Sigmo voice translating device, which claims to allow the user to translate immediately 25 different languages, closed last night at $249,216 raised on a goal of only $15,000. The initial goal seems quite modest in light of their incredible success as 3375 backers lined up to support the technology product. This raise puts Sigmo in the top 50 of most funded on Indiegogo in all categories and in the top 20 for technology campaigns.
The majority of backers went with rewards that promised to deliver a Sigmo with first shipment expected in January 2014. Several re-seller packages were scooped up by backers hoping to offer the product for sale. Reseller packages started at $1250 for 50 and went up to 10,000 for 500. One reseller package was acquired for $4100 which delivered a reward of 200 Sigmos.
As consumer interest grew, this pretail effort indicated substantial interest in the market which inevitably drove support for the crowdfunding campaign.
Stretch goals were quickly let as the campaign easily cruised past the initial hurdle. The final stretch was set a $200,000 which was surpassed only in the past couple of days as funding velocity increased at the very end.
The campaign suffered an initial hitch as they fell pray to the series of PayPal freeze outs which occurred several weeks ago
. PayPal addressed the issue within a few days of the issue and the campaign rolled on.
The device which connects to your smart phone, either iOS or Android, via bluetooth allows the user to voice translate in 25 languages by leveraging existing technologies, such as Google Translate, which are readily available on the internet.
Sigmo was the brainchild of two inventors from Switzerland, Marti Karrer and David Barnett, who faced with the challenge of communicating in multiple languages while traveling decided to address the problem by creating a device that allows people to talk and understand foreign languages without and barriers.
The Sigmo team will continue accepting orders on their web site soon.
Languages available for translation are listed below:
- English
- Spanish
- French
- Finish
- German
- Italian
- Japanese
- Chinese
- Mandarin and Cantonese
- Catalan
- Korean
- Dutch
- Norwegian
- Swedish
- Danish
- Portuguese
- Polish
- Russian
- Arabic
- Indonesian
- Hebrew
- Czech
- Turkish
- African
- Malay
- Croatian
- Thai
- Greek
- Bulgarian
- Turkish
- Slovak
- Hungarian
- Ukrainian
- Hindi
Have a crowdfunding offering you'd like to share? Submit an offering for consideration using our Submit a Tip form and we may share it on our site!