KickstarterForum.org

Hi everyone,

My name is Everett Carney and my goal is to bring life to your desk.

For those not interested in a wall of text, please check out my project here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...e-to-your-desk

My Story
At the end of August I realized that I didn't want to sit behind my computer making apps for the rest of my life. I wanted to switch industries and do something in green technology but I didn't have any experience so I had to take a different approach. I decided to start my own company doing something that, I believe, everyone could benefit from: I want to greenify every single work space and desk. When I say "greenify" I literally mean I want to put plants and living things on your desk. Many people are afraid that they will kill plants or fish and consequently miss out on the amazing health benefits that those things offer. Plants purify the air you breathe and make your room continuously smell fresh without the use of chemicals. Fish and flowing water have all kinds of proven health benefits, especially when it comes to stress relief (which, let's face it, we all need).

I combined my passion for plants and animals with my technical skill set and came up with Alive and Modern. My goal, although simple, is a huge undertaking. I came up with ways to create never before seen aquariums and miniature living walls that could grow all kinds of tropical plants people thought they'd never be able to grow. Orchids, bromeliads, air plants, tropical vines all thrive on the specially-designed living wall. Each aquarium I've made has a different sound level. The "Steps" waterfall has a soft, trickling noise while the "Floating Box" is nearly silent. Each aquarium can hold small shoaling fish, Killifish or a Betta. They're also great for decorative shrimp! If you've never seen freshwater shrimp I highly recommend searching Crystal Red Shrimp images.

The Money
Your support goes directly back into the company. I need to have the special tools I've designed made so my business partner and I can produce our structures at a reasonable volume. We need to do bulk orders for parts, laser cutting, and shipping. Any money left over goes to the development of our own light structure that's independent of this project (backers for this project receive an awesome screw-in LED light that can grow just about anything) and the development of our next two designs (which will be revealed as stretch goals if the funding goes well ).

Questions? Comments? I'd love to hear it. If you have a minute to share my post on Facebook and/or "Like" my page please do so, I'll gladly return the favor!

-Everett Carney, Alive and Modern

Update 1
We have new backer reward tiers!
Check out the update here: http://kck.st/1agBuMy

Now for a picture of a fully planted living wall

A wall of text lol. Seems like you've been getting some good traction. See that you have also lost a few pledges? How are things going?

I did lose one backer... I'm not sure why. Things are going alright, I think it's a hard price-point to sell at. I've actually gotten way more traction outside of Kickstarter targeting enterprise-style sales.

Right now I'm struggling to find more ways to get the word out and increase visibility. I'll likely pay for a few days of Facebook advertising to see if that gets me anywhere. There are two forums that I had hoped to post on (I had massive traffic spikes to my website when I posted on them previously) that don't allow posts for these kinds of projects. I think it's unfortunate that they do that, they're a bit archaic and don't understand the power crowd funding has :-/. I hope to make a big push next week when I build a few more demo models to show off different styles of setups.