DailyDirt: Build A Better Mousetrap Umbrella...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are all kinds of ways to improve on everyday items. We've talked about how wallets are a popular type of project on Kickstarter, but there are certainly plenty of other things that could be re-designed and made slightly (or significantly) better. The Ralph Waldo Emerson quote about building a better mousetrap actually didn't mention mousetraps, but we've ended up with a lot of mousetrap inventions, regardless. Here are just a few examples of umbrella inventions that the world might beat a path to.

• A novel umbrella (called the Sa) uses origami techniques to fold up nicely and resist inverting in strong winds. It's a $70 umbrella, though, so it's not quite for everyone. (Plus, it's not made out of a single square sheet of paper.) [url]
• Another Kickstarter umbrella project is selling a battery-powered wand that shoots jets of air to repel raindrops. It doesn't actually exist yet (which might be a violation of Kickstarter's terms), and it looks not unlike a fat plastic toilet plunger. Despite the drawbacks of this design and its $88 price tag, it has exceeded its funding goal by about an order of magnitude. [url]
• A few years ago, another Air Umbrella was designed by Je Sung Park & Woo Jung Kwon, but this concept product didn't solve the engineering challenges of creating a curtain of air that actually repelled raindrops. Perhaps someday there will be a wide selection of nice-looking, quiet, electric umbrellas, but in the meantime, noisy air-blowing umbrellas hopefully won't get too popular. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: air umbrella, crowdfunding, design, inventions, origami, sa, umbrellas
Companies: kickstarter

DailyDirt: Butter. Mmm. Butter.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Butter is an awesome addition to nearly any breakfast food (except for cereal, but who knows, have you tried it on cereal?). One of the only problems with butter is that sometimes it's not as spreadable as you'd like it to be. Sure, you can buy special tubs of butter-like substances that are more spreadable, but sometimes you just want a cold pat of real butter on your toast. Here are a few suggestions that could make your life with butter everything you've ever dreamed.

• Some folks adamantly recommend that everyone should NOT store their butter in a refrigerator. Room temperature butter is obviously more easily spread, but some people just don't like the idea of butter going rancid slowly on a kitchen table. [url]
• Which edge of a butter knife have you been using all your life? If you said the serrated edge, try the other side when spreading butter. Maybe there is no wrong way, but there's more than one way to use a butter knife. [url]
• If you want to buy a butter knife that's specifically designed to spread butter better than any other butter knife, throw some bucks at the Stupendous Splendiferous ButterUp knife. It's just a bunch of holes in the knife that act like a grater, so you can scrape off buttery bits, even off a cold stick of butter. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: butter, butter knife, cutlery, food, spreadable
Companies: kickstarter

DailyDirt: I've Fallen And I Can't Get Up 2.0

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

In the US, over half of the mobile phones people are using are smartphones, so it's not surprising that there's a nascent market for smart devices trying to take advantage of this existing user base. Wearables like smartwatches and smartglasses are nifty gadgets, but there could be other smart-things that might be hanging around necks or strapped to our arms in the near future. One feature for all of these smart accessories could be personal protection -- allowing the wearer to signal to friends/family/police in an emergency situation. Here are just a few examples (that are available for pre-order or need some crowdfunding love).

• A portable panic button that connects to your smartphone could be psychologically calming. This particular button lets your friends track your location while you're going down a scary dark alley. (But maybe try to avoid going to dangerous places in the first place, okay?) [url]
• Smarter jewelry could be a more fashionable take on wearables -- and they can also track your location 24/7. At least it looks nice, but how many more gadgets in your life do you want to charge on a regular basis? [url]
• If you really want to feel safe, how about a can of pepper spray that also connects to your smartphone? This smartphone accessory also takes a picture of your attacker right before you spray him in the face.... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: cuff, defender, pepper spray, react sidekick, safety, smart accessories, smart jewelry, wearables
Companies: indiegogo, kickstarter

