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Fed Up With Charging Wires? This Guy’s Solved The Problem
Oxford University dropout reinvents the way we charge our devices.
By Seymour Segnit
date
The Home Improvement Disaster That Started it All
Ever had a simple home improvement to do and have it go badly wrong? How about badly wrong and took your life off on a new crazy and unexpected career?
Back in 2013 my wife Amy went away for a few days on a business trip and I decided I would ‘delight’ her on her return with a simple home upgrade.
The plan was so simple. Swap one of our wall power outlets in our dining room for one of those ones with a couple of USB outlets.
The trouble was, the outlet was set into solid brick beside a fireplace and while the cavity in the brick was big enough for the old regular outlet, it wouldn’t accommodate the fancy new one with its bulky USB transformer on the back.
So I chipped away at the brick to make a slightly bigger cavity…. and suddenly away came the entire brick and the adjacent one was clearly now loose..
Well you can guess what happened. Before I knew it there were bricks and dust everywhere… and just days before my beloved Amy was due to return home!
This was the look of Segnit’s dining room that day in Spring 2013!
Calamity Became the Mother of Invention
Well I fixed up the brickwork and gave it a lick of plaster and paint. I even remembered to install the new outlet with USBs while I was about it!
Amy returned home and all was well, but it got me thinking long and hard about charging – and it’s been a healthy (I think) obsession ever since. (See if you think its healthy when you join me to get a sneak peak at my new invention!)
Within days I came up with an idea for a completely new charger design that looked and felt like a wall outlet, but needed zero installation.
Having no clue what to do I put my idea on a crowdfunding website and quickly it became the all-time #1 crowdfunded accessory for mobile devices. The US Patent Office gave us a design patent and a crummy competitor even tried and failed to copy it, all within a few months.
Then came the hard part. You’d think it would be easy to get a seemingly simple product made. I mean, how hard can it be? It turns out getting something like this right takes time. It took about two and a half YEARS years from concept to shipping!
But ship we did and I’m proud we delivered over ¼ million chargers to some 70,000 pre-order customers. Five years later people still tell me “I use it every day” – that’s what happens when you design something people love that’s built to last.
Then Calamity Became the Mother of Invention… Again!
But the cruel truth is that sales at our old charger company grew too quickly. My whole life I thought that it would be wonderful to have a runaway success on your hands. But it was a nightmare! If you’ve seen TV shows and read articles about companies needing to ‘fund inventory’ that’s really hard to do when things are moving fast, and the company ran out of cash. By the Summer of 2016 it was pretty much all over.
So it was a sombre scene as Amy & I sat at the table back in the dining room where it all started. For a moment it looked like we’d cracked the entrepreneurial code… but in fact we’d just had one more particularly harsh ‘learning experience’. And it was a doozie!
But as I sat there with Amy, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that the charging industry is ready for something completely new… that if we just tried again we really could change charging for good.
So I drew up a series of plans for a completely new approach to charging. An approach that is all about delighting you, the customer, and not about making things easy for the manufacturer (which trust me is what normally happens).
To start over with no money was daunting, but we were determined to do it right. Amy & I used some of the last room on a credit card to buy the list of customers from the old company and sent them all a simple email asking what we should do.
I included a video of me where I explained step by step what had happened, the mistakes I’d made and asked folks to take an up or down vote: Should We Try Again or Go To Hell?
As the Votes Came in I Started to Cry
I’ll always remember the afternoon we sent out that email and the responses started to come in. Do you have times in your life where you can remember everything about exactly where you were, how you felt, who you were with, even the light in the room?
As the votes came in I started to cry. A trickle of votes (and tears) at first – then a flood.
Not only were the votes positive, it was a landslide. If it had been a general election, with green for every state voting for the ‘Get Right Back on the Horse’ party, the map would be solid green from East to West.
So feeling very, very grateful I started on the new system that I’d love you to see now.
Remember we had no money – and just a hunch that customers would love our vision for the future. (Today we know you do. We have 4.7 Stars on Trustpilot, 4.7 on Google Reviews etc etc).
So we decided to invite the folks on the mailing list to take a look at a special preview launch one Tuesday lunch time. It was the most astonishing day of my life! You’ll hear the story if you join me online later today or tomorrow… its pretty amazing.
Charging Standards Change All The Time…
So I invented a System to Keep Up.
Here’s what I set out to solve.
You have a nice phone, tablet, computer and there’s plenty of brands you can trust. But when it comes time to charge your stuff, most people can’t even name a charging brand, let alone one they love and trust.
At MAGFAST I believe we’ve found a revolutionary way to change charging for good. Yes, famously, we plant a tree for every charger pre-ordered, but the truth is making products that people love and that last is by far the best way to make a positive impact.
So we’ve put together a family of chargers that are designed to be not just compatible, but best-in-class when charging ALL your devices, the ones you have today – and anything likely to be made in the next decade.
The truth is that even though it seems like there’s always new charging connections coming out, the industry has now settled on two standards and they’re really just getting started.
“Qi” Wireless Charging: You Already Have This. So do We!
Even if you don’t use it, you almost certainly have Qi Wireless charging on you phone. Its fantastic and super-convenient, and every MAGFAST power bank has it. I break it all down in the online preview you can attend later today or tomorrow.
Seymour demonstrating the MAGFAST Air product.
USB-C: The (really fantastic) Wired Charging. Right across the MAGFAST Family
Whether or not you know USB-C, it’s the connection on most new gear these days. Even Apple have adopted it for their laptops and iPad Pro devices. (Remember at MAGFAST we support ALL devices, remember, so that means all Apple iOS and older USB devices too).
USB-C is a great standard that’s way ahead of what came before, and we use it right across the product family… and always with the PD Power Delivery standard for the best possible speed.
With Qi and USB-C so excellent and rising so quickly at the start of their decade it seems unlikely that another standard will emerge. But if it does, as you will see MAGFAST is a completely modular system, so we can instantly adopt and new standard – future-proofing our customers.
In addition to all the wireless and USB charging, just add the optional jumper cables and
MAGFAST’s Extreme charger will jump-start your car – and a couple of dozen other cars – all on a single charge. Really.
The MAGIC is in the MAGNETs
Do you remember the joy and fascination of magnets from when you were a child? It’s a little difficult to describe in writing, but we use magnets throughout our family of products for our (patent pending) snap-to-charge system. It works beautifully and its as delightful as magnets were when you were young! I’ll show you at the demo later today (or tomorrow – just click to pick your time)
The Excitement is Palpable – and you could WIN our $1,000 Prize!
People from all around North America have discovered MAGFAST and we’re lucky to have legions of supporters eagerly awaiting production of these products.
Won’t you please join me and take a look? It’s a fun and fascinating advanced look at some very special products. People who’ve attended previous demos have rated what you’ll see 4.8 Stars – so we’re obviously doing something right!
Please click the orange button and pick the best time for you. There’s an unsubscribe link at the foot of every email, and of this page, and even on our home page so you’re in good hands!
Just by registering we’ll put you in our $1,000 drawing where you could win all kinds of cool tech from Apple, Samsung etc – INCLUDING some of these game-changing new chargers.