Hardware development, like many engineering projects, is typically a group effort, with contributors increasingly working from home or across multiple buildings, organizations, states, countries, and continents rather than face-to-face. And as a new wave of hardware start-ups are finding out, coordinating those contributors often requires more sophisticated tools than just e-mail and phone calls. “Hardware [...]
Innovation is all around us—especially in today’s fast-moving world of M2M-enabled connected devices. Good ideas may be a dime a dozen, but the ability to take a concept through the development and production process requires more than just the right idea; it requires the right combination of partners, tools, and support. HWTrek, www.hwtrek.com, a unique [...]
Since its inception in November last year, Taiwan based HWTrek started out as a cross between a crowd-funding and a manufacturing advisory platform for hardware companies. But now, HWTrek is putting more attention on the manufacturing advisory side and has newly created a platform called the HWTrek Project Development Hub. Many fresh hardware entrepreneurs have [...]
Yesterday Mobile Geeks attended a debut meetup event from new Taiwan based crowdfunding platform HWTrek. Created in collaboration with TMI Holding Corporation, a Taiwan based incubator that makes early stage investments with local talent trying to tackle global markets, HWTrek seeks to offer hardware entrepreneurs from around the world the chance to realize their ideas [...]
Crowdfunding, which uses the Internet to pool small investments from many investors, is still a nascent market. But the success of the Pebble smart watch project which raised over $10 million through Brooklyn-based crowdfunding site Kickstarter, has encouraged the emergence of more crowdfunding platforms including Florida-based Peerbackers and China-based Demo hour. This article by Lorraine [...]
The hardware entrepreneur movement is gathering steam with more options and services emerging in its ecosystem. However, this time around those options are located outside the United States. Yesterday, I spoke to HWTrek, a newly-launched global platform for crowdfunding and contract manufacturing services. The Taiwan-based site aims to cater to hardware entrepreneurs based in the [...]
HWTrek seeks to help people overcome the manufacturing hurdle in getting their crowdfunded hardware projects off the ground through mentorship. Lucas Wang, the CEO of HWTrek, isn’t that impressed with FitBit’s Force activity tracker. Examining the device in his Taipei office, Wang offers a critique of the device: the display is not aligned perfectly with [...]
The hobby electronics industry is really taking off. People from all different geographical locations, all levels of education, and different walks of life are producing electronics at a surprising rate. I'm not talking about big-name manufacturing here, I'm talking about your neighbor doing a small run of 30 custom lighting controllers for his balcony. One [...]
Kickstarter was built for creative people -- filmmakers, songwriters and artists. The fact that tech projects and gadgets have found a home there is just a very lucrative bonus for the company. Since it's genesis in 2009, Kickstarter has facilitated $881 million worth of pledges. Tech is its fourth-largest category, beating out music, art and [...]
Kickstarter helps startups raise money. Alibaba is a $157B Asian giant that helps you manufacture anything. What would happen if you combined the two? We’re about to find out with the launch of HWTrek. This article by Josh Steimle was published on Forbes, read more here.