Thursday, May 16, 2013

Melon Nears Fundraising Goal, Only Days After Crowdfunding Launch

It's official--Los Angeles-based brainwave-tapping startup Melon is within a couple of thousand dollars of hitting its $100,000 fundraising goal, to bring its combination headband-and mobile-phone app to market. According to the company's Kickstarter page, it has now raised $97,398 towards the $100,000 goal for the project--only three days after the project launched. Melon's founders, Arye Barnehama and Laura Michelle Berman, are hoping to tap into the interest in the "quantified self" movement, to help people focus and concentrate better. The startups is part of the latest LaunchpadLA class. Melon--and many other hardware focused startups--have found a sudden new source of funding through crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter. Before sites like Kickstarter, those hardware startups faced formidable issues getting early seed funding, particularly from professional investors and angels; the advent of crowdfunding seems to have turned that formula around dramatically in the last couple of years.

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