From Cubicle to Startup in 27 Days

Good writeup. There were a couple things you probably could have done better (which you probably know).

* Nevada LLC - Half the time I've seen people do it, it's not worth the effort to form a company outside your actual state of operation. Especially not for an LLC, which is already not well suited for companies which plan to take outside investment at any point.

* LegalZoom - This is also usually not worth it. You mentioned in your post that LegalZoom is a major part of your expenses so far. Did you take a few minutes to actually look at your state's website for creating an LLC? Here in Michigan, it's literally a one-page form that takes less than 2 minutes to fill out, with a $25 filing fee. And yet, I meet people all the time here who used LegalZoom to form their LLC.

* Filing an LLC simply for personal protection - A lot of people don't realize that simply filing an LLC does not protect your personal assets. Someone can still try to sue you personally and it's up to the court to decide if your LLC is valid and protects you personally. Filing is easy. But you have to actually operate on a day-to-day basis like a real company for it to hold up in court should the time come. This means doing things like doing all transactions through a separate company bank account, presenting yourself as a representative of your company when you meet potential partners or customers (e.g. making sure your LLC is on your business card), using the LLC for all legal docs, dealing with applicable business insurances, etc. IANAL, so be sure to look up the actual rules of the game for your state.

* Kickstarter title - I didn't think it was that good. It doesn't even mention "iPhone" in the title, so I would have had no clue what you're talking about without visiting the page and reading up.

I don't want to sound like this is all negative though. This was a great writeup of your experience. I especially liked the points about developing a physical product.

EDIT: By the way, your homepage is awesome, especially the "Charge Ready" slide.

As you realize, your video needs a lot of work. You need to focus more on the product less on you or your company. We don't see any actual footage of the cable being plugged in, just some rather plain mockups of how it could work. You have a working prototype, show it! Better lighting, better editing and better sound also help give your product more credibility.

This is a good first draft, you just have to go through a couple more iterations.

Hey -- thanks so much to the founders for this well-thought write up. Learned a lot.