so now, without furtherado, it is my pleasure to introduce our featuredspeaker for tonight. doreen lorenzo is thepresident of quirky, which is an awesomecompany that helps
the night i invented 3d printing, people bring amazing ideasout of people's heads and into the real world. she oversees productdevelopment and operations for this fast-growing company.
before quirky, she was at frogdesign for 16 years and seven years as the president of frog. she is a incrediblethought leader on design and innovation. she's featured inleading publications like abc, bloomberg, fastcompany, fortune, new york times. you guys heard of any of those? impressive.
she's a member of the worldeconomic forum's global agenda council. and probably mostimportantly, she believes very stronglythat everything in life can be connected back toa lyric in a ramones song. so with that, pleasegive a warm welcome to my friend doreen lorenzo. [applause] thank you!
how do i follow that? that's all i want to know. yeah, but i won't hear anything. well thank you everyone. i'm very excited to be here. and i have been inthe maker movement before it was calledthe maker movement. because i've been making thingsfor a very, very long time and/or around peoplealmost, probably,
as long as you, mr. bass. so, yeah. this is very exciting. and i'm thrilled. the way i'm going to talkabout the maker movement, i'm going to talk about itthrough this little company i work for, calledquirky, which i think is doing incrediblethings to bring the maker movement to everyone.
so first questioni'd like to ask. how many of you are partof the quirky community? ooh! how many of you havesubmitted inventions? ok. [laughter from audience] my goal, tonight, when youwalk out, you will sign up, and you will becomepart, because that is really important. if you are a maker, i thinkyou will just get excited.
so let's talk alittle bit about it. so you know, we, uh--everybody know this guy? kind of a greatamerican inventor. and he believed thatthe value of an idea really lied in using it. so kind of an earlymaker, i would think. him and alexandergraham bell, i think, kind of set the tonefor american invention. [video playback]
-before thomas edison inventedthe commercial light bulb, he was just tom, akid who'd dropped out of school after three months. there are millions of toms inthe world-- ordinary people with untapped potential,unwavering ambition, and revolutionary ideas. and the way we see it,inventors aren't just scientists, engineers,or designers; they're real people, like you.
ordinary folks witha problem to solve and the drive to makethe world a better place. -we are a complexmachine, but it's our community thatmakes this machine run-- turning our wheels,fueling our creativity, and inspiring greatness witheach and every idea that comes through ourdoor, big or small. without you, oureveryday inventors, quirky wouldn't be quirky.
together, we aresteadily marching towards one simple goal. to make invention accessible. -so happy nationalinventors' day, community. (chuckling) thanksfor keeping us quirky. [end video playback] so that was somethingwe made in february for national inventors' day. but i think, you know, i playthis only because i really
think it talks a lot about--you've got to have the idea. you've got to start somewhere. right? you've got to have the idea;you've got to start somewhere. but the most importantthing is you've got to do and you've got to make. so we really believethat, in our dna, we are all idea people,because we all invent. i mean, i'm sure you sit throughhere, you were out there.
i was watchingeverybody go through, and you were playing andtinkering and thinking about making stuff, right? and that's kindawhy you're here. we love it. think about it,when we were kids. but then when something happens,we stop, because it's hard. these are justsome of the things that you've got to doto make products, today.
it's actually adifficult process. and that's not even all of it. so invention's hard, butwe know it's important. so what we wantto do is, we want to make invention accessible,and we want everybody to have the ability to getout and get their ideas-- everyday people-- and getthem into the marketplace. so every week-- everyday, actually-- ideas are submitted intothe quirky community.
currently there'salmost a million members in the community. i just asked somebody;there's like 972,000 people. it grows by about2,000 people a day. we get, currently, about4,000 ideas a week. those ideas are curatedthrough a voting system. and then every thursday night,they kind of go down a funnel. every thursday night,7:00 pm eastern time, in our new york city office,we vote on about 10 to 12
of the best ideas thatwere curated down, and you become aquirky inventor. you can submit youridea, the world votes, we influence design,we manufacture it, everyone cashes in-- it's great. and we make stuff,every single day. so currently, todate, there's hundreds of products in the market. we have paid out millionsof dollars to the community.
