Getting a product in front of customers is one of the most difficult and important things a company can do.
From crowdfunding to e-commerce to retail, different sales mediums each have their own unique opportunities and risks.
Join us for a panel discussion with retail and crowdfunding experts sharing their insights around the different options for selling hardware products, including the pros and cons of selling products before they've been built, crowdfunding success and horror stories, and the considerations around pursuing traditional retail deals.
Zach Supalla is founder and CEO of Particle (formerly Spark IO), a start-up that's making it easier to build internet-connected hardware (Internet of Things). He has raised more than $1MM on Kickstarter and has been featured on CNN and in WSJ, TechCrunch, Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and more. Particle was listed as one of Fast Company's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies of 2015 in the Internet of Things.
Kate Whitcomb is the Program Director for Hax Boost, a 2 week intensive sales, marketing, packaging and distribution training (Boost Camp) followed by 4 weeks of tactical execution and network building.
Kate spent 4 years with Target Corporation, where she was responsible for over $500m in total product spend across the beauty, home goods and baby categories. Most recently, Kate was the Growth & Innovation Lead for Target's Consumer IoT team in San Francisco, where she focused on preparing Bay Area hardware startups for retail distribution.
Eric is co-founder and CEO of Bloom Technologies, a women’s health company designing the future of prenatal care. Bloom combines wearables with data analytics to reassure expecting moms and provide doctors with better information to improve birth outcomes. Bloom is crowdsourcing the largest dataset on prenatal health to help doctors earlier predict and manage pregnancy complications before its too late.
Earlier this year Bloom won Richard Branson’s Extreme Tech Challenge out of more than 1000 companies worldwide.
Madelynn Martiniere is the Director of Community for Fictiv. Over the past 5 years, she has worked alongside both startups and large corporations alike to bring about the new hardware revolution. Through strategic communications, partnerships, and programming, her methodologies bridge the gap between the maker movement and scalable enterprises.
