The reMarkable team is shipping their first product days. So far it’s been a great success, with the most pre-orders for any European company ever, and some great reviews. Still lots of risk left, but the way they’ve maneuvered through obstacles since we first invested tells me they’ll manage whatever challenge they face in the future as well.
Their pre-sales campaign is one of many things they really nailed. The most natural thing for an entrepreneur wanting to do pre-sales would be to do a Kickstarter campaign. The infrastructure is there, “all” you have to do is create the content. But the guys at Remarkable were early determined not to do pre-sales that way – Kickstarter was associated with gadgets, not premium products.
So they set up their campaign on their own website. It’s quite easy to integrate payments to any website these days, so technically it was no big deal. By doing it this way, they controlled the full experience. No minimum sales target, and the design/feel was 100% remarkable (pun intended). From the start their product felt more like a premium product.
Their newest product video (top) is truly great, and really speaks to that (premium) fact.