Over the course of past few years, when talking about startups, spotlight was always on web service or mobile service. It seems that people are fine with leaving stuff like hardware innovations with Intel, Lenovo and Taiwan OEMs.
HAXLR8R, a venture fund focuses on entrepreneurs building hardware devices is trying to shake up the status quo of hardware world by offering seed funding (US$ 25k), office space (San Francisco and Shenzhen) among other resources for 2-4 person to make tangible things happen.
The accelerator program is currently looking for applications for their Winter 2013 Class, the second batch of the program. Check out their website if this intrigues you.
For Batch II, it all begins in Shenzhen from January through April 2013, with the last week spent in the Bay area. And at the end of the program teams have the opportunity to present their company to US-based investors during our HAXLR8R DAY.
Shenzhen, which produced numerous PCs, laptops and Apple’s iDevices, is literally the hardware center on the planet with lots of factories, matured value chain and so forth. On the other hand, it’s also the origin of Shanzai products, or copycats. The city from every perspective could be deemed as a bless for hardware hackers.
Here’re some of the graduates from previous batch:
Axio
Axio’s mission is to revolutionize how people interact with their brains. We are a new breed of “connected health device,” using our EEG headband to monitor users’ focus and neurofeedback to improve their performance. Our Bluetooth© enabled headband and connected software give people the ability to communicate with their brains and get “in the zone” when it counts.
Axio hopes to be the premier focus platform in the emerging cognitive enhancement market, declared by Forbes to be the next “trillion dollar market” (Forbes Magazine, 2012).
Nomiku
Food lovers no longer have to salivate in vain at the delicious foods their favorite chefs make in immersion circulators for sous vide cooking. Now you can make 72 hour sweet and sticky ribs and Heston Blumenthal’s scrambled eggs conveniently in your own kitchen.
Nomiku is one of the fastest project on Kickstarter to raise $100,000 and now ready to deliver its beautiful product to the world.
Kindara
Trying to get pregnant can be a huge pain in the ass. If pregnancy doesn’t happen easily, women have limited options: confusing urine test strips, or expensive doctor visits.
Kindara founder Kati Bicknell knew there had to be a better way, and set out to create it.
Kindara is the intelligent and organized way to get pregnant. With Kindara for iPhone women can track their daily fertility signs and gain new insight into their reproductive health. Users can see if and when they ovulate, find the optimal time to conceive, as well as identify potential fertility issues should any arise. Help is built into the app so women feel supported every step of the way.
Kindara gives women an amazing new window into their fertility, allowing them to be an active participant on their path to motherhood.
Bilibot
Everybody loves robots.
But where is our R2D2, promised by science-fiction movies three decades ago.
Imagined by a team of robotist from MIT, Bilibot is a robotic platform aiming at making robots more affordable, easy to use and of course – useful.
Makeblock
Makeblock is the next generation of construction platforms. Smart designed, easy to use, with strong parts mostly made of hardened aluminum enables you to build easily every kind of robots, 3D-printers, artwork or what ever you want.
Open to other electronic and mechanic platforms you can attach different kind of Arduino boards, sensors, motors, drivers, industrial standard parts and even Lego.
PortableScores
Make every game a world class event.
The portable electronic scoreboard is a connected device that makes recreational and league sports more exciting and professional. It is built to fit in a backpack, mount on a floor, wall, or tripod, rugged and water resistant, but with a large bright display and connectivity via remote control, USB, Bluetooth, and accessory switches.
You can integrate the scoreboard easily into any aspect of your life and share it with the people there, or the people who aren’t via social networks.