Another Area Where There's Tremendous Innovation Without Patents: Wallets On Kickstarter

from the pay-attention dept

Among friends who pay attention to my Kickstarter-backing habits, it's become a bit of a joke that I seem to be obsessed with wallets. And it's somewhat true. By my count, I've backed 11 wallet projects on Kickstarter. I will also admit that there was a period of time (basically all of 2013) where I would actually make sure to check Kickstarter for new wallets once a day, though that's since stopped. It definitely did border on obsessiveness. Another friend of mine has ordered about the same amount (I think at last count he was at 13 such projects). We've joked that we should set up the "museum of Kickstarter wallets" between the two of us. I still can't fully explain what made me so fascinated with finding a better wallet, but I think it was a combination of factors. After years of using a Costanza wallet, I saw a friend's minimalist wallet, and it just made sense to me. The problem, though, is that for all the neatness and organization of a minimalist wallet, you're definitely giving up some features to shrink down the wallet. And thus began the perpetual hunt for the more perfect minimalist wallet.

Kickstarter has now posted an article that feels like it was written with me in mind specifically, discussing why there are so many wallets on Kickstarter, since others have noticed that Kickstarter is basically the place to go for everything in wallet innovation, among other things. There are a few reasons for this that the article presents, including the fact that wallets are, generally speaking, a relatively simple product to make. Thus, for many creative folks, it's a good "test" project, to see if they can design, sell and manufacture something straightforward. But, there's another reason described that I think is much more interesting, and it explains in part why I started to become infatuated with seemingly minor differences between the various wallet projects. It's that there are so many different variations on how to make a wallet, and it's really tempting to find that "perfect" variation:

Answering this question is where we step into the realm of true maker geekdom. Wallets are ultimately all about the small details — those tiny pebble-in-your-shoe subtleties that suit one person’s needs and ruin the next person’s day. “It’s a product that has to do a lot of different things at the same time,” says Dimatos, “and you can’t push one part of it without pulling on the others. Make your wallet too slim, and congratulations, it now fits nothing.”

Scan through the history of wallet-project designs, and you’ll see the same broad strokes repeated. Zoom in on the details, though, and what you see isn’t simple repetition — it’s more like a strange form of evolution and natural selection. There are certain basic wallet forms: the slim leather billfold, the elastic sleeve, the two rigid plates. But each iteration of them tweaks one element, or optimizes another, to find its own niche, like bird species evolving to pick berries from different parts of the same tree.

Obstructures’ design for the Aluminum Plate Wallet, for instance, owes a bit to one of Kickstarter’s earliest slim-wallet hits. The picture on the left above is the Humn: two carbon-fiber plates, held together by a flexible band. One member of the Obstructures team had tried out the Humn, and noticed an issue: when he spread the two plates apart, tension on the band stayed high. If his fingers slipped, the plates could snap back together on them. So the Aluminum Plate Wallet (in the center) was designed to release the tension when the wallet was opened. Obstructures band the plates together with two O-rings; to open the wallet, you roll one ring out of its notch and down toward the other. Tension adjusts accordingly. (There’s a manufacturing perk, too: O-rings are common, easy to source, and don’t need to be cut to measure.)

This month, you could find the same notch-and-ring system in the Bracket Wallet (on the right). But the Bracket design tweaks something else: where the Aluminum Plate has a solid, substantial, elegant look and feel, the Bracket runs back toward the same breezy minimalism as the Humn, with bright, slim carbon-fiber plates.

Similar things happen to every design. The elastic sleeve keeps mutating, evolving niche features to suit different backers. “They’re all very different,” says Sutter. “Things like the Crabby versus the Slim versus TGT — they’re all using similar principles, but I don’t find them redundant.” It’s more like one big process of crowd-based personalization; wait long enough, and there’s a good chance someone will tweak the wallet in a way that suits you. “Everybody’s got their own way of innovating within that archetype,” says Hall. “The metal wallets aren’t terribly different, but they appeal to different sensibilities. Some people like more tools integrated. Some people prefer making it as compact as possible. I think there’s still a lot of room to play with it.”

That describes my view of it as an outsider perfectly. The deeper I dove into the new wallet pool, the more quickly I could look at different projects, and the little tweaks they had made, to judge whether they were an improvement on something I'd already seen, and worth experimenting with (one other factor: if you focus on cheap wallets, it doesn't get too expensive, and while some wallets are pricey, many are quite inexpensive).