in fact, one of our inventors--who i have a picture of, later on-- justbecame a millionaire. pretty impressive. i think he's 26. because we do believe thatthe best ideas don't just come from the boardroom anymore,but they come from your living room, they come from yourshower, your backyard, riding a bicycle. we all have them.
but there's somethingabout invention that's happened-- soi'm sure everybody has this statistic available. how long did it take to buildthe empire state building? come on! usually that's yelled out. 410 days. 410 days to build theempire state building. in fact, they were justcelebrating this in new york;
75th anniversary. they were taking hotsteel from new jersey, driving it over in thetrucks, and putting it. it was precision. it was fast. it was quick. this is the first fighter jet. took 165 days to build. this is when there was aneed to get it out, cut
through the red tape,make stuff happen. how long did ittake to build this? 36 months. people, what the hell happened? what has happened? what has happened to our makers? why have we slowed down so much? -we are quirky, acompany that develops three brand-new consumerproducts every single week
by reinventing invention. every thursday at7:00 pm, we sit down, and we look at the bestideas in the world that were submitted to our website. we pick the top five ideas,and then we get to work. doodling, developing,prototyping, coding-- -building, breaking-- -shooting, styling-- -ironing, sewing, cutting--
-contacting,connecting, conversing-- (laughing) that's too many! -and finally shipping, again,the best products the world has ever seen. -tilt it back [interposing voices] -ok, now i want to do it. now i want to do it. -this is quirky.
it's thursday at 7:00 pm,and we are made in new york. ladies and gentlemen, welcometo quirky product evaluation! [crowd cheers] we really do. we develop-- andthis year, we'll ship about 70products, this year. we ship three virtualproducts every single week, which means that weactually-- somebody said, what is quirky like?
and i said, it's santa'sworkshop on steroids. absolutely crazy. we have, you know-- our3d printers basically go (laughing) 24 by 7. and we are justturning out stuff, prototyping, testing, shootingit, putting it in real life. we have this pet productwe're developing right now. it's called a fish bubbler. so what it is is,you press the tube--
and you put the tube into thefish tank; you press the tube, and these big bubbles-- andthe fish run through it. and it has theselights around it. it's more f-- ok. (laughing) [laughter] this was a very, very well-likedproduct by the community, carl! but it is actuallymore fun for the owner. so yesterday, i mean, therewas this-- these fish. you would have thought thatwe had the angelina jolie
fish in our-- because thephotography studio was all over these fish, andwe were shooting them, and we were getting them. and of course, the fish donot want to go, at that point, they didn't want to gothrough the fish bubbler. but we got them to do it. but what we dois, we put this up on our site, every single week. we put three new products; weget the community feedback.
and we understandwhether-- can we make this? can we take this to the market? is there need for it? and we do this fast, very fast. so here it is. this is our site. since you allhaven't been there. (laughing) you go up, you submitideas, you vote on those ideas, and-- you can doa couple of things
on our site, whichis interesting. so you don't have tobe just the inventor. let's say you didn'tinvent something, but you want to influence it. you can be an influencer. so ways that you actuallycan make money from quirky is, you can be an inventor,or you can be an influencer. we are averaging, rightnow, about 2,000 influencers per product.
so if it's a productthat is doing well-- like the gentlemanthat made $1 million, recently, on his product, theguy that named the product has made close to sixfigures on his product, on the naming of it. so you can actuallydo, you know, fairly well byinfluencing a product. we are in 4,700 doors. and we believe thatinfluence-- that's
just part of the community. i met this reallysweet, little woman-- was walking throughthe new york studio. and she came over, andshe's like, oh, doreen, i'm so happy to meet you. and she hugged me,and i'm thinking, ok, i don't know her, but-- and i said, are you an inventor? and she said, no,no, no, no, no.
i'm an influencer. i said, oh, that's nice. and i said, where you live? fort bend, indiana. i said, well, areyou-- what do you do? and she says, i'm a readinginstructor in fort bend. she said, i workpart-time in the schools. and i said, oh, so youwere on the quirky site? she goes, i'm onit all the time.
