Connect Today to Win a FREE Trivae!

Hello virtual friends. 🙂

As you know, we’ve been running a Kickstarter campaign for our totally cool and new product, Trivae.  It’s a patent-pending kitchen tool that’s coming out this summer.  Totally functional, it solves so many kitchen gripes all the while letting you cook and entertain in style!

We’re giving away up to 3 Trivaes through a raffle with PlugMob – https://plugmob.com/plug/Trivae . Anyone who connects their networks will be entered to win! No purchase is necessary, but you can learn more about this awesome product by clicking HERE.

Deadline to enter is Friday, January 16th at 11pm EST. What is PlugMob? PlugMob is a tool that connects to your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts (whichever you select) and allows us to post ONLY 1 message on your behalf. We’ve crafted a message, but don’t worry – you can customize it as you see fit!

All you have to do is connect your social networks here: https://plugmob.com/plug/Trivae

And what do you get in exchange? You’ll be entered to win a classic black, color, or TOTALLY CUSTOMIZED ($250 value!!!) Trivae. See the image above for details, and the Kickstarter campaign for what this means!

As long as at least 50 people participate, you’ll get a chance to win an awesome, a super awesome, or a ridiculously pimped out Trivae (depending on the number of participants). The drawing will take place this Friday and we’ll notify the winner in an upcoming post. Don’t delay!

 

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UPDATE (as of January 22):

We want to thank everyone who connected their social networks for participating in our “Win a Trivae” contest. Because of your efforts, we were able to reach an incredible 155,000 new people and tell them about our project.

A total of 283 people signed up to participate and so, as promised, we raffled off all three prizes:
•    (1) Trivae in classic black,
•    (1) Trivae in one of our available colors, and
•    (1) super cool Trivae with a custom finish!

The lucky winners have been selected! Please visit our campaign here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/339561090/trivae-art-and-function-at-work-in-your-kitchen/posts/1114407 to see who they are!

If you see your name on the winner list, you MUST email us at info@trivae.com from the email you used to sign up for PlugMob for instructions on how to claim your prize. The deadline to claim your prize is 30 days from today (February 21st).

If you didn’t win one of the prizes, don’t despair! Our campaign is still live for 8 more days on Kickstarter so you can grab one for yourself here: http://kck.st/1rTl1Ir. Once the campaign ends, so will all the special pricing perks. So if you want a Trivae in your life, be sure to get it now to save a bunch! HINT HINT: It also makes a great gift for just about anyone ☺

Again, we are so grateful for all your support! It’s because of you that we are able to make Trivae a reality and we can’t thank you enough!!!

The Final Lesson on Kickstarter

Kickstarter is a fun place to window shop. You can learn about amazing new products coming to market or films about to be made.

But it’s more than window shopping. Once you pledge on Kickstarter, you feel like you are part of something. Take it from people who researched hundreds of campaigns, tearing apart every little detail but never pledging – when you finally pledge, you become a child waiting for Christmas. A Christmas that isn’t guaranteed on a certain day but we’re adults and most of us have learned to manage our enthusiasm.

You receive updates on how your gift to yourself is coming along. Some creators update their backers more than others, but in our experience creators are always willing to communicate. Why wouldn’t they want to talk about what they’ve spent the past couple of years creating? Then, you get it in the mail (whatever it is) and as you pull it out of the box you know that you are one of the first people to ever own one. Hey, and if the product takes off, that may be a bragging point one day.

So, the Trivae team urges you to pledge a project on Kickstarter. Whether it be in the art, comic, design, or film section – do it. And if it happens to be ours, great. If tomorrow is the day, wait until 8 a.m. CT, check the product design category, and you may see a product that looks familiar (it’s us!). 🙂

A Beginner’s Guide to Kickstarter II

In our first installment of Kickstarter education we covered the burning question – what is that…thing? In this installment, we’ll discuss why people choose to fund their dreams with crowdfunding. As you’ll soon see, it’s not just because it’s a fun way to do so; it’s because of all the ancillary benefits. But, it’s still a lot of fun.

A Beginner’s Guide to Kickstarter

Sometimes new concepts can be hard to grasp. Especially really new concepts. It took running a Kickstarter campaign and not quite reaching our goal to realize that maybe explaining ourselves would be a good idea. It’s a revolutionary idea, we know.

Most people aren’t familiar with Kickstarter. What is this foreign concept? Well, we’re going to tell you in our next couple of blog posts. Trust us, you’ll almost be experts by the end of this course. Wait, should we be charging for this?

To get started, the first thing you need to know is that Kickstarter is an online platform that allows people to kick start their creative projects. We would say no pun intended, but that was definitely intended.

To keep learning, check out the infographic below and stay tuned for our next lessons on Kickstarter.

Strikingly – the secret weapon in our bag of tricks

One aspect of being an entrepreneur that few people give proper thought to is having to learn a vast number of skills outside of your general knowledge area and, at times, far outside of your comfort zone. This can be very time-consuming and distracting, not to mention daunting, and more often than not, it significantly slows down your overall progress towards the main objective which is to bring a business or an idea to life! This is also likely the reason why so many great ideas never see the light of day; their creators simply give up under the weight of all of the things involved in bringing it out of their head and into the physical world. As co-founders of the company behind Trivae, a multi-functional kitchen tool, we’ve had to become proficient in areas far beyond anything related to the kitchen industry.

A kitchen tool—what could you possibly need to learn? Well, as it turns out, the answer to that is “lots of things” and most of them have nothing to do with cooking or the kitchen. To give you some insight as to what it took to create Trivae, throughout the design process we have become near-experts in: CAD software, prototyping, various tooling, casting techniques, metal alloys, different metal finishes, the international patent process and how to read, understand and draft patent applications…the list goes on and on. And this is all before you even turn to the general running of a business. In the midst of all of this, there is one all-important thing for any business that we haven’t yet mentioned and, lucky for us, this is the one thing we never had to master – the art of website programming.

