I’m back from my second trip to CES Las Vegas, the biggest tech show in the world, with ZeroHour innovations. The Eureka Park area for startups moved from the basement of the Venetian to the much larger Sands Expo Center this year, and ZeroHour has also graduated in many ways from year one.

Our strategy in 2014 had been to launch our first product in November with a crowdfunding campaign, and use its success and publicity to distinguish ourselves at CES since the device was in pre-production and we only had the prototype available.

What a difference a year makes. ZeroHour XD was produced, received all kinds of mentions and support, and the amazing creators at ZeroHour Innovations even had time to take consumer feedback and adjust it for the next iteration of their tactical flashlight with portable power. Rather than repeat the one-two punch strategy, we decided to launch the next crowdfunding campaign from CES, which meant we collapsed two very intensive projects into one timeline. In addition to the logistics for the exhibitor booth, press kits, sales sheets, and of course our snappy attire, we were up late many nights before CES editing the new campaign and preparing to blast it out to the press, customers, and prior backers.

After a last-minute snafu that almost saw us miss our morning launch, everything came together and within hours, we hit our goal! (Prior year we hit goal on day 29.) We displayed our Kickstarter page in the booth so attendees could watch it grow, and this inspired a lot of people to pledge since they wanted to be part of the live campaign. As intense as it was going in, launching from CES paid off, and as a startup ZeroHour has to be industrious with promotion since we don’t have jumbotrons yet.

We hit $50K over the course of our four days at CES, and as I’m writing this, we've passed the $108K that the first project raised, with two weeks left! This is a real testament to the product quality and customer rapport ZeroHour built over the last year, and I’ve had quite a ride myself.

2/6/15: The campaign closed at $250K, more than double the amount raised last year!