We’ve now been in market for exactly one year, and we would like to thank our customers and our parters (especially Kaspersky Labs, Sophos, and VIPRE) and share a few of our milestones:
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15K FixMeSticks purchased by customers in 18 countries.
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Major retail distribution agreements in Canada and the USA.
The road less travelled
Corey and I have made a string of decisions that run counter to startup practices. We bootstrapped this company with own money versing seeking venture capital, we built a PC accessory while futurists call the end of PCs, and we market our product using old school media like radio versus Twitter and Facebook. We’re not trying to be contrarian, we just test a lot and invest in what’s working.
A rocky beginning
9 days into our launch in May 2012 and we noticed an error in the manufacturing process that could cause the FixMeStick to stop working on a small percentage of PCs. Despite being in the midst of our launch, and near the end of our cash after a year of research and development, we decided to ship every customer a free replacement FixMeStick. It was emotionally tough, but one of the things we really enjoy about this business is treating customers the way we like to be treated, that made it an easy decision.