The product, despite placing third in an Ohio State University entrepreneur's competition, far undershot its goal on crowdfunding site Fundable.com - raising $8000 in pledges versus a goal of $150,000. A failure? Yes, but not an ending.
Max Zitney’s outlook is that the disappointing campaign saved the two a lot of grief because it showed them that the product, in its current configuration, was obviously not sparking a lot of enthusiasm.
But the Zitneys’ story doesn’t end by merely recognizing the silver lining. A UK-based company called NFC Ring, which has developed a similar idea, approached the brothers, offering to inspect their concept and possibly collaborate in the near future....
NFC Ring appreciated the Zitneys’ idea but said the technology is not yet in place to create a ring-size, Bluetooth-enabled vibrating notification device. Those features, however, are ones that the company would like to incorporate into its product . “They said that’s their ultimate goal,” said Zach Zitney, adding that NFC Ring intends to resume talks with the brothers when they’re ready to start integrating MiRing’s designs into their own technology. Given the fact that the Zitneys have a U.S. patent on such a gadget, they may have to.
“There are still options available,” Max Zitney said. “The crowdfunding just opened up the doors for us.”
So: failure, especially cheap and fast failure, does not mean that a project is finished. It may just be a step on the way. The Zitneys did not achieve their funding goal, but the crowdfunding project exposed them to new opportunities and proved to them that going it alone would not be a success - an example of an "intelligent failure."
Hat tip Roxanne Persaud.
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