Hasta La Gadget!

Two or three years ago, e-cigarattes were exotic. These strange sticks, their ends LED-lit and their owners expelling odorless smoke – “It’s vapor!” – would look as futuristic as a Replicant’s food injector. They gave the smoker nebulous powers, namely the ability to smoke on a plane, and they were expensive and hard to find.

Now, they’re everywhere. Even Leonardo DiCaprio was caught sucking on one on set. But are they safe? And what will they really do for the hard-core smoker?

Today the e-cigarette industry is worth around $3 billion globally, outpacing the entire stop-smoking industry including patches, gum, and other addiction killers.

Yet unlike smoking cessation products, which are sold over the counter in pharmacies, e-cigarette companies will never, ever make a claim that e-cigs will treat smoking addiction. In fact, these companies claim the opposite in their marketing materials, citing that they are not intended “to treat, prevent or cure any disease or condition.” This is the same language that appears on other dubious health concoctions

Even though it seems obvious that e-cigarettes are meant to help people tame their addiction to analog cigarettes — and there is even anecdotal evidence suggesting they are more effective than smoking cessation therapies — the claims made by these companies will partially determine the fate of the entire industry.

But before we get into the regulation of tomorrow, let’s look at the history of the tobacco industry.

A Brief History

In 1906, the Food and Drug Administration was created under President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1938, the FDA passed the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act, giving the federal government jurisdiction over products like foods, medicines, and other substances that could harm the public health.

For years, that didn’t include tobacco products. It was only in 2009, under President Barack Obama, that the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA) was put into place, giving the FDA the power to regulate the Tobacco Industry.

Before this, big tobacco was allowed to experiment with new products and market their wares however they pleased, with regulation coming from state governments. In the 1950s, the realities of smoking were just beginning to show their ugly head. We began to realize there was a clear connection between smoking cigarettes and developing cancer and other fatal illnesses.

So what did the industry do? They created something called “harm reduction products”, which were meant to be “safer” than your usual cigarette. In the beginning, this simply meant adding a filter. By the 80′s, companies were taking it a step further.

RJ Reynolds introduced a type of smokeless cigarette called Premier, which seemed to disgust everyone and eventually went off the market, only to resurface itself as the Eclipse. The American Cancer Society claimed that the Eclipse line, which went on sale in 2000, was not as safe as the marketing campaign suggested, as it still delivered carcinogens and other harmful substances.

In other words, harm reduction has long been a strategy for Big Tobacco to keep sales up in the face of… well, cancer. Keeping that in mind, it’s not too much of a surprise that harm reduction products have never really taken off. Until now.

E-Cigarettes and Harm Reduction

In public perception, smoking cessation products are the good guys. These are the products like Nicoderm CQ and Nicorette that are sold by pharmacies only, used for a temporary period, and regulated as treatment and/or therapy. I quit smoking for a while with the help of the patch, and got more congratulations during that period then I did graduating from NYU, winning State Championships in volleyball, or landing a job at TechCrunch.

Harm reduction products, on the other hand, seem like ploys. Many people hear “safer” and “cigarette” in the same sentence and assume it’s yet another trick to increase sales.

But e-cigarettes are different. The movement wasn’t led by Big Tobacco. The e-cigarette industry began to boom in 2007 led by hundreds of smaller companies. Eventually, Big Tobacco took notice. Unlike the patch, or the gums, e-cigarettes actually made a dent (a small, but noticeable one) in cigarette sales.

Rather than fight it, major tobacco companies are now investing in e-cigarette offerings. Lorillard, the maker of Newport, Maverick and Old Gold cigarettes acquired Blu eCigs for $135 million in April 2012. Reynolds American, which makes Camel, Pall Mall, Kool and others, is now selling its own Vuse e-cigarettes in select cities as a trial run. And Altria (formerly Phillip Morris), seller of Marlboros, now sells an e-cigarette line named MarkTen.

This has pushed distribution of e-cigarettes far beyond what small, independent companies could ever manage.

However, Big Tobacco’s involvement is a double-edged sword. While distribution is greatly increased, pushing these devices into the far reaches of the country, big tobacco also gives off the perception that these devices, like the products they’ve sold for centuries, will probably kill you.

“What are these products?” asks Dr. Michael Siegel, Professor at Boston University’s Public School of Health and supporter of e-cigs. “Are they harm reduction or are they smoking cessation? It’s a tough situation because, on the one hand, you have what it does and on the other you have the claims are that are allowable under the law. It’s a strange situation where they are being regulated as tobacco products. But they are not tobacco products. There’s no tobacco in them.”