But what also struck me about the quoted section above is that it so directly repeats one of the key points we've made for years about the general process of innovation. As we've noted, innovation is an ongoing process of experimentation, as different people try different things and figure out what works. If you've spent much time in truly innovative environments, you'd know that this is a key part of the innovation process. For years, we've talked about the difference between ideas and execution, and that becomes quite clear in cases like this. Some of the wallets may seem like good ideas, but the execution is terrible. A few of the wallets I've received have been close to unusable (which also helped convince me to back off my wallet obsession). But it's also why competition is such a huge part of the innovative process.

What you see in the wallet/Kickstarter space is a really interesting innovation petri dish -- happening because of lots of easy experimentation and tons of competition, as different folks try to innovate around a few basic concepts to make a more perfect product. The Kickstarter article describes it as evolution, but it comes down to Elon Musk's idea of the velocity of innovation.

The larger point, however, is that all of this innovation and competition and evolution is happening because so many different folks are trying to make that perfect wallet for a group of customers. That is, what's driving people is the ability to make a better product and better serve a market. Note that nowhere is there any discussion on "intellectual property" or locking up an idea. If someone patented the use of o-rings to bind together two plates, or some of the other common structures, it would actually slow down the innovation as there would be fewer opportunities for others to innovate and improve on one another's ideas.

This is why it gets so frustrating to see people insist that somehow you need intellectual property protections to create innovative markets. We see all the time that there's often much greater innovation in markets where there's much greater competition and where the focus is on making the best thing for the customer. As a result, we see a much more rapid pace of innovation in such markets.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, my personal favorite Kickstarter wallet projects are (in order) the FITT, the Ainste and the TGT. Those three have come the closest to what I like, but I've checked out plenty of variations to see if anything improves on those designs. And, of course, none of those may meet your personal needs, but that's why this competitive market is so useful. There are probably other projects that are more interesting to you.

Filed Under: competition, crowdfunding, innovation, patents, wallets
Companies: kickstarter

DailyDirt: Better Keyboards

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Keyboards are one of the fastest and most accurate ways to input text into a digital device. Sure, you could argue that speech recognition has beaten a txting champion (Ben Cook in 2006), but the more common experience with speech recognition is far from perfect dictation results. Early keyboards used some relatively complex mechanical designs to achieve a nice tactile feel and accurate input -- replaced by various iterations of keyboard improvements to become thinner and lighter and more (or less) clicky-sounding. Here are just a few more attempts to make better keyboards.

• Designing a keyboard isn't as easy as you might think. Okay, maybe it's just as hard as you think it is.... [url]
• It might be neat to have a camera sensor track your hand movements so that any surface could become a keyboard or multi-touch input device. But if it's really that great, why aren't there more of these kinds of camera-based keyboards? [url]
• Touchscreens are lacking in the tactile feedback department, but there's an accessory that features shape-shifting buttons that make raised bumps on a glass surface appear and disappear as needed. Presumably, these shape-shifting bumps don't make clicky noises when you touch them, and making a touchscreen even more complex doesn't sound like a better option than just adding a detachable keyboard for a tablet. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: buttons, haptics, input devices, keyboards, multi-touch, sensors, speech recognition, touchscreens, ui
Companies: keyboardio, kickstarter, nuance

DailyDirt: I'm Givin' Her All She's Got, Captain...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Space travel is filled with all kinds of complex challenges -- microgravity, radiation exposure, fuel constraints, etc. Thankfully, engineers and physicists are coming up with creative solutions to some of these problems, and new propulsion systems are being put through a battery of tests to verify their safety and reliability. Here are just a few cool propulsion designs (that may or may not work at all).

• NASA can't explain how it works, but there's a propulsion system that seemingly violates conservation of momentum -- and it actually produces a small amount of thrust. There are a few different versions of this propellant-free thruster, called a "Cannae Drive" or EmDrive.. and there's even a Kickstarter project to try to build a similar system. Is it April Fool's day every day? [url]
• NASA is looking into every possible means to improve space travel, including the very speculative faster-than-light "warp drive" that proposes to bend space-time to get to distant destinations in a matter of weeks instead of decades. Alcubierre drives are purely theoretical, and NASA explicitly states any kind of FTL warp drive is firmly in the speculation realm. [url]
• Vortex rockets provide a practical solution for reducing the weight of a traditional liquid-fuel rocket. Conventional rockets require some (heavy) complex cooling systems to prevent parts of the rocket itself from melting and/or vaporizing away, but a vortex rocket eliminates the need for cooling by creating a mini-tornado of burning fuel where the hottest temperatures are kept away from rocket structures. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: alcubierre drive, cannae drive, emdrive, propulsion, rockets, space, space exploration, vortex rockets, warp drive
Companies: kickstarter, nasa

