Hemingwrite

The Hemingwrite is a new take on an old tool, the typewriter. Patrick Paul and I conceived of the idea in early 2014 as a dedicated writing device that combined the distraction free nature of old devices with modern conveniences like cloud backups.

At first just another nascent product idea, it gathered steam in our minds despite neither of us working on it over the course of the year. September rapidly approached bringing with it our self-imposed deadline of the Engadget hardware competition. We needed to submit a video of a working prototype by midnight on September 16, 2014.

With minutes to spare, we submitted a quick and dirty video showing a freshly machined Hemingwrite with some basic typing capabilities. It was not our best showing but it turned out to be enough. We moved onto the social voting round.

Once the project was put online, it was picked up by PSFK which started a flurry of press from all around the world. It was incredible! Over 150,000 people visited our basic WordPress site within only a couple of months. Thousands were emailing us and signing up for our mailing list awaiting the presale date. We never imagined that kind of response! We were even in print in the Wall Street Journal which was amazing to see. The Hemingwrite was also featured in design magazines in India, Israel, Singapore and elsewhere.

On December 10th we launched our Kickstarter to a few months of pent up demand. The numbers out of the gate were hard to believe. Over 200k was raised in the first 20 hours and our complete fundraising goal of 250k raised within 36 hours. Thus began our journey to making the Hemingwrite a reality. It is now a full-time gig with people working on the project around the world.

More information can be found on the Kickstarter campaign here: http://kck.st/25cAhby