In his book, The Lean Startup, Eric Ries discusses (among other things) a way to measure early success in a startup company: Validated Learning. This is the idea that a startup company is really just a series of experiments in a new way of doing business and that, rather than measuring success in dollars earned, success should be measured in amount learned. Rather than just some lame excuse (“Well… we learned a lot!”), Validated Learning is the engine of success which drives a company forward.

On that note, I would like to announce the failure of Swiftlet’s Kickstarter campaign. We reached only 7% of our funding goal, which essentially invalidated one of the core assumptions in our early business plan: The idea that potential customers will contribute toward our product which has not yet been developed. It seems that the market has too many finished products which are similar to what ours will be.

One of Swiftlet’s core values is Transparency, not just in our source code, but also in the way we run our business. This frees us to share a lot more of what’s going on inside our heads here business-wise and hopefully learn some lessons that can be shared with other entrepreneurs. We are still in the process of getting into this experiment mindset, so stay tuned here on our blog for future business adventures.

In the mean-time, there are a couple of ways that you can still support Swiftlet Technology in our goal to change the world:

• First, sign up for our email list in the form on the right-hand side. This will allow us to keep you updated on what is happening with the company!
• Second, if you support our goals for open-source technology, please donate money to our cause. This will allow us to accelerate the continued development of the hardware and software. Because we are a small company, we will have to divert most of our attention to things that make money in the short-term, but any money you donate here will go directly to our open-source technologies. Also note, we are not in a position to offer rewards for these donations; if you are interested in receiving a wireless module, sign up for notification when pre-ordering is available.
• Finally, share your opinions with us! We are dedicated to making something useful, and that can’t happen very well without being able to understand what it is that you want out of the technology! Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an email through our contact form so that we can get inside your head!

Thanks again for your support, we look forward to building this open-source, open-protocol, wireless mesh networking technology with your help!

Dan Kurin,
Founder & CEO