Not your average flash drive or vibes

The Duet is a USB powered vibrator, with models that can also be used as a flash drive (we’ll leave the type of content you’d find on a vibrator flash drive to your imagination). Insert your own joke about computer viruses here. Joking aside, the design driven sex toy is becoming more popular – and an area we’ll explore in a future post, but beyond business models and general entrepreneurial spirit, the Duet vibrator is probably the one with the most tech cred.

The majority of vibrators – even those which have been given extreme design makeovers – still rely on batteries or electric chargers in order to provide a buzz. The USB-charged battery is sexy tech at its finest, and the functional flash drive gives it obvious discreet geek appeal, but it’s also going into production courtesy of crowdsourced funding – a model that’s had its greatest hit with gadget adaptations and accessories.

While the Duet hasn’t hit anything close to the $1 million of the biggest crowdfunded gadget success story, it exceeded the $15,000 fundraising goal in just 2 days and there are currently 37 days left to go. CKIE, a Kickstarter-style site from design blog Yanko Design that focuses exclusively on industrial design, provided the platform. Women who expect smart functionality and sleek design from all their gadgets have apparently provided the rest.

The basic Duet comes in 3 colors, and will retail for $139 (it’s $75 if pre-ordered through CKIE), while 8GB and 16GB dual flash drive models will retail for $189 and $349 respectively ($125 and $250 at pre-order) and come in black and gold combinations. If that seems a little expensive, even for a flash drive that does serious double duty, both versions come with a 24K gold band, and we know how valuable gold is these days so just think of it as an investment. All models feature 4 vibration modes, 5 power levels, a waterproof design, two “virtually silent” motors and up to 4 hours of continuous use, though there’s nothing that indicates how storage space on the flash drive might effect performance.

Designer Ti Chang and engineer Michael Topolovac are the founders behind the line.

{via Refinery29}

If you have an idea for the next Facebook and are thinking of turning to crowd funding to get things started, under current Securities and Exchange Commission rules you’d actually run into lots of big problems for all those small issues of shares. It’s part of the reason platforms like Kickstarter don’t give supporters actual shares or ownership in projects. Good news though, the SEC is considering relaxing the rules around crowd funding to make actual investment less onerous for companies who’d prefer to take small amounts of funding from lots of investors (rather than large amounts of funding from individual investors). {WSJ via VentureBeat}

Fashion startups have been able to make crowd funding work largely through pre-orders, rather than actual investments, and Kickstarter’s most successful project to date was largely based on providing a platform for a large demand of pre-orders on a product. So while it’s always good to see a government body keeping pace with the times, we have to wonder if a startup without a physical product would actually be able to find enough investors to make crowdfunding a viable alternative to angel or professional investors.

The SEC is still in the early stages of considering any rule changes, and the chance of fraud is a big reason. While individual investments might be limited to $100, or something relatively small and unlikely to cause severe financial damage to crowd funders, there’s also some caution surrounding easing regulations given how easy it is for scams to spread online.

It’s not so far out there to think that “we’re creating the next Google, and for only $100 you can become a millionaire!” emails would start to replace those from deposed dictators who offer millions if you’ll only cash a large check for them and wire the balance.