she taps me, and shegoes, oh, dear, i made $26,000 lastweek-- last year. $26,000! she's a part-timereading instructor. that's probably close to her--equivalent of what she'd made. and she loves it. and she said, no, no,i'm on it all the time. it's an income. so as i said, every tuesday,thursday, and friday,
we do our consumer launch,and we churn this stuff. we're looking atthis constantly. what we have seenis, there's spikes. the more people thatknow about quirky, or the more peoplethat hear about it, it spikes into how manyideas that we may get. and that would thenchurn out, again, how many productsthat we can get out. so recently, we wereon cbs sunday morning.
and that day, thatsunday, we got-- that sunday-- wegot 22,000 ideas. [audience reacts with awe, whistle] 22,000 ideas. we're still, obviously,combing through that. what happens is, thecommunity votes on it. so it is, really-- it beginsto get self-selected and out. but it was absolutely crazy. it was absolutely crazy. so recently, we starteda partnership with ge.
and one of thereasons was, again, look-- thomas edison, the motheror the father of invention, there, and ge had very muchfelt that, in consumer products, it had somewhat lost its way. it took years to get aproduct out the door. it actually took them threeyears to re-do an oven door. and they released apress release about it. and they talked about it. and we kind of-- you know,we were scratching our heads.
it's like, we getproducts out the door. three years to get an oven door? are you kidding me? so ge came to uswith the concept of, let's try to work together. it was about a year ago. let's try to work together. and so, initially,what we did was we took some of their patents,and we put them up on our site,
and we had thecommunity submit ideas. and what happened was, we got1,800 ideas in about two weeks. and from those, as we did,we came up with four products that we produced. and that started--that was about may, and these products were on theshelf in stores in october. ge kind of liked that.[audience laughter] they're like, well, that's pretty cool. like, we haven't been able todo that in a very, very, very
long time. so we talked a lot aboutwhat else we can do. oh, and by the way,not only-- these are connected homeproducts; we also developed an underlyingsoftware application that we're callingwink, which is really an open platform able toconnect all these products. and ge was even morefascinated with that. so they said, let'spartner some more,
because we lovethe fact that you could get theseproducts out the door. that's something aboutquirky that happens. we really-- thereisn't middlemen. and because weiterate so quickly and we're lookingat stuff so fast, we get those products out. we know if it works,it doesn't work; we get feedback from thatcommunity constantly.
and the other partthat's really interesting is going to allof these retailers and being able to givethem all this feedback. we know what colorspeople like; we know what pricepoints people want. we have all of that information. so we recently-- justto talk about speed and to talk about themaking concept-- we recently introduced a new product.
because you know, whenquirky started-- again, quirky's five years old--when quirky started, think about provingthis concept out. we're going to getideas from people, and we're going to make it. then, i don't know thattoo many people would've bought that kind of idea. like, oh sure, yeah, thecrowd's going to come, and you're going to getall these people that
are going to cometo a community, and you're going to make it. so a lot of the products thatwe initially made were plastic. they were injected molds withplastic, 'cause they're simple, inexpensive to make, wecan get them in the store. what happened is, we provedthat the model worked. so now-- here'sthe fun part-- now, it's-- let's take that ideaand let's make complicated products, but let's do itin the same amount of time.
which is, compress the time. so our newestproduct is a product that we call aros, better knownas the world's most bad-ass, in-window air conditioner. and i have a littlevideo that will tell you a little bit about it. but in essence,what this does is, it works in connectionwith our wink app. but it triangulatesthree things.
it tells you theweather; it lets you know what the weather is. it lets you know yourlocation, so you can tell it where you are, soit knows that you're driving home, so it willgradually turn your air conditioning on, as opposedto blasting your air conditioning on. and you also tell it how muchyou want to spend every month. [audience lets outcollective "ah"
of appreciative comprehension] so it triangulatesthose three things, so that-- you know, obviouslyyou could override it if you're reallyhot, and you look like you're gonna overrideyour bill-- but it helps you. so we started thisproject in november; today, they wereshipped to amazon, and they'll be distributed onthe first week-- we presold these on amazon, andthose that bought
the presale will getthem this weekend. so they were manufactured inmarch. [audience applauds] so this is-- and again,we made some improvements. the air flow comesout over the top, so you-- better circulation. i mean, we made someimprovements to it. and actually, itlooks really nice. so here's a littlevideo about this, too. oh, oh, oh!
