Silicon Valley Nation: Crowd-funding electronics innovation

SAN FRANCISCO--I've written for many years about the new development paradigm in the semiconductor industry, given cost constraints and other factors. Since venture capitalists aren't giving entrepreneurs any love, it's time to leverage crowd-funding, as we've seen in successes like Adapteva.

Now comes a battery-charging idea, based on Georgia Tech patents, that's seeking funding.

Potential Difference Inc., a company founded by a part-time blues singer and Harvard biochem graduate, is looking for $50,000 to push its technology to market. To date, the company has spent $300,000 in R&D, a third of that from the founder, Elliott Small (pictured). But as it nears the prototype stage the company, working with Chargetek (Camarillo, Calif.), is looking for a little bit more to get over the hump.

His project on Indiegogo is a 120-day project, ending March 26, and he's raised $950 so far toward his $50,000 goal

Why crowd-sourcing more money at this point?

"The money can be procured even in significant amounts fairly quickly," Small said in a telephone interview, a small dog barking in the background. "Campaigns can't last more than a few months anyway. It's not borrowed money and it's not equity."

Indiegogo offers a few ways of building a crowd-funding project, including entrepreneurs getting no money if the target is not achieved or taking the money regardless of whether that threshold is crossed.

"It's a way of pre-selling the products...although actually you're not selling. You're getting donations and you're getting a perk, which is the legal background," said Small, who also moonlights as an R&B singer.

So what's the technology? Small licensed two patents from Georgia Tech that were awarded more than a decade ago, essentially software managing the battery-charge process and keeping track of the state of charge of the battery and applying the charge in a way that will allow you to charge with a higher current.

Patent #6229285, granted in 2001, to Yi Ding, determines the battery's state of charge by applying an alternating current pulse to the battery before initiating a charging sequence and recording the battery's response. Patent #6094033, granted in 2000, also to Ding, describes a similar approach to battery monitoring and charging.

This isn't Small's first crowd-sourcing rodeo.  He tried raising money on Kickstarter to raise money to take a converted EV across the country on a promotional drive. "I didn't really work at it hard at (raising the money),  and nothing resulted from it," Small said.
 
But this time around, he's sees a much bigger opportunity, with an estimated 2 billion cell phones and laptops being sold each year.

"There are two ways to provide faster charging for cell phones," Small said. "One is to work out collaboration with cell phone manufacturers. We're working on that. The other is to target cellphone battery chargers that people use to charge spare cell phone batteries. That's a market we can approach right away while we're working on relationships with cell phone manufacturers."

Electronics entrepreneurs are building leaner startups and getting smarter about funding them, using today's tools to take ideas to market. Elliott Small is one of them. Andreas Olofsson at Adapteva is a another. 

How about you? Does crowdfunding intrigue you enough to get that idea out of your head and into the garage and prototyping phase?

Related stories:
--Silicon Valley Nation: VCs still hate you
--Silicon Valley Nation: The end of Silicon Valley?
--How Kickstarter created a community for Adapteva