Local start-up and Friends-of-Wellingtonista Ponoko (among other connections to us they’re also part-sponsor of our awards this year) have their picture at the top of an interesting article in the tech section of today’s New York Times. The article talks about the rise of internet-aided design and making and describes Ponoko thus:
Ponoko, a company based in New Zealand, allows customers to upload designs for flat shapes that can then be snapped together like Ikea furniture. Making a prototype can be as simple as cutting shapes out of cardboard. Users then create a digital version and send it to Ponoko, which cuts the pattern out in metal or wood with a laser.
There’s a fair head of global buzz building up around Ponoko, whose potential extends far beyond the Times’ fairly neutral description of what can be achieved with them today.
And as for us: well, we were very excited to note what looks like a prototype of the highly sought after 2nd Annual Wellingtonista Award trophy visible on the table between Dave and Derek. So maybe this means we’ve made the Times as well?
Ponoko is perhaps Wellington’s hardest to categorise tech startup. The general idea seems to be to around empowering ordinary people to design items that Ponoko will help them manufacture and distribute.
This admittedly sounds a bit vague until you’ve been immersed in the service, as several of the Wellingtonista (and many of our readers) have been. In fact, it’s now possible to buy fellow Wellingtonista Sue’s designed-by-Sue, built-by-Ponoko jewellery via the Ponoko site, with more to come.
So we are all very excited about what Ponoko has to offer, and that view is shared by the people at TechCrunch, who invited them and a handful of others out of a field of 700 start-up hopefuls world wide to present to today’s TechCrunch40 conference in San Francisco.
This is a fantastic achievement (the immediate evidence being the occasional 503 bandwidth errors on the Ponoko site after co-founder Dave ten Have‘s presentation) and we hope this is the foundation for further and bigger success!
It’s been a banner week here at the Wellingtonista Towers for drinking networking opportunities. Yesterday was the VIP night at Beckon, tonight was a Ponoko showcase at the Paramount, and tomorrow we’re meeting up to discuss our evil plans for world domination.
Find out what we’ve been up to after the jump.