One was created in Italy, the other in Finland, but there is an Italian among the founders, and they are literally breaking the bank on Indiegogo. The crowdfunding platform par excellence is Kickstarter, with campaigns like those of Pebble and Oculus that have gone down in history, and, in Oculus’s case, gone to the headquarters of Facebook (here are the top ten earning projects). But these days Indiegogo is making waves with two projects that have far surpassed their requested amounts within just a few hours: Embrace by Empatica and Jolla Tablet by Jolla. The second one is the one that has surpassed the one million milestone but it is the first one that solicits the most patriotic pride.
Empatica is a startup that was created within the halls of the Politecnico di Milano and active in the field of analysis of physiological signals. With headquarters in San Francisco, it boasts high caliber collaborations with the likes of Harvard Medical School and the laboratories at MIT in Boston. And on Indiegogo it launched its application Embrace, which is capable of warning those who suffer from epilepsy of an imminent attack as well as signal this risk to a bracelet worn by a relative or friend. Developed together with the Epilepsy Foundation, it costs 199 dollars and in just a few hours it surpassed the 100,000 dollars that had been requested. The target limit was raised by another 100,000 dollars and, with one month still to go, the total has already reached 142,000 dollars.
On the other hand, Jolla, which was born out of the ashes of Nokia, has decided to exploit the visibility that has been offered by crowdfunding to launch its first tablet. This tablet, just as the smartphones that are already available in Italy, is based on the Sailfish Os operating system, one of the few solutions that – as Italian co-founder Stefano Mosconi always emphasizes in interviews – is attempting to counter the dominion of Android and iOs (and Windows Phone). The key aspect is its price: only 249 dollars (obviously, as for Empatica, offers to support the cause can be for less than this sum). And it is this price that has been most important: the one million dollar hurdle was surpassed in just 24 hours. Now it has reached 1.2 million and there are still 16 days left. However it ends up, these are stories that will be remembered, with a bit of Italy that can we can be proud of.
