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Nomad Goods : The Founders of Most Portable Battery Chargers

Many of the startups, today, have become famous only because of their uniqueness. But, most of the entrepreneurs did not know how and where to start. But, the ones who had strategised all the steps were able to gain success faster than the others. One such team, that was focussed and clear on its goals, was the founders of Nomad Goods, a company that builds consumer electronics accessories, especially the portable charging devices.

The Santa Barbara-based company, initially, known as ChargeCard was founded by Noah Dentzel, Adam Miller and Brian Hahn in 2012. They founded Nomad Goods to bring portable accessories, like the chargers for smartphones, so that people do not worry about draining out the battery of their devices.

Noah Dentzel is a native of Santa Barbara and completed his school education from Santa Barbara High School. Later, he joined the Dartmouth College and completed a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.). He started his career as an intern at Tuenti Technologies, an internet company based in Madrid, later becoming the project manager for the app development team of the company.

Nomad Goods team
Image Source: circleup.com

During the time he was working at Tuenti, most of the work was done over the phone. Dentzel had a BlackBerry phone and had to carry a charger or a USB cable with him all the time. This annoyed him, but as his work demanded, he had to stay near the charging point all the time. But then, he thought of buying micro USB or any other solution, and looked for the alternative for the long charging cables over the internet, but found nothing.

According to Dentzel, it was one of his friends from the mobile division of his company who gave him the idea of shaping up the cable charger into a thinner charger that looks like a credit card. It was a great idea, and along with his partners, Dentzel started working on the same. Meanwhile, he left his job and debuted the first product of the company on Kickstarter, on 18 July 2012.

The three co-founders did not want to take any risk by putting in a lot of money in the project, rather they decided to launch the product in front of people and know their reaction about it. The three participated in the event with an intention to raise about $50,000. But, since they had brought an amazing idea and a great product to the stage of Kickstarters, they ended up making $161,000 for the company from 5,500 backers.

The uniqueness of the idea was to create minimalist and practical tools, which anybody could carry to any place with them. The first product that Nomad Goods developed was a charger named ChargeCard, with the shape of a credit card and could easily fit into a wallet or a pocket.

Though the company got a really good start, the company had no marketing team, or a customer service department. It was all on the shoulders of the co-founders. So to get the attention of people around the world, they started sending the sample of their product to different writers, and as a result, they got featured in the New York Times. This gave another kickstart to the company.

In 2013, they developed their next product, named ChargeKey, a USB cable of the shape of a key, capable of holding other keys as well, such that the user did not need to carry an extra charger, but his keys were the charger. Another smart step the founders took was that they launched the ChargeKey at another fundraising platform, i.e., IndieGoGo. The launch helped them to raise another sum of $172,000.

In 2014, the company took part in CircleUp, and eventually, raised a sum of $1.2 million. The company hosted its series A funding in the month of November of the same year. Till the mid of 2015, the company had shipped over 150,000 units to its national and international customers.

Since its inception, the company has launched over thirty charging and non-charging products. The most successful charging products from the company includes Pod Pro (a charger for the iPhone and Apple’s smartwatch), RoadTrip (a car charger), Wallet (a charger of the shape of a note capable of giving a full charge to a smartphone), PowerPlant (a charger having two ports supporting multiple charging), etc.

Other than the charging products, the company also produces leather phone cases, leather and silicone Apple Watch bands, wallets, etc.

The company provides battery packs and charging hubs for iPhone, Apple smartwatch as well as Tesla Model 3. There are chargers for BlackBerry and Android smartphones as well. The chargers from Nomad Goods are compatible with almost any USB port you can find, such that you can plug it into any device like TV, game consoles, computers, car stereos, and even electric keyboard and charge your phone or the smartwatch.

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