As a vegan, I'm very excited by this news because it might convince others to give it a try. Today someone told me that they recently ate a chicken burger at Veggie Grill and she didn't know until later that it was not chicken. She said at the time she thought, that was a really good chicken sandwich!

Great article! In it you mentioned the Laramie Robotics Club. As the founder of a social robotics company, I'm wondering if there is something specific about robots that makes them a good medium for learning to code. I have some ideas about this but I would like to see what others think.

What do you plan to do as a next step post-crowdfunding (other than delivering your product, of course)?

Most important is to deliver our product (both hardware and food). However, we'll also be able to run some testing on our website to see what content/messaging/copy converts best into additional pre-sales.

We (Tovala) will also be hiring for some software, operations and food roles :)

Build a really great product! We envision improved versions of the shower, and after that other products that use water in the home. The product development cycle is realistically 18-24 before you get something to market, so it is a long timeline.

Product development and improve our sales cycle/customer acquisition cost!

What strategies did you use to get the word out about your campaign?

We built up a big email list. Starting with the team we had ~12k emails collectively (team of 6 people). Everyone we had ever emailed. And tiered the emails/frequency. We also did a lot of pilots beforehand and gathered interest from people who had ACTUALLY interacted with the product. And in our case had showered with Nebia!

Did you make your own videos or work with a video production company?

We made our own storyboard, Carlos, my co-founder is very creative and a good storyteller so he crafted the arch of the video. We studied Nancy Duarte's stuff. We worked very closely with our videographer who also put his heart and soul into it. In short, storyboard/script in-house, filming/editing outsourced.

At what stage should your product be before you launch your campaign?

I think it depends a lot on the product. If you ask @liseman or Kevin Hale they'll say launch NOW! That was the advice we got. :) In all seriousness I think you obviously need a working prototype, and clear validation that people like your product! Most importantly you should know what it's going to entail to deliver on your promise.

Does anyone know when the attendees are notified? I applied to attend and I'm wondering when we will hear back. Thanks!

I'm wondering if you select edtech when you apply to YC? My company, a social robot for kids, could be considered edtech but it is also a toy and a therapeutic tool. Who decides if my company is considered edtech or not?

How do you market it? Ed tech is more than products for kids. Your product must be geared towards educational goals and how the district staff will interact with it. If you need help shoot me an email. I'll gladly chat about it.

I was at ISTE 2015, did you attend? We probably met if you did. :)

There's a question on the application that asks "Which category best applies to your company?" You can select Education as an option.

I was surprised to read that "Google has struggled to create such network effects with both Hangouts and Messenger." At my university, all the student groups that I have worked on use Google docs, Messenger, and Hangouts to coordinate. We don't use Messenger a lot, only when we are online working on a document together, but we do use Hangouts weekly. For us, Google is for group productivity (sort of like Slack), but I couldn't see using Google Messenger for communicating with friends or asking questions to a chat bot. I wonder who their target audience is for this new product. Any ideas?

From the standpoint of someone who had to ask people to use common messenger among a team of people with varying team in the field operation at an event, biggest issue I have seen with Google Hangouts (I guess this also applies to Facebook in that respect as well) is that there seems to be a bit of reluctance from people when they are required signing up to more "blanket" service, in this case, Google.

I guess for some who do not use other Google services (especially when they don't use Gmail, YouTube, etc.) either don't want set up or show high resistance in setting up a new account with Google.

Some privacy concern aside, many of those integrated services works great especially when they are used effectively, but I think the flip side is that those services tend to be "too heavy" for some people who just want to use it as a messenger and nothing else. (Actually, I wish they had an option like that.)

For me, this article is literally the first time I've ever heard of "Google Messenger".

A few other students at my university use Hangouts and Docs, but generally everything is done via email and github.