The Hackaday Prize invites everyone to focus on specific challenges with encouragement of prize money and motivation of deadlines. But what happens after the award ceremony? While some creators are happy just to share their ideas, many projects need to get into the real world to make their full impact. Several past prize winners have used their award as seed money to start production and go into business. Recognizing this as something worth supporting, a new addition this year is Tindie’s Project to Product program.
Tindie is a marketplace for makers to sell to other makers, hence a natural place for Hackaday.io projects to find an audience. (And many have found success doing so.) For Project to Product, two Hackaday Prize semifinalists will receive support from mentors to transition their hand crafted project into something that can be produced in quantity. In addition to engineering support, there’s also funding (above and beyond their prize winnings) towards their first production run. In exchange, Tindie asks for the first production run to be sold exclusively on Tindie marketplace.
Of course, some entries are ahead of the curve and already available on Tindie, like Reflowduino and Hexabitz. We know there are more creators with ambition to do the same, putting in effort cleaning up their design and sorting out their BOM (Bill of Materials) towards production. They’ve done a lot of work, and we hope Tindie can give them that final push. They see their invention become reality, Tindie gets cool new exclusive products for the marketplace, and the rest of us can buy some to play with. Everyone wins.
If this sounds like something you want to join in as a creator, there’s still time. The final Musical Instrument Challenge is accepting entries for one more week. Better hurry!
Source:: Hackaday