LineShark launches $60,0000 Kickstarter campaign
By Tom Ballard, Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurial Initiatives, Pershing Yoakley & Associates, P.C.
The campaign is on for local start-up LineShark Audio.
The company, first profiled on teknovation.biz in November 2012, officially launched its Kickstarter campaign this week. The goal is to raise $60,000.
“We’ve structured the Kickstarter campaign to pay-off all of our tooling costs,” Co-Founder Jed Eaton told us. This will allow LineShark to generate positive cash flow immediately from sales.
The device is billed as a “go-anywhere, connect-to-anything audio interface for musicians who use mobile devices.” It enables musicians to bring performances to life by adding the creativity and power of mobile devices to their live setup.
One of the LineShark’s key features is the ability to connect a mobile device into a musicians signal chain in the same way as a traditional effects box solution. For the performer it means he does not have to reconfigure or sacrifice his current setup in order to add in the rich functionality offered by a mobile device.
“We’ve been working on this (the Kickstarter campaign) since a little before Christmas,” Eaton said.
“We had to get approved by Kickstarter,” Co-Founder Jon Mayer added. “They vet people and products. It is not a trivial process to get approved in the hardware category.”
For the two Co-Founders, LineShark is their proverbial “night job.” They have been very deliberate in the development of their company since we did our last update on teknovation.biz last June.
“The technology has not changed,” Eaton told us, even after deploying 10 prototypes that have been tested by musicians.
“Everybody that is using it (the LineShark) likes it,” Eaton says.
Their Kickstarter campaign involves various levels of support.
“People can back us for as little as a dollar,” Mayer said. The LineShark team, however, hopes to secure much more investment with its approach to pricing.
The device will retail for $149, but the first 50 people who commit $99 will be designated as “Early Backers” and get the LineShark at that discounted price.
On the upper end, those wanting a customized, limited edition device can commit $249 and get a LineShark casted in a one-time limited edition color.
The overall goal is to sell 400 LineSharks during the 30 days.