here's the best part. let me tell you the best part. this is garthen. garthen is the inventorof the air conditioner. garthen was one of the ciosat the department of energy. so he kind of knew alot about this stuff, like, he knew a lot aboutenergy, making stuff. and it really bugged him that--all this energy consumption. but he was also atinkerer and inventor.
he submitted 42 ideasto the quirky website. and when this idea waschosen, and we brought him to our headquarters tounveil what we had done, he started to cry. and he said that-- and thisis really kind of a sad story. he said that he had spent$25,000 of his pension money trying toget an idea patent. and he realized that itwas just too expensive. and now he actually got tomake something, actually got
to be part of something,because of quirky. you'll see garthen now. we're also going to make-- ithink we got garthen an agent; he is like a rockstar, right now. he's going to be in commercialsand all sorts of things. but you'll also notice that2,238 people influenced this. they helped name it,they helped price it, they gave us designideas, and so they'll also partake in the royalties.
-just yesterday, weannounced to the world we were making the smartestair conditioner ever. it's called aros. hopped on a plane. 16 hours later, we're righthere on a boat to china, to this amazing factorywhere the first aros ever is getting made. -i've had the privilegeof being able to see aros all the wayfrom the beginning.
from concept todesign, to engineering, and to manufacturing. and now, at the final step--assembly and mass production. -the manufacturingprocess is often a mystery to a lot of people. they see an idea, and they seesome graphics and pictures, but they don't know what'sbehind that, that there's a lot of people involved. -i think that if everyconsumer and every designer
got to see what i'veseen over the past month, people would think aboutproducts like they've never had to think about them before. being able to see each andevery screw put into a product, see the person that putthis screw in there, is a truly humbling experience. -what really struck me aboutit was the number of people involved and the care theytook when they were actually putting the airconditioner together.
-this is it! the first few arosto come off the line. it's been an amazing few days,watching garthen leslie's idea go from just asubmission to a website to fully fledged product. and now that's here. it's may 1, and it's shipped. so kind of fun. [audience applauds]
kinda fun. the idea, the concept ofmaking something like this, for a person likegarthen, was unattainable. truly unattainable. and so the ability for him todo this, get his idea across-- and he had very-- we get everything, insubmissions, from two lines, i think. you know, one ofthem was called--
they were called dinner pants. and one of thesubmissions-- dinner pants. and they weretuxedo pants for men that had an expandedwaist for after they ate. [audience laughs] not something we'regoing to make. so you get thetwo-line submissions, and you also get,really, much more-- garthen had submittedsomething much more detailed.
in fact, really detailinghis triangulation of how you can control thisto be energy-efficient, and everything in between. so to watch that go, and tosee that happen, and to be part of watching us-- youknow, we had prototypes. we made so many different partsof this air conditioner that were-- and you can stillsee them lying around. and then for the lastmonth to-- you know, i had one sittingnext to my desk.
and just to be able toconstantly turn it on and play with it, we were-- you know, youcan control many of these air conditioners, so i wouldhook into somebody else's and control them allaround, just to make sure. it's just amazing. because, again, this submissioncame in to us in november. so that was pretty exciting. so it's reallyabout real people, to me, coming up withreal ideas and having
those ideas get made. and they really arepeople, just-- like i said, it's the sweet womanthat came to see us. every thursdaynight on our panel, we have a community memberwho's, usually, an inventor. and it's just kind of amazing. it's like, well, how'd youcome up with this idea? or why'd you do this? and it's reallyjust because they
wanted to solve a problemthey were dealing with. you know, theyhave that problem. and i have to say, i lookat these ideas all the time, and i think, god, whydidn't i think of that? like, it's so damned simple. like, why didn'ti think of that? and then to actually give themthe ability to get this made is exciting. so i'm just goingto give you a--
before we go into-- just talkinga little bit more about-- just to get to know some of thepeople that are the inventors. just a littlehistorical background about quirky which ithink would understand. you've been seeing ben kaufman. ben's the founder of quirky. how many of you have a mophie? battery pack for your iphone? ben developed that whenhe was 17 years old.