DailyDirt: Making Good Toys

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

While it's still summertime and schools haven't started up yet, kids are happily playing outdoors (hopefully) and not worrying about the coming onslaught of homework and common core initiatives. The stuff that kids play with has gotten more advanced over the years (not just iPads and gaming consoles), and some toys are really fascinating. Here are just a few things

• Here's a Kickstarter project to sell a water hose attachment that can make 100 water balloons in under a minute. It's not exactly rocket science, but apparently some plastic tubing and elastic o-rings is worth about 15 cents per water balloon. [url]
• Play Doh is generally safe to eat, unless you're severely intolerant to wheat gluten, because it's made of water, salt and flour (plus a bunch of other proprietary stuff). There are some recipes for making your own sculpting clay at home that might be more appetizing, but what can you expect from a toy product that was originally designed to clean soot from wallpaper? [url]
• Soap bubbles are fun, but how hard could it be to make soap bubbles a solid color with some dyes? Apparently, it's non-obvious to those skilled in the art (see US patent 7910531), and simply adding dyes to soap bubble solutions make mostly clear (regular) bubbles with all the dye collecting in a single spot on the bottom of the bubble. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: kid stuff, play doh, soap bubbles, toys, water balloons
Companies: kickstarter

Yes, The Guys Using Legal Loopholes To Screw Over An AirBnB Host Likely Also Scammed Kickstarter Backers

from the this-happens dept

Recently, Russ Roberts had YCombinator's Sam Altman on his absolutely wonderful podcast Econtalk, and the discussion is fantastic and worth listening to (which is true of most Econtalk episodes). Among many interesting and thought-provoking points that Altman made about innovations and new startups like AirBnB and Uber was that with those kinds of new solutions there were always the growing pains -- the stories of crazy drivers or the AirBnB guests throwing crazy house parties. Those stories generate a lot of attention, and they tend to highlight issues where service can be improved, but they do little to slow down the momentum of those startups (in some cases, the publicity actually helps). The simple fact is that there are some people who will always abuse the system, but that alone doesn't deny the amazing opportunities created by some of these services.

But still, with the stories of scams and loopholes, there are always going to be some people who actively seek to take advantage of them. That's just something that happens. These are the same people who take advantage of loopholes in traditional ways as well. I knew a guy in college who bought a really expensive TV, but always returned it right before the 6-month money-back guarantee was up -- only to buy another TV to do the same thing over and over again. Same guy would also figure out ways to drop certain classes strategically to get better grades. He basically spent his life looking for loopholes. Such people exist, and apparently two Russian brothers who are good at that sort of thing are getting some attention for trying to effectively build some scams off of two popular online platforms these days: AirBnB and Kickstarter.

The AirBnB side of the story got attention first. Apparently, one of the brothers, used AirBnB to "rent" a condo in Palm Springs for 44 days, paying the first month in advance. However, he then stopped payments, and made use of a California renters/squatters law that says if you reside in a place for more than 30 days you're a "tenant" and if the owner wants to get rid of you they have to go through (very complicated) evictions. It seems clear that this was the plan all along.

A few days later, however, it came out that the brothers staying at the condo were Maxksym and Denys Pashanin, who also had a history of running a big Kickstarter project that raised $40,000, but hasn't delivered. They've also set up a second Kickstarter campaign, but (not surprisingly) it seems to be having trouble finding backers.

Making the situation even more bizarre is that Maksym appears to have logged into the Kickstarter account for the first game to comment on the story by joking about the situation: In the end, though, some are trying to make a big deal out of what this means for "the sharing economy" or for these kinds of new platforms that are all the rage online these days. And the answer is: absolutely nothing. It may provide some details on how these companies can do better fraud prevention in the future, but the simple fact is that there are always people who are going to look to pull scams. That was true a thousand years ago and it was true a hundred years ago and it was true ten years ago. It's still true today. In fact, the difference might be that these guys, in pulling these scams, are getting plenty of attention for it. Their latest Kickstarter campaign is a dud, and it seems likely that they'll now have this reputation stuck to them going forward.

