11 min funding

What are you able to finish in 11 minutes?

Most people would probably answer along the lines of grill a nice steak, bake a pan of cookies or play one round of Candy Crush. Not Micheal Armani and David Jones however. They would get their dream funded. 

Called the Micro, their personal 3D-printer smashed its Kickstarter goal of $50,000 and is now well on its way to becoming one of the most interesting projects on the site.

Created by a team in Bethesda, MD, the Micro originally sold for $199 for early birds and his since risen by $100. It’s a tiny printer, to be sure, with a 4.5 cubic-inch build volume and a special internal spool that holds the filament inside the printer’s case. It can build objects 4.5-inches high, which isn’t much but it’s enough to have a bit of fun.

The founders, Michael Armani and David Jones, have done something quite intelligent: they’re building a very bare-bones printer with some very interesting software. However the full success of this campaign this is not because they have a great product. 3D-printers have been around for a good long while now, and if you really wanted one you would have gotten it already. 

Instead, what they do have is a shown a well structured purpose and functional solution. There a few key take-aways from this success story:

• Affordable, consumer printer: Micro keeps repeating and showing this. The product is affordable, making it available for any consumer
• Effortless: It is super-easy to use. The technical problems that may arise for consumers (How do I get blue-prints? How do I hook it up? What programs do I need?) are already explained and solutions provided by the company. This puts the consumer at ease with the product, making it comfortable.
• Power efficient = lower cost: By using more energy efficient components they can produce a better and more efficient product, which in the end lowers cost. 
• Showing of functions: The video clearly shows and highlights different real-life, momentary problems where the product can be put to use. It shows a woman fixing a broken shower curtain, a man printing a prototype for a project, or even just printing a small espresso mug because the last one broke.
• Explaining why they need money: This may be the most important and best part of this video. They explain the project, the funding, and the plans they have for the funds expertly and simply. There is no doubt in my mind, why they are asking for my money, and where the money I contribute is going to end up should I choose to fund them.

In short, an expertly executed project. Please have a look and comment below!

Are you popular? Do you think?

You're the least popular among your gang on friends. You are, its true, it has even been proven.

Don’t believe it? Consider this: the average Facebook user has 245 friends, but the average friend on Facebook has 359 friends. That’s right. The average person on Facebook has fewer friends than their friends do, a phenomenon commonly known as the “Friendship Paradox”. It may be seem to odd to be true, but it is - for nearly everyone.

The friendship paradox as a phenomenon was first observed by the sociologist Scott L. Feld in 1991. One way to think about this is to remember when you first joined Facebook. When you first created a profile, you started out with 0 friends. The quickest way to get friends was to add people who were already on Facebook. And since these people were already using Facebook, they already had a huge lead in friend count. And each time you added a friend, those people got to increase their friend count too! So clearly, it’s not that hard to see why your friends would have more friends than you when you first joined.

Of course, as you invite more friends and make contacts you can certainly overtake people in the friend count. The friendship paradox is not about the time you joined. It’s about this: on average, you will tend to add friends of people who are popular because it’s a social game. This is not a complete explanation but it should give you the idea of why this happens. And in the end, the average Facebook user ends up having fewer friends than their friends do.

Now lets do a practical example: Imagine that A and B are friends, B is friends with everyone, C is friends with B and D, and D is friends with B and C. A has just 1 friend, B has 3 friends, C and D each has 2 friends. Now we will count the friends of friends. A is friends with B who has 3 friends. B is friends with everyone, which makes for 5 friends of friends. Similarly we will find C and D each has 5 friends of friends. If we do some quick calculations we find that the average person A has 2 friends but the average friend of A has 2.25 friends. This is the friendship paradox!

A good example of this is Twitter; users on Twitter in general follow more people than they have followers them selves. This is because people are more likely to follow those who are popular than those who are not.

Thus, over 98% of Twitter users are subject to the friendship paradox. Or are just not popular. Either or.