Ang Peregrino Recommends 67: Quirky

Quirky
URL: http://​www​.quirky​.com/

Quirky, Inc. is a lot like Woot, which I have also fea­tured here sev­eral months back. The main dif­fer­ence is that while Woot is a site that sells really cool stuff (Woot stands for Want One Of Those), Quirky is a lit­tle more inter­ac­tive. The expla­na­tion is below.

Every­one has a prod­uct idea. Chances are, you do, too. The 22-year-old entrepreneur-in-chief of Quirky, has launched two suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies based on this premise, with write-ups in Reader’s Digest, Busi­ness­week, Entre­pre­neur, and other main­stream media — includ­ing more than one prime­time appear­ance on CNBC.

Among other things, mophie and klus­ter made him some­thing of a poster­boy for aspir­ing inven­tors. Over the past few years, he’s received lit­er­ally thou­sands of emails from peo­ple all around the world look­ing for the same answer: I have this idea for a prod­uct and saw your article/tv show/website and want your help get­ting it out of my head and into the mar­ket­place — how do I start?

The truth is, nei­ther mophie nor klus­ter were cre­ated to answer that ques­tion directly. They did, how­ever, uncover the solu­tion to bring­ing vir­tu­ally any prod­uct idea to life and putting it into the hands of con­sumers. In comes quirky, the attempt to change the way peo­ple think about prod­uct devel­op­ment forever.

How can I par­tic­i­pate in quirky?

The answer is twofold: a) you can sub­mit a prod­uct idea dur­ing the sub­mis­sion phase, or b) you can rate other people’s prod­uct ideas and/or choose your favorites dur­ing the vet­ting phase.

Do I have to pay to play?

Nope — there’s no fee to reg­is­ter with quirky. There’s no fee to rate or choose your favorite prod­uct ideas. Mind you, if you want to toss your own prod­uct idea into the ring, well, yeah, then you’ve gotta pay.

Why does it cost $99 to sub­mit my idea?

Hey, plas­tic dinosaurs don’t grow on trees. That, and you’ve got to ante up to post your prod­uct idea, have thou­sands of peo­ple check it out, weigh in, and give it the fair shot it deserves. Best case sce­nario? Your $99 invest­ment takes you all the way to pro­fes­sion­ally man­u­fac­tured prod­uct, on the shelves, ready to earn you a hell of a lot more. Worst case? Those 99 bucks buy you detailed ana­lyt­ics of who liked and didn’t like your idea. After­all, just because you may not have won the race this week doesn’t mean your idea wasn’t viable. Maybe you’ll decide to go it on your own, and hey, now you’ll have valu­able research to help you go ahead and make that happen.

How much will I make if my prod­uct gets selected?

Say your awe­some idea is the awe­some idea of the week and cho­sen to move forward…right there, you’ve just earned your­self about 40% influ­ence. If you want that to sound even cooler, we could say it like this — that means you’re pock­et­ing 12¢ for every dol­lar your prod­uct brings in. Seri­ously, that’s pretty unreal. B-b-but wait, it only gets better…because your influ­ence can grow just like every­one else’s by con­tin­u­ing to weigh in and rate ideas through­out your product’s process. Aren’t you glad you chose to fly the quirky skies?

How do I post an idea?

All you gotta do is put up $99 to post your prod­uct idea. The sub­mis­sion period is open for 7 days, dur­ing which time you toss your idea up onto the big screen (well, guess that could be a pretty small screen, too, really). 99 bucks dropped, the sub­mis­sion process is easy: 1) come up with a work­ing name for your prod­uct, 2) write a blurb to help the com­mu­nity really get what the idea’s all about, 3) upload any files of images, sketches, inspi­ra­tion to fur­ther push your cause. Remem­ber, this is your pitch — get us in your pocket, and you’re that much closer to turn­ing your idea into a real­ity.
Can I sub­mit more than one idea a week?

Butofcourse…submit as many ideas as you want. $99 a pop.

How do I get paid?

30¢ of every dol­lar put up on quirky goes back towards reward­ing the community…and when we say “com­mu­nity” we mean the per­son who posted the win­ning prod­uct idea as well as the influ­encers along the way. So even if you weren’t feel­ing super inventy that day and you just rode some­one else’s project’s coat­tails, you can still cash out for hav­ing influ­enced (voted for) one of the ideas that did win.

As soon as you earn $75 on quirky, you sign up for a Pay­oneer card and receive your earn­ings on this klus­ter branded debit card.

How do I vote for an idea?

After the 7 day sub­mis­sion period, you can go in and rate all the ideas based on the cri­te­ria that we’ve set. Super easy — just slide the rate bars to the right to reflect how much you like each idea. The fur­ther to the right you move the bar, the more you like the idea. We’ve also given you some handy stars to allo­cate to your absolute favorite ideas. Choose wisely, grasshop­per, you’ve only got a few…

What if my idea doesn’t get selected?

You know what? We can’t all win every time…but then again, when you sub­mit your idea onto quirky, even if you lose, you kinda still win — or at least ben­e­fit. Whether your idea was picked to be the win­ner or not, we’ll give you detailed ana­lyt­ics of who liked and didn’t like your idea. That way if you choose to go for it, you’ve got valu­able research to go ahead and build the prod­uct on your own. But there is one other option — if you want to give your prod­uct another week, just throw down $10 more and you can sub­mit it again to roll it into the next week’s contest.

Can I go out and build the prod­uct on my own?

Absolutely — if that’s the road you want to take, go right ahead! No one in quirky’s com­mu­nity nor the quirky team owns your idea. Feel free to run around and do what­ever you want with your idea. All we’re say­ing is that if you sub­mit your idea into quirky, we can help you max­i­mize, develop, build, and sell the prod­uct. And, hey, if you give us a go but we don’t choose your prod­uct idea…we still love you (aw)…in fact, we’ll even give you the data and ana­lyt­ics to help you go ahead and build it on your own.

How do I know that no one will steal my idea?

Well…let’s be hon­est, you don’t know that no one is going to steal your idea. We’re sim­ply here as a place to get good ideas out of people’s heads and into the world. But, in our opin­ion and expe­ri­ence, the com­mu­nity is just as good as any legal doc­u­ment — we’ve done this com­mu­nity val­i­da­tion thing before…couple o’sites we like to call mophie and kluster.

Here’s the short expla­na­tion of what Quirky is all about in 30 sec­onds (and you had to read all that?!):

For the great stuff, the great ideas, and the oppor­tu­nity to put it out to the rest of the world (and earn from it), Ang Pere­grino Rec­om­mends Quirky this week.