🔒‘Sunglasses on steroids’ entrepreneur raises $350K on Kickstarter

If you're seeking to fund a cutting-edge product, why go to a bank or your own reserves when there's a group of cash-stacked technology enthusiasts willing to finance the startup costs?

That's the thinking that led John Galley, a self-described “recovering lawyer” living in Rockport, to raise capital on Kickstarter, a popular crowdfunding website. He is raising funds for ORION4Sight, a high-tech, military-grade product he calls “sunglasses on steroids.” After more than a month of fundraising and getting the word out, the campaign has paid off handsomely.

Through Sept. 13, Galley raised $348,449 from 2,881 backers, far exceeding his original $9,000 goal, which is a record for Maine-related products on Kickstarter. It's also the most-funded sunglasses product and the third most-funded product among “wearables”— a category of cutting-edge technology that has been rising in popularity, especially with the announcement of the new Apple Watch.

While Galley is the architect of the fund-raising campaign, the ORION4Sight sunglasses themselves are a creation of his longtime friend Kirk Kreutzig, a self-taught inventor. Kreutzig, who started out as a photojournalist, holds four patents in optical technology. He started an Illinois-based company, Spectrum Technologies, to create high-tech filters for eyewear, weapon sights, laptops and other military equipment. Galley is an investor in Spectrum and also serves as general counsel.

The consumer version of the high-tech military specs is being developed for a wider market by ORION4Sight, a separate company founded by Galley and Kreutzig.

“We've known for years that the big enchilada for us would be to switch from the military contracting world to a much larger consumer-oriented world,” Galley tells Mainebiz. “This technology is very well suited for the product.”

Galley says he can't describe how the ORION4Sight technology works because it's still in the process of being patented. But the effect it has on people who wear the sunglasses is what Galley calls “vision enhancement.” That means better image contrast, improved image crispness, reduced eyestrain and more accurate color saturation.

The sunglasses are suited for a number of activities, including driving, hiking, sailing and tennis, he says.

“When someone puts on the eyewear, the biggest difference they notice is images have better definition, better contrast to the things surrounding them. Things just kind of jump,” says Galley, adding that based on product demos so far, people want to put the sunglasses right back on after taking them off. “Be careful who you lend them to.”

Galley says the Kickstarter campaign was successful for a few reasons. For one, he reached out to a group of friends and contacts to get funding commitments before the campaign began, he says. “Once you turn the switch on, these people are ready to support you and that shows early signs of success and momentum and helps attract other backers,” he says. Once the campaign began, it also attracted early adopters who have funded a number of Kickstarter projects.

It also helped, Galley says, that he hired Rockport-based marketing firm Dream Local Digital to create a video for the campaign that was produced by Lucas McKnelly, a marketer who also consults on Kickstarter campaigns as a side business.

While the ORION4Sight's backers are expected to receive the first batch of sunglasses this fall, Galley says this is only the beginning for the startup.

“We want to take the product into the bigger commercial marketplace,” Galley says. “Some of the [crowd-funded] money is going to make those next steps possible.”

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