Design 1st has worked with a number of clients that have used crowdfunding as one of the ways to raise more capital, but crowdfunding is a lot more powerful than just raising money.Crowdfunding gives you a platform that significantly streamlines the traditional model of raising capital to launch a new product.  It’s a lot easier for you to get an opportunity to be in front of interested parties and give them ways to help grow your business.Backers on crowdfunding platforms are motivated by wanting cool stuff at a discount before […]

Ottawa inventor Jay Conohan walked into the Design 1st office in January 2013 with a product idea and the enthusiasm to dive headfirst into the product development process. Now 10 months later, he has a working prototype, Kickstarter campaign and is preparing for the ABC Kids Expo in Las Vegas to showcase his product. Here’s a quick summary of Jay’s journey and how he re-invented bath time for toddlers. The Product Idea: Like many inventors, Jay stumbled across the “Bath and Play” product idea by accident; literally, his son Ronyn […]

Voice first products are at the leading edge of technology and product design, making them a highly demanding undertaking for developers, designers and innovators.  Working with leading edge technology can be a risk for design firms, given the limited precedents and poses a challenge to successfully translate the technology into physical products.Design 1st, a firm with deep expertise in hardware product design was sought out by a US client to develop a voice-first product. The effort resulted in a nine month process of navigating the complexities of this product category. […]

The modern age of the Internet has made many aspects of daily life more accessible, and the same is true for small design companies. Creating the connection between start-up companies and potential investors has never been easier through sites like Kickstarter and Indie-gogo, allowing the makers of the World to test the market before committing to the expensive steps that use to be required to prototype a new product to be tested by the consumer. By December 2013, a handful of Canadian start-up companies had successfully funded their hardware products, […]

We've got exciting news for Canadian crowdfunders! Indiegogo, the largest global crowdfunding platform has chosen Canada to launch and test a new iphone App. Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin made the announcement today saying Canada was choosen as the test country for the eventual global roll-out due to the diversity of campaigns and feedback from Canadians. "Canada is a really important country for us, in terms of volume it's the second-largest country for us in the world ... and we send money to 70 to 100 countries a week," - Indiegogo […]

A couple years ago many great product ideas were sitting collecting dust in the minds, workshops and hard drives of entrepreneurs. These ideas sat behind the barrier of funding – often dismissed after the entrepreneur exhausted their bootstrap, government and private lending finance options. But crowdfunding changed that. Using online platforms, crowdfunding meant new product ideas could be pitched to a wider global audience and funded through individual donations. These fundraising efforts have led to some pretty impressive success stories, the most notable being the Pebble Smartwatch which fundraised $10.3million […]