Safety

To be clear, any product that delivers nicotine into the human body is automatically considered “unsafe.” That’s the nature of nicotine itself. It’s not meant to be in our bodies.

That said, smoking cessation products like Nicoderm and Nicorette are automatically forgiven. Their purpose is to wean you off the nicotine addiction, and then be discarded. No one quits smoking and says, I’m going to use the patch for the rest of my life. That’s not how it works. In fact, doctors who prescribe smoking cessation therapies have strict limits on how long they can continue to provide the patch, gums, etc.

E-cigarettes are different. These companies don’t want you to quit smoking entirely; they simply want you to switch from smoking to vaping. In fact, the business model is built around your return. The idea is that you pay a larger sum up-front, for the device and a first set of cartridges, making an investment in it, and then return to buy refills.

In this way, e-cigarettes are simply a cigarette alternative, and not a therapy to help you quit.

But even though e-cigarettes deliver nicotine into the body, and for an extended period of time, many experts agree that they are much, much safer than combusting cigarettes.

Right now, however, clear cut information on their safety is limited. To start, there have been no finished clinical trials to measure the difference, and holding a clinical trial that is effective becomes difficult knowing that subjects would be exposed to a known carcinogen.

Moreover, the lack of regulation here allows e-cigarette companies to be lazy or negligent. The nicotine dosage may vary from one product to the next, or perhaps they’re using something other than propylene glycol (the standard liquid found in e-cigarettes). They might even have a shoddy battery or wiring that exhausts burning plastic along with the nicotine.

Many e-cigarettes are manufactured in Asia, sold at gas stations, and the consumer is none the wiser that these products haven’t been checked out by any governing body. In short, there is no oversight.

Thankfully, according to Dr. Siegel, e-cigarettes are “orders of magnitude safer” than combusting cigarettes.

“Even if e-cigarettes only cause a five to ten percent reduction in cigarette consumption, you have to understand that from a public health perspective, that is an enormously positive impact,” said Dr. Siegel.

On the other hand, it’s the lack of regulation that makes e-cigarettes potentially dangerous. So what can be done?

Regulation

This is where things get tricky.

The FDA is set to regulate the e-cigarette industry over the next year, at the latest. How they will regulate them is anyone’s guess.

There are three possible scenarios:

The first is that e-cigarettes will be regulated just like traditional cigarettes, with rules on how they can be marketed. This would still allow for distribution, letting e-cigs be sold anywhere traditional cigarettes are sold, but it would limit these companies’ ability to market themselves as a cigarette alternative, or at all.

The second option is that these products will be regulated in the same way as smoking cessation therapies. They would be sold only in pharmacies, over the counter. This would limit visibility and distribution enormously.

The third option is that the FDA will create brand new regulation for e-cigarettes, which would covers things like dosage, materials used, quality control testing, etc. but would still allow for broad distribution and marketing.

There is a raging debate right now over these options, or more pointedly, the time it will take to get to these options. Those that are pro-e-cigs want to ensure that the regulation is fair, and are willing to wait as long as they’re waiting for something close to option three.

Others believe that the e-cigarette companies are purposefully stalling, asking the FDA to wait for more hard evidence on the effects of e-cigarettes (especially compared to traditional cigarettes) in order to grow marketshare in an unregulated field. They see this as a huge risk considering that the e-cig industry is growing rapidly, and these unregulated products are in the hands of more and more unknowing consumers every day.

Bloomberg is even working to essentially ban e-cigarettes in New York.

Big Tobacco’s involvement in the matter only muddles things further. The industry doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to reducing public harm (or even admitting their products cause it in the first place), so in a way, Big Tobacco’s investment in the industry almost discredits e-cigarettes as just another marketing ploy.

On the other hand, Big Tobacco has the brawn to lobby the FDA in a way that these small manufacturers wouldn’t be able to do. Thanks to Big Tobacco, e-cigarette companies now have a voice in the pending regulation of their products.

The future of the industry is surely in question, but one thing is quite certain: this isn’t the last you’ll hear about e-cigarettes and the debate is heating (not burning) up.

Additional reporting by Eliza Brooke

New hardware startup and Y Combinator Summer 2013 cohort member Senic is launching pre-orders for its first product today, a laser rangefinder like the ones sold in hardware stores around the world and used every day by contractors and DIY enthusiasts. The difference is that Senic’s device uses Bluetooth Low Energy to communicate with iOS and Android devices, recording measurements instantly and syncing them to the cloud.

