James Siminoff

My favorite new start-up, Quirky

My friend Ben Kaufman a fellow serial entrepreneur (founder of Mophie and Kluster) just launched a new business called Quirky.  Quirky leverages the crowd to create products, it then pre-sells the product until it has enough to be manufactured.

I really love the business model of building a platform that enables the crowd to do the heavy lifting, WIkipedia is probably the best example of this.  I continue to play around with a business around this same idea for content, which I hope to launch in 1-3 years (too busy right now).

So far Quirky users have come up with a few products including the one above, the Presto, which presses the water and slices Tofu at the same time.  Not sure I would need one but that is exactly the point, all they need is 250 Tofu lovers to pay $30 and this niche crowd built kitchen device will become a reality.

Keep an eye on Quirky I have a strong feeling that some really incredible things will come out of it…