- I had to like destroy
most of the parts in order to make everything fit together.
By the time I was done, it was pretty bad.
- Hardware is great.
- Hardware is hard.
- Cat and Rachel set out to create
portable wind turbines to make clean energy
more accessible at the consumer level.
- Microgrids are a big portion
of the climate change solution.
And so, Aurea started because there was
a big piece missing in small wind.
- We're all about getting portable wind energy
into as many hands as possible.
- But when you're building hardware from scratch
on scraped-together funding, how do you survive
long enough to get to market with something
that you can be confident people will actually want?
- You gotta have an ego⁠—
enough of an ego that it's gonna overcome
any time you get a "no."
- We wanted to validate our product that,
"Hey, it seems like a niche market, but oh baby, it's big."
- You just started your dream business.
How much profit will you need to pay your basic
living expenses, like rent and ramen?
This is a show about
the economics of entrepreneurship,
and founders turning their dreams into reality.
This is "Ramen Profitable."
- I was at Queen's University
for mechanical engineering, but I realized
I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
The company started by implementing small-scale
wind turbines into high-rise buildings,
but we realized that the cash requirements
were too high.
- And we were like, "Okay, we'll compromise."
- So we scaled down the technology,
and that ended up being a Shine turbine.
We were spinning 'em at such high RPMs
and the blades just sort of cracked off.
- The Shine turbine is 3 pounds, 40 watts,
downwind wind turbine.
It's the lightest and most powerful,
portable, renewable energy source
to charge your handheld devices⁠—
it's thanks to its high-efficiency
blade technology.
- They're very strong,
but they're not gonna injure anyone so⁠—
- Do it again.
- As wind speeds double, power output
actually goes up eight times.
Shine has the highest power output for weight carried.
- There you go. There you have a wind turbine.
- But we wanna stay within the design constraints
of the blades themselves, so that they don't overspeed.
It wouldn't like chop off my fingers.
- Nope, haven't yet.
- Oh.
- Prototyping is a wild journey,
especially in the early days
when you don't have a lot of money.
- The blades close down.
- We had the whiteboard out,
and we just started drawing concepts of wind turbines.
- To scale their tech into a portable package,
Cat created an initial 3D-printed
prototype in her basement.
It was⁠—
- It was very much an ugly baby.
- I just remember her sending pictures
to me of it, and I was just like, "What's that?"
I was like, "Should we like do this again?
Should we like, make another one?"
And she was like,
"I already sent pictures to the investors."
And I was just like...
- She was horrified when I started showing it to people,
but it did what it needed to do.
We would show the concept to investors
and, you know, potential users.
And they would understand what we were trying to do.
- It can't be perfect. It's all gonna change.
So just get something out there, get feedback,
and then go back to the drawing board.
- Cat and Rachel believed
in what they were building,
but how would they know
if it was something people wanted?
Something people would buy and use?
- As we, you know, built our first prototype
and then our second one,
we'd bring that out into the community.
We basically just start asking them all kinds
of questions about:
'How do you like this shape?'
'How does the weight feel?'
'Do you want the blades to fold on the body?'
And we started to be able to refine the design based
on the feedback that we got from the customers.
- It was time to launch the Shine turbine
into the market.
Cat and Rachel needed the revenue
to keep the company going.
- Crowdfunding is not shopping.
And having those backers understand
that you're figuring out the ups and downs⁠—
that's everything because your brand is very new,
it's very fragile,
so you want entrance into the market to be
a positive one.
- We did need funds to buy our parts,
set up our manufacturing, and hit the ground running.
We were like, "All right, why not?"
- But maybe even more importantly,
they needed definitive proof that people wanted
what they were building.
Crowdfunding, often seen as a way to raise money,
is also a resource for building a community of fans,
subscribers, and customers zealous for whatever it is
you're offering⁠—
if they want it at all.
- So in June 2021, we launched our first
Kickstarter campaign.
- That involved a lot of all-nighters,
working weekends.
- Writing the page copy,
working on advertisements, capturing all the footage,
making the video.
You had to create communities on Facebook.
- Making sure that we knew exactly what
our pricing and our model was gonna be.
Yeah, it was absolutely nuts.
- We pressed go on our campaign
and within one hour, we hit our funding goal of 15K.
And we're just like, "Wow, okay."
- We got featured in major publications;
Rachel, Vanessa, and I, constantly,
were just responding to messages
and emails and questions.
- Within our first five days of opening up our sales,
we were sold-out.
- We wanted to make sure that we were building something
that was important to people,
and through the Kickstart, we realized,
"Oh geez, we certainly did."
- Hey.
- Thanks to the success
of the crowdfunding campaign,
Cat and Rachel were able to attract investors
to fuel the growth of the company.
After weathering pandemic-related
delays and chip shortages,
Shine is now producing turbines
to fulfill Kickstarter orders,
and getting tantalizingly close to achieving a big first.
- The Kickstarter launched us, literally,
into a whole other level of business.
We raised a lot of money, but it just put us
on the cusp of profitability.
- It's no longer just our belief—
there was, you know, hard evidence
of the mass-market appeal of this.
You know, I lived in fear almost every single day
that this wasn't gonna pan out.
We're very fortunate,
but at the same time, we worked hard to get here.
- The early days are really hard
because there are more people who don't believe
in you than do.
That's when you really have to have a lot of resilience.
If you know in your heart that you're the person to do it,
then you're the person to do it.
- Love you.
- Love you, too.
- We've been able to compliment
each other's strengths and weaknesses
along this windy journey.
- I'd say it's been a breeze, but it hasn't.
- Yeah, but we shine on.