Thought you’d heard it all on Kickstarter? Well, how many times have you run into a project there that’s about launching a language? You read that right. Get your credit cards out, Minnesota startup lovers! Here’s your chance to say you were there back in ’16 when history was made.
But here’s the deal: you gotta tell a lot of your friends, because the folks at TruScribe have set a pretty hefty goal for this one: it’s $100k. Of course, that’s befitting the ginormous implications here — I mean, how often do you get to impact the entire freaking global community, with that single audacious goal to allow everyone on the planet to communicate visually? This is big stuff, people!! What’s a lousy little 100 Grover Clevelands?
TruScribe, as you’ll recall, is a whiteboard video animation company that was cofounded in Minnesota. (We 
wrote about them here back in 2014.) A large part of its staff is in Madison WI, but Minneapolis became its headquarters a while back, with great new digs at International Market Square. It was named the 253rd fastest-growing company on the Inc. 5000 list in 2015, which was understandably touted far and wide. (As a point of reference, crazy-fast-growing LeadPages of Minneapolis was #220.) In February 2016, TruScribe announced the first part of its new initiative to transform into a full-fledged software business, with a new iOS app called TruGlyph. (You can download the app here.)
What’s coming next you can see in their new (and very first) Kickstarter project. Here’s an excerpt from that page on what it’s all about:
“We’re asking creatives – artists, word nerds, and everyday folk – to join our community and contribute to our efforts through our TruGlyph app. And we need your help to create the TruGlyph Marketplace that will reward those that contribute in the most meaningful ways.”
On communicating visually:
“While the internet and social platforms help us reach people anywhere on earth, we are worlds away from the technology helping us be understood across languages and cultures. People are visual observers and learners, but we’re often limited to text and audio when we want to communicate in meaningful ways. We believe that a Visual Language is the first step in allowing people to communicate visually.”
On the big goal of a global visual language:
“Visually representing even a single language is an incredible undertaking and even more so as we’re reaching across the world. Which is why we can’t do it alone, nor should we do it alone and why crowdsourcing is the only way we will accomplish it. Language isn’t defined by the dictionaries that print it, but by the people that use it.”
About the Glyph, the building block of this language:
“A Glyph is a simple image that animates as if drawn and is associated with words and context. The 
community is already using our TruGlyph app to draw glyphs, tag them with words, and play games that pit glyph versus glyph asking the player to decide which has more meaning. When a glyph increases and meaning and rises up to become part of the Global Visual Language, it’s because of their efforts — which is why we need to reward them..(our) marketplace will be a system that allows creatives who contribute to the global visual language, in the most meaningful ways, to be rewarded and compensated for their efforts.”
And here’s more about TruScribe software:
“It’s an innovative platform designed to let you communicate via video using the TruGlyph global visual language. Send a video message to a friend; create a video to market your business; your ideas can be understood by anyone, anywhere. Backing the Kickstarter gives you a FREE subscription to the TruScribe software and the new frontier in worldwide communication and understanding.”
So, there you have it, crowdfunders — get your credit card out, back the project, and grab your reward!
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[Disclosure: TruScribe has been a client of mine.]