Of course, the other possibility is to use some of these new platforms to get them back as well. Forbes reporter Kash Hill has already suggested (jokingly, we're sure) perhaps using TaskRabbit to beat these guys up...

Filed Under: crowdfunding, denys pashanin, eviction, maxksym pashanin, sharing economy, tentant laws
Companies: airbnb, kickstarter

DailyDirt: Growing Better Strawberries

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

We've talked about how strawberries are actually not berries and about a few cool tidbits about growing them. If you like strawberries, here are just a few more links for your perusal.

• American strawberry farmers enjoy access to the strawberry breeding program at UC Davis which accounts for more than half of the ancestry of strawberries in our supermarkets. The proprietary strawberry breeds created in this program are generally sold to any grower that wants to use them, but potential changes to the university's program could make desirable strawberries harder to obtain. [url]
• The Marshall strawberry almost went extinct -- even though it had been called "the tastiest strawberry in America" -- in 2007. A single clone at the USDA's Germplasm Repository was re-grown among some strawberry enthusiasts (circa 2009), and a Kickstarter campaign is helping to create an organic strawberry farm dedicated to this variety. [url]
• The use of methyl bromide as a fumigant has been around for decades in strawberry fields, but it's an ozone-depleting chemical (and a possible carcinogen). Alternatives are being tested as methyl bromide is (slowly) phased out, and some disinfestation techniques appear to be promising replacements. (It should be noted that even some organic strawberry farmers get plants from nurseries that use methyl bromide, and new techniques to control disease organisms can use more water.) [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: disinfestation, farming, food, gmo, marshall strawberry, methyl bromide, organic, pesticides, strawberries
Companies: kickstarter

Kickstarter, Etsy And Dwolla All Speak Out On Net Neutrality And Why The FCC's Plan Is Dangerous To Innovation

from the make-your-voice-heard dept

During this open comment period for the FCC's proposed rulemaking on net neutrality, it's been great to see hundreds of thousands of comments go in to the FCC on the matter. It's also been fantastic to see that a number of innovative startups have decided to speak out on how important an open and free internet is for being able to build their businesses, to innovate and to compete on the modern internet. They also point out that the current plan from Commissioner Tom Wheeler would put that all at risk. Here are three interesting ones worth mentioning.

First up, is Kickstarter. CEO/co-founder Yancey Strickler wrote a great opinion piece for the Washington Post along with a blog post highlighting the company's actual FCC filing, which is similar to the WaPo piece. Here's just a bit of it, but gives you a sense of why this is so important:

Kickstarter, like Wikipedia, Twitter and every other service on the Web, was built on the foundation of an open Internet. We would not exist without it. The more than 60,000 creative ideas that have been brought to life using Kickstarter — from new technologies to new restaurants to new symphonies — also depend on a free and open Internet.

Once a fast lane exists, it will become the de facto standard on the Web. Sites unwilling or unable to pay up will be buffered to death: unloadable, unwatchable and left out in the cold. It won’t be enough anymore to have a great idea and to execute it well. New entrepreneurs will have to pay their ISP tax, too.

Though Kickstarter is the largest and best-known “crowdfunding” platform, there are now dozens of similar sites out there. Competition is good. It inspires a better experience for customers. We’re happy to compete on the basis of our product. Under a paid-prioritization system, however, this kind of competition would end. Sites like ours would succeed or fail not on the basis of their passion or service but on whether they have the resources and desire to pay the big Internet carriers.

This proposed system would incentivize entrepreneurs to divert resources from their customers and staff and into paid deals with ISPs. Trading healthy competition for deep pockets is a terrible way to create an innovative, competitive economy.

That third paragraph is a key point that policy makers often don't get about the startup world. People in the startup world thrive on competition -- and they're happy with an open playing field because they believe in their own ability to out-innovate others. It's that sort of entrepreneurial spirit that makes such wonderful innovations online. The whole idea of putting up roadblocks for competitors is the type of thing that tends to happen later in a company's life, when they're less about innovating and expanding markets, and more about protecting their turf.

