Quirky is a New York–based product invention platform that designs and builds consumer products submitted and developed by a global community. The company lets anyone submit product ideas or vote and influence others’ ideas in real time on Quirky.com. Products are sold directly from Quirky.com and through national retail partnerships with The Home Depot, Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond, Target, and Amazon.com. Alongside its Series D, Quirky announced a partnership with GE to release a line of smart home products and to support the WINK platform. As part of that partnership GE will take a minority equity stake via a $30m strategic investment and provide services to promote products and develop premium countertop appliances. Quirky was founded in 2009 by Ben Kaufman and is hiring in NYC and SF. The company has raised $175 million in funding to date. Quirky operates an online community and product-development platform that pairs inventors with in-house designers, engineers, manufacturing and retail professionals to commercialize consumer products. The company focuses on developing roughly two consumer products per week and has developed over 200 products into retailers such as Target, Staples, OfficeMax and Bed Bath & Beyond. Its community has grown to over 250,000 members and the average product attracts about 800 contributors; Quirky has paid more than $600K in royalties to its community. The startup has also run corporate partnerships (for example with GE) to integrate technology into everyday products, producing items like the “Milkmaid” smart milk jug. With new funding the company plans to improve its community submission process, add more tinkerers and advisors to its development teams, and create a distribution program to increase inventor involvement at retail. Quirky is a social network and platform that crowdsources product ideas and involves a community in every stage of creation, from ideation and naming to manufacturing, marketing, and sales. Users submit ideas for a $10 fee, vote and rate submissions, and the community selects one product each week after a seven-day evaluation period. The site has produced products such as Pivot Power, Wrapster, and Fender and averages about 60 products a year. Quirky sells products online and has retail distribution deals with Bed Bath And Beyond and OfficeMax. The company expects the Quirky community to make over $1 million on the site’s products this year and has raised a total of $29 million to date. Quirky will use the new funding to build out the team, especially hiring in product development and design, and will star in a reality series on the Sundance Channel. Quirky is a social network and platform for product development that crowdsources every stage of product creation from ideation to sales. Users submit product ideas for $99 and the community votes, rates, and influences submissions; after a seven-day evaluation the community selects one product each week to move forward. The platform engages participants in naming, logo selection, packaging, design and engineering decisions. Since launching last summer the community has helped develop 12 different products. Quirky was founded by serial entrepreneur Ben Kaufman. The company plans to use new funding to build a full-scale rapid prototyping shop, hire a global sales force, expand retail distribution, staff 24-hour design and engineering capacities, and add interactive collaboration tools.

Total raised

$169M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Series D

Latest activity

Nov 2013