Barbara Belvisi builds hardware. Not with her hands, but with her venture capital firm Hardware Club, which helps startups find a market for connected physical products.
Photo-printing phone case Prynt and robotic projector-speaker-camera Keecker have grown into hardware hits with the support of Belvisi, 31, and her co-founder Alexis Houssou, 30, who take startups after they have refined their product in an accelerator (Y Combinator, Highway1 and Startupbootcamp are among their partners). "They focus on helping startups at prototyping," says Belvisi. "We then take care of the scaling phase and help the startups expand worldwide."
Belvisi and Houssou set up Hardware Club in May 2014 in Paris and San Francisco, before expanding to Taiwan in August 2015. The two French financiers saw a gap in the venture-capital market: entrepreneurs developing products with electronic components, such as drones, robots, wearables and sensors. "We quickly realised that to achieve our goal and support startups, we would need to build the strongest and largest community of hardware entrepreneurs," says Belvisi.
Hardware Club, which bills itself as an exclusive club, has built up a network of manufacturing and distribution partners that can be accessed only by its members. Other benefits include access to Hardware Club's online resources and events. "Our reward will be the return on investment," says Belvisi, who intends to close a new $30 million (£24m) fund by the end of 2016.
In Hardware Club's short life, it has sifted through more than 3,000 applications, endowing free membership to 220 startups from 31 countries, including multinational brands such as Kano, ROLI and TrackR. More than 50 per cent of these are now selling products.
Hardware Club sees part of its future in retail, and this winter is opening concessions selling products from its startups in department stores including Harrods in London.
Belvisi plans to add shops in New York, Tokyo, Berlin and San Francisco. "The experience in retail is disappointing for testing connected devices," she says. "Our customers will understand straight away the products' usage, will be able to try them and then grab a box off the shelves."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