The end of net neutrality would make it easier for turf protecting, but make it much harder for the kind of open competition and innovation that drives so many entrepreneurs.

The next company is Etsy, the famed online marketplace, which has a blog post from Althea Erickson (the company's director of public policy) and a link to the company's comment with the FCC from CEO Chad Dickerson. Both are worth reading.

Etsy’s continued growth depends on equal access to consumers. Any rule that allows broadband providers to negotiate special deals with some companies would undermine our and our sellers’ ability to compete.

Etsy hosts over 25 million products; yet we are a low-margin business. We made a values-based decision to charge only $0.20 to list an item and 3.5% of every sale, much lower than other e-commerce platforms.

We spend considerable resources ensuring that large, high-resolution photos load quickly and efficiently. We have also considered offering our sellers the ability to create and share videos, which they could use to introduce themselves and the unique process behind their products. But our low margins would not allow us to pay for priority access to ensure our site loaded as quickly as rival sites if the FCC’s proposed rules went into effect.

If a consumer were to click on an Etsy shop and perceive delays in images loading or videos buffering, they would likely click away to another site, and our seller would lose that sale. We can’t predict the future of e-commerce or product innovations, but we want to ensure that Etsy sellers can reach buyers with the same technologies as any other online retailer.

Ultimately, the micro-businesses who sell on Etsy would suffer most if the FCC moves forward with this proposal. Most US Etsy sellers (88%) are women running micro-businesses out of their homes. Taken individually, they may be small, but together they sold over $1.35 billion worth of goods last year. The Internet has democratized access to entrepreneurship for a whole new cohort of Americans, and Chairman Wheeler’s proposal threatens to undermine this progress by creating a pay-to-play environment that gives even greater advantage to entrenched interests.

As with Kickstarter, Etsy is highlighting how the real impact will be on the users of these services, people who have been able to build tons of unique and wonderful businesses that mostly wouldn't have been possible before. They are now -- but they could be at risk if the FCC mucks this up.

The final company is payments company Dwolla, which posted its comment to the FCC from the company's founder and CEO Ben Milne. Here's an excerpt:

Dwolla supports an open Internet and we rely on it for the success of our business. Without an open Internet, companies, such as ours, would not be able to achieve the level of innovation made possible today. Technical discrimination and pay-to-play deals may directly harm Dwolla. We are working hard to develop our networks and scale our breakthroughs to the masses. Dwolla does not believe we can sustain our low-cost value proposition should a pay-for-priority come to fruition. We believe that there are legitimate concerns around the payments incumbents’ ability to outbid newer companies, such as ourselves, with existing cash on hand. Should we be negatively affected, Dwolla could be forced to increase transaction rates to our users, which conflicts directly with our low-cost business model. Additionally, Dwolla’s real-time payments service is dependent on the speed and reliability of payments. This impacts both us and our users. First, conducting business outside of the fast-lane would mean slower transactions and an impairment of one of our major competitive advantages; second, our users would not be able to transact amongst themselves with the same ease and assurances.

Government policy should encourage competition and innovation in payments processing, which would result in greater efficiency, speed and low-costs for businesses and consumers across the economy. The FCC should impose a rule against unreasonable discrimination, relying on Title II of the Communications Act. Technical discrimination and pay-for-play arrangements considered by the FCC will only stymie the types of innovation and creative solutions needed to address our country’s financial needs, which we believe the CFPB should encourage for the benefit of all consumers.

While so many like to pit the net neutrality fight as just a battle between internet giants like Netflix against broadband giants like Comcast, it's stories like the three above that show it's about much, much more than that. These three platforms have had tremendous success over the past few years, but in all three cases, the success is driven by the fact that they've enabled people and many thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs to do things that simply weren't possible before. It's a powerful message that's often lost in this debate.

As a reminder there are just a few days left if you want to add your own comments for the FCC to consider. And, as a further reminder, our crowdfunding campaign for our net neutrality reporting is still ongoing. If you support it, it will allow us to dig deeper and explore how the potential rules might impact companies like those above and many others as well. And, if you pledge now, you'll have double the impact thanks to the matching funds that have been agreed to by some key donors.

Filed Under: competition, fcc, innovation, net neutrality, startups, title ii, tom wheeler
Companies: dwolla, etsy, kickstarter