We’ve been working on Trivae for two years and ever since the beginning, our website has been the key to presenting our business to the world. For a business that lives primarily online for the time being, our website is the face of our brand and is the place where people come to get to know us. As such, it’s the piece of our business that deserves, and demands,  a lot of our attention, all of which is worthwhile because it reflects all of the efforts we have invested into our company.

Thankfully, creating our website has been one of the most effortless parts of making our product a reality. With Strikingly, we were able to create a website that we are proud for the world to see!

With the launch of our Kickstarter campaign quickly approaching (wait, is that tomorrow?), we are especially grateful that Strikingly’s platform is so adaptive to changes. Need to add our campaign video to the website? No problem. With a couple of clicks, we are able to rearrange images and text into new positions without taking any critical time away from running our business. These easy to use features allow us to showcase our invention effortlessly in a visually compelling manner. Strikingly provides us cost savings by allowing us to forgo expensive programmers, time savings, and also makes us feel like we’re not alone. Their people are always there to answer our questions while being wonderfully pleasant to work with!

We’re big about showing gratitude to those who have helped us along the way and Strikingly was the perfect partner for us. While learning the ins and outs of the design, manufacturing, marketing and all the other processes associated with bringing Trivae to market, we didn’t have the time or resources to create a distinctive website from scratch. Fortunately, Strikingly was there to help us and made sure we didn’t have to make any sacrifices!

Don’t believe us? Check out our website at www.trivae.com!

Life experiences are just a question away

In this day and age, it’s easy to forget simple mantras that we used to live by as kids. I can’t recall the last time that I actually thought of “The Golden Rule,” something I was reminded of constantly as a kid. After so many years of reinforcement, these phrases become embedded into our daily lives and are often executed subconsciously. But what about the mantras that have been forgotten?

One that is often times forgotten, but is very prevalent in daily life, is the notion to ask for what you would like and many times it will be granted to you. In business, it is amazing the kinds of things that you can experience and the doors that will open for you if you simply ask.

A great instance of this is when we went on an adventure throughout Omaha to find a specialty engraver for an entirely customizable Trivae that will be offered through our Kickstarter campaign. We stopped by an old, established engraving place, Herman Engraving Co., and asked to speak with someone, even though we were hesitant given we didn’t make an appointment. We ended up speaking with the president of the company (Mike Hahn), getting a tour, and seeing great pieces of history that one would never guess originated in Omaha.

When we were walking through the shop, we were able to see the 2015 Daytona 500 trophy being made. Mike even stopped to describe the entire process the trophy goes through when it’s in their shop as well as how long they had been involved in making it.

Then, at the end of the tour, we ended up at a cabinet filled with relics from the past. Mike pointed out a strange looking piece in the top corner and told us that they were the ones who actually made the mold for the very first computer stand frame that Steve Jobs used back when he was starting Apple.

It’s the weird looking thing in the top left corner of the cabinet.

The pride that Mike takes in his work was evident throughout our whole visit. He was open to entertaining ideas and questions while teaching us about their work and Omaha’s industrial history. In short, he was incredibly inspiring. Meeting a man who has worked hard and taken pride in every second of it gives us another goal to aspire to. Who wouldn’t want to one day inspire others?

Experiences like these are just a question away and can be found throughout every city in the world. There are always stories waiting to be told.

The Journey

When people think of entrepreneurship, generally an image of a cool product or driven business person comes to mind. What people don’t realize is that entrepreneurship, before anything else, is a journey.

It is a journey in which you not only create something from nothing but accidentally reinvent yourself in the process. When we first decided that we wanted to create something, we had close to a million ideas. Many nights were spent deciding which product had a chance of surviving in the market. When we settled on Trivae, it felt like we had really made some progress.

Two years later, we realize how minute that first initial feeling of progress was. After many sleepless nights, countless phone calls, and many encouraging words from our loved ones, we have finally arrived at a place where Trivae is almost a reality. And yet, it still seems so far from reach.

We have had to become more patient in this process, both with ourselves and with others. We have had to learn new skills and, when we couldn’t learn on our own, we had to reach out to those who could teach us. The world is brimming with possibilities the moment you realize that simply asking can help you to overcome most obstacles.

In all honesty, becoming entrepreneurs has been one of the most terrifying and rewarding experiences of our lives. We wouldn’t trade it for all the sleep in the world (even though we could really use some).

A Little Background

The feeling of being just out of college: freedom, opportunity, giddiness, and, that’s right, “real life”.

Fresh out of schooling and wide-eyed at their first “real” jobs, Trivae creators Svetlana and Rebecca met and became instant friends. The girls spent their days working in finance on Wall Street and both flourished in their careers. Little did they know, each was harboring secret dreams of becoming an entrepreneur. Both kept their inventive ideas a secret until Rebecca was about to leave NYC to work in Europe. After five years of friendship, it was finally made known that they both shared a common dream—to start a business of their own.

With an ocean between them, the two began brainstorming product ideas, trying to decide which of their many ideas would be the most useful. After two years and many cooking sessions, Svetlana and her sister, Ruslana, decided they were tired of trying to find a place for the lid while cooking. Svetlana and Rebecca spent two more years spent designing and planning and are finally ready to present their product to market. They have worked tirelessly, trying to perfect everything regarding Trivae.

Svetlana and Rebecca have an infectious bug they would like to share with you, their enthusiasm for work. Not many people can honestly claim that they love their jobs, but these two definitely can. If you’re ever lucky enough to speak personally with them about Trivae, you’ll see that sparkle in their eyes.