The use of a cloud-based platform for collecting and storing measurement data, as well as Senic’s plans to expand their hardware catalog to include a number of different hardware devices, including micrometers, gauges, and other tools that builders and engineers use regularly in their work. Senic co-founder Toby Eichenwald explained that he got the idea working for his father’s company in Korea, and learned from its customers that the measurement industry was essentially “stuck in the 80s.”

“We build precise, sensitive devices for smartphones,” Eichenwald said. “The product that we’re working on right now is the worlds’ smartest laser distance meter. It’s directed to two big groups right now, so we’ve made one app that’s directed at do-it-yourselfers and consumers (a floor plan app), and for our B2B customers we’re doing a price quote app so that electricians or heating guys for instance can walk into a building, enter the price-per-feet of their systems and quickly generate a quote.”

The laser distance meter they’re building has a 200-foot range, is accurate up to 0.075 inches, is water and dust resistant and features single button operation. It will retail for $149 in stores, but is available to pre-order customers through the Senic website starting today for just $99. The Floorplan app for iPad (Android support coming soon, now that Android 4.3 supports Bluetooth Low Energy) allows a user to record length and width measurements and build a model in the software, and then rooms can be dragged and positioned next to each other to mimic the actual floor layout. The Price quotes app outputs an invoice that can be emailed, and offers in-app customer sign-off for approving work orders.

“We’ve talked to a lot of architects, engineers and really big firms here in the Bay area to see what problems they’re going through, and that’s why we’re focusing on apps first because they solve the biggest problem,” Eichenwald said. “People in the building industry are under huge money and time pressures, and anything that can save them a lot of time and make their lives easier is so valuable to them.”

Senic is looking to ship in the beginning of November, with an idea first production run of around 500 to 1,000 units, and Eichenwald says that they’re fully ready to go to production, unlike a lot of Kickstarter or other crowdfunded products at this stage. The laser rangefinder is just a start, too, and eventually firms could use Senic products for all their measurement needs, which could result in a completely new resource in terms of aggregate, cloud-based data from the building and construction industry.

Yes, that headline does say “shoelace startup.” Hickies was a Kickstarter project created by a team of Argentinian founders, including husband and wife team Mariquel Waingarten and Gaston Frydlewski, which raised $159,167 on the crowdfunding site and allowed the startup to relocate to NYC and enter mass production. Hickies are shoelaces that don’t require untying, keeping shoes snug and secure while allowing them to slip on and off.

The campaign closed its funding on June 14, 2012, and since then the company has done a lot more beyond just relocate to New York City. The Kickstarter enthusiasm for the product, which likely would’ve seemed off the wall if pitched to distributors without anything except for a prototype and some vague market research, helped Hickies secure a number of global distribution deals, including with Brookstone, popular airport fixture and general reseller of slightly weird but useful stuff.

“The visibility that Kickstarter gave us was just as important if not more so than the money raised,” Frydlewski explained in an interview. “Brookstone’s interest in Hickies came directly from following our Kickstarter campaign. The Hickies project success gave Brookstone the confidence to move quickly with a national launch in their stores rather than slowly going through a trial phase.”

Brookstone isn’t the only suitor that came calling, however. Hickies has managed to lock down distribution arrangements in Japan, Korea, Canada and Latin America, and plans to expand its operations with a Europe-based subsidiary in September. Frydlewski says that Kickstarter’s very international audience really helped them arrange distribution deals beyond the U.S. market, something that definitely would’ve been difficult without Kickstarter’s unique platform advantages.

Kickstarter also continues to help with product development. According to Frydlewski, the community it builds is a lasting one – not just something that’s useful while running the campaign, but an element that pays dividends afterwards, too.

“An amazing feature of Kickstarter is that it functions as a true community and we continue to interact with our backers. This has allowed us to better understand how Hickies is being used and how we can improve,” he said. “We just launched our second generation product which was developed using much of the feedback we received from our supporters. We are continuously working to improve the product and have some exciting developments in the pipeline.”

Frydlewski and company learned some valuable lessons about how to run a Kickstarter campaign in the process of creating Hickies. He cautions startups using the platform about agreeing to a distribution deal too quickly, as the amount of inbound interest can be overwhelming. Doing due diligence and putting a proper expansion strategy in place beforehand is key for hardware startups, he says. They also found that you should basically be ready to ship before you even start asking people for money.

“The best time to launch a Kickstarter campaign is when you’re absolutely ready to start production, or are able to deliver the service/product,” he said. “Our recommendation is that you do not launch a Kickstarter campaign if you are not 100% ready to be on the market.”

