Everyone has ideas. A better this, a better that, the idea being that there is a need, and that people's lives are better when it's fulfilled. But Making your idea a reality is not terribly easy. Whatever product it is, it has to be cheap to make, reliable, easy-to-use and made by a group of people (like you) that knows everything about whom they are selling it to, and why they want to buy it.
Usually the standard practice is to join a business incubator, or perhaps an accelerator. GrabCAD owes much it's success to TechStars and the great mentoring we got. But what about physical products, not platforms or software?
Enter HAXLR8R.
HAXLR8R (pronounced like 'hack-celerator') was founded by Cyril Ebersweiler, Sean O’Sullivan and Eric Pan (Seeed Studio), and operates out of Shenzhen, China and San Francisco, California. Twice a year, a whole class of entrants and their product ideas are accepted and run through an intensive course to produce a functional, ready to market and sell product with all the necessary skills, business plan and investor slides to pitch for start-up capital.
First, students are rushed out to Shenzhen, China, the beating heart of 'The World's Factory'. Located right outside of Hong Kong, Shenzhen has been a part of China's economic explosion right from the beginning. The greatest thing about this side of the world is the sheer ease at which a product can be prototyped, supply chains organized and product mass-manufactured. Often a shoddy product does great because of solid supply chain management. Often a great product fails to succeed because of shoddy supply chain management. The HAXLR8R aims to give you an understanding of your product from end-to-end.
After prototyping and perfecting your product and how it's going to be made, you're sent off to sunny San Francisco to perfect your pitch and your plan. Give some credit to HAXLR8R for assembling a crack group of mentors, which includes Brad Feld (Foundry Group), Nolan Bushnell (Pong, Atari), Ben Rubin (Zeo), Bill Warner (AVID/Warner Research), David Holz (LEAP Motion) and Richard Kelly (IDEO). When the wheels are turning but traction is happening, these are the guys that get you into gear. They're the ones that catch all the blind spots in all your assumptions. In other words, they help you succeed like no other. Ever so recently, they added Zach "Hoeken" Smith, co-founder of Makerbot, to manage product development for HAXLR8R. Next they expect to add Clark Kent as their blogger.
By May, you're ready to Rock and Roll, ready to find the capital you need to take over the World. Already HAXLR8R has pumped out a few cohorts of companies. My favourite? Check out Sassor, a device to help small restaurants and business monitor and manage their electricity consumption and save power!
Click here to apply for the Winter 2013 class, which runs from January to May.
