Business / Gadgets

Investment turns ideas into reality

By Alfred Romann in Hong Kong (China Daily) Updated: 2014-03-10 07:09

A professor suggested the device had greater commercial potential because dozing off is a major cause of car accidents. He encouraged Gui to pursue it. So, after graduating, Gui applied for several incubator projects for Vigo. A hardware incubator company, HAXLR8, accepted them.

HAXLR8 sent them to its base in Shenzhen in Guangdong province, a city known for rich hardware manufacturing resources. The three-month project allowed Gui and his team to improve their product and set the foundation of their fast-growing team that is now based in San Francisco.

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But actually managing a company can be a daunting task for a new graduate, so he took three internships: One at a company with five employees, another at a company with 50 staff and a third at a company with 5,000 people.

Just before graduation, Gui was interning at a pioneering software company in California when he noticed that more than 90 percent of lower level employees, such as development and testing engineers, were either Indian or Chinese.

"I began to realize that Indian and Chinese people are very good at developing things but know little about management," he says.

Paying special attention to his manager's work and the work of his manager's supervisor, Gui decided to write directly to the CEO and ask for a meeting.

To his surprise, the CEO at one of the most admired software companies in the US agreed to meet him for a chat. They talked for 15 minutes about corporate management and Gui's thoughts on the company.

After the meeting, he discovered that the top people rarely have the time or the opportunity to communicate with ordinary employees. Some managers had never even met the CEO. He then e-mailed the firm's entire senior management team and asked for personal meetings. He has used much of what he learned from them in developing Vigo.

But it was not the crash course on management that solved the company's need for capital. Crowdfunding did that. Crowdfunding through Kickstarter allowed Vigo to raise $57,365 as of early February from 635 backers.

Through another website, the China-based Demohour, the trio raised a further 60,772 yuan ($9,975) from 160 backers who could contribute between $5 and $5,000. About a third of the backers put up $79 in exchange for a new Vigo.

The funds will help the team produce the first batch of Vigos. The money will be used on injection molds for the casings, building the electronics and hiring developers to perfect the product.