From a stolen bag to the Mu tag.
This spring, Quake is excited to welcome a cohort of companies with revolutionary ideas for solving everyday problems. Meet Informu, a company that has already generated significant interest in its product, the Mu tag. The Mu tag is the first predictive loss prevention device on the market. It’s easy to use: attach the tag to one of your items, download the app, and live worry-free!
While every startup has a story, Informu has a particularly interesting one. In 2015, Informu founder Lang Mei was a college freshman studying abroad in Paris. When he was doing schoolwork at a cafe, his bag was stolen. In his bag were his passport and laptop. He never got anything back.
This got Lang thinking: losing your belongings (or having them stolen) was such a common problem. But there were no loss-prevention devices on the market, only plenty of bluetooth trackers and GPS trackers. At the time, Lang was studying Information Management and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he found his co-founder Rishabh. And Informu was born.
Informu has garnered significant interest and funding from various programs and platforms. During Lang’s last year at university, Informu was accepted into UC Boulder’s accelerator program. The team also raised capital through a university-wide crowdfunding initiative. Right before he graduated, Lang and the Informu team also launched a successful Kickstarter campaign with a three thousand dollar budget. In the first 12 hours, the company raised $10,000. In 27 days, they had raised $100,000, proving how in-demand a loss prevention device was. In fact, Informu’s Mu tag is in the all-time top 5% of all hardware offerings on Kickstarter.
Lang emphasizes wanting to solve the problem of forgetting or having valuables stolen, while making sure customers derive value from his products. Lang likens his vision to Google’s origins. Google was created to archive information for easier access; similarly, Informu wants to become a platform giving people access to information about their physical world. The company aims to make people’s life experience better by interconnecting their belongings.
In 2018, Lang hopes to make $1 million in revenue. Because Informu made $200,000 in 4 months with only part-time employees, he believes this is entirely possible. Lang also hopes to roll out the Mu tag with a great user experience, and to hire more full-time employees.
With help from Quake’s accelerator, the Informu team hopes to close another funding round. They look forward to building their network and gaining exposure to investors. The goal is to start massive production in the United States and then scale to China, so building out Informu’s distribution network is key. The team is excited to work with investors who have experience in the home shopping network channels. Lang himself is also hoping to work on Informu’s branding and marketing, as loss prevention and personal organization devices are a new and untapped market. Lang is always open to answering questions as well, so feel free to email him to learn more at lang.mei@informu.io.
