Here’s an IoT crowdfunding campaign to watch!
Normally I’m not that into crowdsourcing campaigns because, like those pictures of fast food burgers, they tend to disappoint in real life. But Visybl has a cool idea to take Amazon Dash buttons and repurpose them for small businesses…taking a concept I’m meh on, to something that seems like a nice way to make life easy for office managers.
Visybl is doing a Kickstarter campaign that launches later today that will offer customizable Dash buttons for small business owners or even individuals. For example, if you send a lot of FedEx packages, just program the button to notify FedEx that a delivery is ready for pickup. With one press you set the process in motion, avoiding a phone call.
You could do something similar for scheduling a service call for the copier or use it to buy refills for the coffee maker.
The buttons, which should ship in October, are $44 for one or $400 for a package of 10. They tie into Visybl’s cloud service and use a graphical user interface to help non-tech users set up the buttons. Amazon Dash buttons are only $20 but you have to program them yourself. There are plenty of people who will not want to do the backend developer work to make that happen.
Based in Germantown, Maryland, Visybl has funding from the Maryland startup Fund. It makes money on larger purchases of its devices. For the goButton, it expects that customers wanting to buy more than 100 will also need provisioning, configuration and management that Visybl can provide. But for the smaller customers, the cost is just the one-time purchase of the device.
In my old office, I would have killed for a button that I could press to shame my colleagues into cleaning up the communal kitchen after themselves. That’s when the IoT gets really good.