We love our dogs but we don't love carrying poop. Wise Walkers gets that smelly poop out of your hands, out of sight and out of mind.
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Dearest Backers, You thought you wouldn't hear from us again. Surprise. It was nearly 5 years ago when two then-10-year-old twin girls and their dad set out on a project to learn about this thing called "entrepreneurship." Those 10-year-olds and now 15-year-olds and are sophomores in high school. The dad has a little more gray hair.
As the dad in this story, I have to say that working with my daughters on Project Wise Walker has been (and continues to be) one of the best experiences of my life. I don't think the girls would say "best experience ever", but they both tell me that the destination has been worth the journey. Perhaps most rewarding for me, both girls recognize that the journey isn't over yet and they are both looking forward to what's coming next. Here are the girls at our first official sales meeting at ThinkSpace in Seattle.
In the meantime, we still owe some of you the rewards we promised. Many of you in this category are our ultra-premium backers or you pre-ordered batches of Wise Walkers for your retail stores. It was only just last week where we felt like we finally had a retail-ready product offering. Over the next couple of weeks, we will be reaching out to all of our retail backers and our ultra-premium backers with details of your shipments.
Regarding our commitment to writing about our experiences in detail and sharing those with all of our backers, we are making progress on that as well. There was so much to write about that what started as a series of extended blog posts is now shaping up to be a full-on book. The girls have each committed to contributing a chapter all their own. Stay tuned.
Very warm regards (it was 93 degrees in Seattle today),
Bob, Sarah & Annalise
Greetings to all of you, our loyal backers! I am delighted to share with you that the girls made their television debut tonight on a new Saturday startup TV show in Seattle call "StartIT Seattle". I was very proud of the way the girls stepped up to take on this new challenge. As you might expect, they were a bit nervous but they did it all by themselves and I'm delighted by the lessons they learned and I'm very proud of what they accomplished.
If you can spare a minute, you could help them out by checking out their pitch on YouTube and casting a vote of support at the StartIT Seattle Facebook poll. As you'll see from the poll results, the other startups pitching on the show had all of their backers lined up ahead of time to cast votes the moment the TV show aired. With your help, we can make a respectable showing. Here are the links:
Here's the link to the Facebook poll to cast your vote:
https://poll.fbapp.io/vote-for-your-favorite-product-999597?from=user_link&ref_id=9e4z0g
YouTube (their pitch starts at minute 3:12): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCUtzIdvVMM
We'll have a new and improved version of Wise Walker to tell you about soon and we'll have some other fun updates as well. Look for another message from us in the weeks ahead.
Have a great summer!
Sarah, Annalise and Bob
We're grinding through the orders and making good progress -- so you'll have your rewards soon! Since that also means our time together is drawing to an end as well, I thought I would share a few pictures from Project Wise Walker and the work we've had a blast doing for you. We hope you enjoy them.
In no particular order....
Three cool things to report.
1) We started shipping this week! Some of you may already have received you Wise Walker, but we'll be packing in batches so it could take us a few packing days to get through everything. But it won't be long now before you get your package in the mail. All of the packing will happen after school hours an on the weekend from our office at the uber-cool WeWork. As you can see, we're putting mom to work too!
2) We're launching an online store and we want to feature epic photos of our backers and their dogs enjoying each other outdoors. We'll select new photos periodically and rotate them on the homepage. I know we have some amateur photographers out there... and maybe even a few pros. If you want to propose a picture, here's what we we need.
We can't promise how long each pic will remain in rotation, but we'll do our best to get every pic that meets the requirements up there for at least some time.
3) Continuing with our tradition of sharing the love with other Kickstarter projects, I want to tell you all about another project I recently backed. The product is called Hook, an inexpensive home automation platform that brings wireless, remote control of electrical devices through your smartphone at a fraction of the cost (and complexity) of traditional home automation. I met the team at the UW Business Plan Competition a couple weeks ago and was very impressed with their tech and with their time. There campaign is going well... which is great because I really want to get one. Check it out:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hackajoe/hook-home-automation-on-a-budget
Thank you all again for all of your patience and support throughout our project. We aren't done yet but it has already been a powerful experience for all of us and we couldn't have done it without you.
Very warm regards,
Sarah, Bob and Annalise