships, and an e-commerce arm.
Now Brit + Co. is primed to take all of this to the next level, with the close of a $6.3 million round of funding led by Oak Investment Partners.
The new round, which serves as Brit + Co.’s Series A (the company closed on a $1.25 million seed last year), also included the participation of Index Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Aileen Lee’s Cowboy Ventures, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, entrepreneur Karl Jacob, and longtime Facebooker Katie Zacarian.
The Series A also marks the formation of Brit + Co.’s board of directors, which now includes Oak’s Fred Harman, who steered Oak’s quite successful investment in Huffington Post among other big media deals, and iVillage co-founder Tina Sharkey along with Ms. Morin. Also coming on board as advisors are One Kings Lane exec Sascha Jamall and Apple vet Allison Johnson.
In an interview this week, Brit Morin told me that the new funding comes on the heels of some pretty impressive growth. “Since this time last year we’ve grown by 11x, and our users are super-duper engaged,” she said. “Out of our monthly uniques, 50 percent come on a weekly basis, and 20 percent on daily basis.”
Since 60 percent of all Brit + Co. visitors access the site through mobile devices, either on one of Brit + Co.’s mobile apps (the company has built native apps for iOS, Android, and Windows devices) or the mobile website, a big focus for the company going forward will be on more fully building out its mobile platform. Also in the works will be expanding Brit + Co.’s social community features.
It’s that Silicon Valley perspective — building solid technology to underlie the content — that Morin says really sets Brit + Co. apart from other players in the lifestyle-driven new media space, from Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP and beyond. She put it this way:
“I don’t really know of any other company that’s at the intersection of tech and DIY. I like to say that we see importance in helping people manage their homes just as in helping them manage their homescreens. Today’s millenial digital consumer wants to see order and creativity both online and offline.It’s important to us that we’re building everything in house. A lot of media companies will outsource [the building of] all their apps, but we take design really seriously. We spend a lot of time thinking about simplified user interfaces, new user experiences, and things like that.”
Not surprisingly, another big focus going forward will be on letting people purchase more DIY-maker-meets-techie-meets-fashion stuff through its platform. “A big portion of the new funds will go into creating a bigger strategy around commerce,” Morin said.
But there is no rush to that front, as Morin points out that Brit + Co. has already been making money through day one. “We make money through partnerships, advertising, events, subscription commerce, premium services like the custom domains on Weduary,” she said. “That diversified revenue model we have is appealing to a lot of investors.”
That appeal is certainly evident with today’s news. It’ll be exciting to see where Brit goes in the months ahead.
Surre.al Launches A Kickstarter Campaign To Fund A Cross-Device, 3D Virtual World
Surreal Games, an independent game studio created by the co-founders of mobile gaming company Cellufun, is looking to Kickstarter to fund what it says will be a 3D virtual world (also called Surre.al) that will work across devices and provide access to a wide variety of game environments.
The target for the campaign (which should be live here) is $100,000. If that doesn’t seem like much money for a big, ambitious gaming project, well, the team already raised $300,000 in angel funding, and it has been developing the technology for the past 18 months. You can see a demo of Surre.al in the video below, and as CEO Arthur Goikhman (he’s also one of the Cellufun co-founders), “It’s not just a gleam in our eye.”
So why raise money on Kickstarter? Goikhman said he was definitely inspired by other successful Kickstarter campaigns — he specifically mentioned virtual reality products like Omni and Oculus Rift. (In fact, he said that Surre.al will work on the Omni and Oculus Rift platforms, as well as PC, Web, iOS, and Android. Meanwhile, Jan Goetgeluk, CEO of Omni-maker Virtuix, described Surre.al as “exactly how I envision virtual reality.”)
Goikhman also said that maintaining creative control of the project was important, but in this case, “It goes both ways,” because project backers will be able to influence the game itself. The game’s core environment will be a cruise ship (presumably vaster and more exciting than a real ship), but the point of a cruise ship is to go to other places. So Surre.al isn’t just looking to backers for financing, but also for feedback on what they actually want to see in the world.
The hope, Goikhman added, is to build a virtual world that isn’t just of interest to hardcore gamers but to “mid-core” and casual players and backers too.
The campaign starts now. A lot of the prizes in the campaign seem to revolve around benefits within the virtual world itself, but people who pledge at least $5,500 will get a detailed physical model of the cruise ship. The goal is to launch the game itself in December, though that could change if users want the team to pursue some particularly ambitious additions.
By the way, you may be thinking that when it comes to virtual worlds, we haven’t seen any big, lasting successes — the closest is probably Linden Lab and its virtual world Second Life, and that’s certainly had its ups and downs. Nonetheless, even Second Life creator Philip Rosedale seems to think there’s a still a big opportunity here, as he’s working on a new virtual world startup called High Fidelity.
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