Hello everyone!

We are so amazed and humbled by the support from our friends and family and so many strangers. We weren’t sure at all that people would be interested in something that didn’t involve a buzzword, like quadcopters or 3d printing, or that wasn’t a sleek injection-molded product, like Apple, and instead embodied our ethos of approachability and encouraged people to take it apart. Thank you all so much, you have given us so much hope that we can make our dream of accessible engineering education come true.

Many people seem convinced that this kickstarter will succeed, but for us it’s actually been very stressful even though we’ve done better than we ever thought we would. I think it is pretty standard to have a large first-day bump and then things settle out until there’s a bump at the end when we cross the finish line, but we sure hope we can finish earlier without being stressed out the entire month. This is were we ask for your help — please spread the word as much as possible, to friends and family who might be interested. We will do our best on our end as well, to reach out to new media sources. * What I’m afraid of is that we’ve used up our easy passes — the kickstarter community and our friends — and why should I believe in some magical bump at the end from strangers appearing out of thin air? So thank you so much, those of you who have backed already, for giving us the strength to carry on in the uncertainty of this endeavour. And for those of you sitting on the fence — please reach out to us with any questions you might have, and not wait until the last minute.

* (I was discussing with a friend about self-promotion, and he had an interesting theory, that as nerds we grew up being discourage from showing off, which is what makes it so difficult to publicize our own work).

For those of you curious, this is what the backend looks like.

Kickstarter dashboard

And a view of the statistics, which I didn’t know kickstarter had:

Kickstarter funding statistics

It’s amusing how many people are, as far as kickstarter is concerned, appearing out of thin air.

We also learned that people can withdraw their pledges, which is incredibly stressful to me. It feels like a personal rejection, and like the goal will forever be in doubt!

In the coming week or so we are going to reach out to each of you who has backed up individually and send a letter of thanks.

Please do what you can to spread the word as well, and have a happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate it! Thank you!