and what he found was-- youknow, he had this bright-eyed-- and he had-- idea thathe was going to make it. not only did hehave a bright idea that he was going tomake it, he had the best parents in the world, 'causethey mortgaged their house, and they gave him $187,000 togo to china, to go make this. only when he gotthere, he realized it's so much harderthan any of that. oh my god.
it's hard. and you're all sittinghere going, are you crazy? like, what was-- you know. but that's what he learned. so in his mind,it's always been, making inventionaccessible; giving people the opportunity to make stuff. and part of it is the making. the other part isthe distribution.
because you canhave the idea, you could actually make one ortwo, but distributing it, manufacturing it, dealing withreturns and customer service, damn, that's hard. you know, even in my oldlife, when i worked at frog, and we got to workwith some of the best companies in the world,and some of the most incredible products, wedidn't have to do that. you kind of just turn it over,and you go and you run with it.
and so this ability, then, tomake something-- and there's nothing more exciting,i think, for a maker, is to see millions ofpeople using or interacting with something that you have. i think that's super-exciting. so i'm going to tell youa little bit about some of the people. because i think what i likeabout-- what drew me to quirky and made me so excited aboutit is, these are-- you know,
you might talk about sixdegrees of separation; this is, like, onedegree of separation. it's like, people you know. this is, like, your cousins andnext-door neighbors' friends. i mean, like,that's who's there. so this is jake. jake is the recentlyminted millionaire. he's the inventorof pivot power. that's pivot power;simple idea, right?
it's just kind of amovable plug-- outlet. simple. when jake was in high school, hegot this concept for this idea, so he entered it intoa nasa science fair. and he won! and he got a t-shirt. so he kinda held on. he knew it was a good idea. and when he was a sophomoreat risd-- rhode island
school of design-- he submittedit to the quirky website. we took it; that wasabout three years ago. and now it comes in colorsand different sizes, and it's-- i walkedacross the street. there's a walgreens overhere; i ran into a walgreens, and there it was. so it's everywhere. this is marc. marc's actually a designer too,but he does interactive design.
and he loves makingegg-white omelets, and he found separatingthe yolk from the egg white was really hard. and so he came up withthis idea called pluck. pluck has been on every single--that's one of the first-- my first foray withquirky was this product. it's been on every gift guide. and it's reallysimple, and it works. it works.
this is andrea. she said she didn'treally like to do dishes. so she couldn'tunderstand why you would make food, use acolander-- like spaghetti or something-- use acolander-- or a salad-- and then have to putit into another bowl. she said, why can't it justall be in the same bowl? and so she came up withsomething called ventu. and that's what it is.
you can wash-- you seeit underneath here-- you can strain. and then it has a nicebottom you put on it. i have two. 'cause you know what? you don't have towash as many dishes. it's really kind of nice. and it looks nice. that was last year's christmasitem to many of the family.
and it's really nice. but again, you scratchyour head, and you go, wow. these are simpleideas and get made. and each one of them saidthey could envision it, they could see it, theycame with prototypes of it. but to actually seeit made and in there, in the stores andselling, is very exciting. this is spike and charlie. they went to the beach a lot.
so you know whenyou go to the beach, and you collect allyour stuff, and then you have sand in your bag. and then your husband oryour wife, your mother, your father says, don'tcome in the house? so they came up with an idea--kind of ingenious-- called shake. it's got a bottom thatyou can open up and just shake all the sand out.
sand comes out. again, you're like, wow! that's so simple! that's so simple. so yeah, we have shakein a backpack version, and we have shake in a bigbeach-bag version and a kid version, little version. so that's been also-- and coming out thissummer, then-- we
costed-- this was, initially,fairly expensive to do; it was a heavy canvas. we've now costedit down, as we do, and we have a version comingout this summer that's pretty inexpensive andreally nice quality. but again, you go, well,that's really, really, really, kind ofthe simple stuff, you know, not too complicated. but it helps get the ideaout that you have your idea
and you can make stuff. it's all attainable to you. and that's it! thank you. by the way, just one thing. that's my little logo,that little running person. what we believe atquirky is that everybody, even if you can't draw, youcould draw a stick figure. and so in eightsteps or less, you
have to draw somethingthat represents you.
i agonized, 'cause i have nocreative ability whatsoever. but then i found outthat everybody does, so that was-- little bit. thank you, doreen!