Hickies has managed to ship 500,000 packs of its innovative shoelaces since it closed its Kickstarter funding last year, and the product is available at retail in seven countries across three continents. Kickstarter projects rarely work out as well as they have for this company, so you know they’ve done something right, and probably something worth emulating for others considering going down the same path.

HICKIES Overview from HICKIES – love your kicks on Vimeo.

Today Bitcasa, Disrupt Battlefield finalist, has announced a partnership with Samsung to offer Bitcasa’s infinite storage service to all Windows 8 devices sold by Samsung, save for smartphones. This includes tablets, desktops and laptops.

The company has had this partnership in the works for almost a year, according to founder Tony Gauda, but wanted to wait to share the news until consumers could actually go purchases these devices with Bitcasa pre-installed.

For those of you who haven’t heard yet, Bitcasa is a software service that opens up your hardware to have infinite storage in the cloud, with no lag to watch a stored movie or play a song. It works like this: Bitcasa only saves data that is unique to you, while saving only one version of all the redundant data in its system. You might think that the unique data outweighs the redundant, but it’s actually on the contrary.

As it stands now, Bitcasa charges users $10/month or $99/year for its infinite cloud storage, but users who purchase a pre-loaded Samsung device will get two free months of infinite storage space, along with 20GB for free over the lifetime of the device.

But what does this mean for Bitcasa’s revenue?

The company already has a huge influx of users interested in hopping on the service, as evidenced by the total of 30 petabytes of data stored on the site. But partnerships with major brands offers a more B2B-focused business model. This allows Bitcasa to focus on perfecting the service as opposed to bringing in new users, as the big hardware companies can now do that for them.

According to Gauda, Bitcasa has one of the highest free to paid conversion rates in the industry (without getting into too much detail), “but so many people don’t know we exist,” he added. In other words, the distribution here is critical.

Though Gauda didn’t specify the exact terms of the Samsung deal, he did explain that talks have already begun with other major brands to distribute the Bitcasa service. The idea is to have manufacturers spend less on their own hard drives and instead pay a small fee for every device sold with Bitcasa pre-loaded.

If you’re interested in checking out Bitcasa, head over here.

Pebble not meeting your needs? The Basis knows just a little too much about you for your comfort? Is the Metawatch too meta?

Well then meet the Hot Watch, out of Dallas. The company just launched the product on Kickstarter, and though the campaign is mostly bull shit (with arguments like: “your phone is too expensive to risk taking out of your pocket”), the product seems to be pretty fly for a new guy… in the smartwatch space. I’m funny, dammit. Laugh!

Anyways, the Hot Watch claims to be different from any of its competitors by offering more full-featured functionality when it comes to making calls, sending and receiving messages and emails, and checking up on your social world.

Like the Pebble, the Hot Watch has a 1.26-inch E-paper multi-touch projected capacitive display from Sharp, with a Cortex M3 processor running the show and a secondary DSP processor to handle things like Bluetooth, call control and various audio features. It uses Bluetooth 4.0 to connect to any Bluetooth-enabled phone, but the founders say it works best with Android and iOS phones.

You’ll also find an accelerometer, gyroscope, pedometer and vibration motor in there, and if that weren’t enough, the Hot Watch is water-resistant. Plus, it can detect when your phone is out of reach and will send you alerts that it may be lost or stolen.

But perhaps more interesting than the specs themselves is the fact that the Hot Watch allows for private calling. When you hold the Hot Watch up to your ear, the cup of your hand as it naturally holds up the watch will amplify the call into your ear.

This allows for entirely private calling, the same way it would be on a smartphone. Of course, the Hot Watch covers all the bases when it comes to calling functionality, allowing you to use speakerphone as well. Users can also receive and reply to messages, social feeds, and emails.

Also like the Pebble, the Hot Watch comes with customizable watch faces, as well as an SDK for third-party developers who want to build snazzy apps for the forthcoming watch.

The Hot Watch also has a number of gestures for answering calls, rejecting them, dialing, muting, ending a call, or even calling your favorite number. In fact, the sensors built in can detect when you’ve fallen down and will dial an emergency number if you haven’t responded in 30 seconds.

Plus, there are Hot Gestures that let you get straight to a feature from the lockscreen. For example, write a D on the screen and go directly from the lock screen to the dial menu.

The Hot Watch has just launched its Kickstarter campaign and already received $42,000 of its $150,000 goal. Head on over to the Kickstarter page to check it out.

It’s getting hot in here, so put down all your phones.