From Kickstarter to Logitech — Logitech Acquires TT Design Labs

It’s not every day that your start-up gets acquired, but today is that day for us — and it’s pretty exciting. I’m Derek Tarnow, one of the co-founders of TT Design Labs, and I’m so excited to be joining the Logitech team as a product designer.

Less than 2 years ago, my classmate, Zahra Tashakorinia, and I began developing our first product, TidyTilt, as part of a grad school project at The Institute of Design in Chicago. There, in a product design course, we were tasked with developing a solution to a common problem, and launching the resulting product on Kickstarter. We focused on solving the issue of tangled earbud cords that countless smartphone users regularly experience. By the end of the semester, we had launched TidyTilt on Kickstarter, where it went on to raise over 2000% of our funding goal.

This marked the start of our user-centered design firm, where we’ve since released a follow-up version of TidyTilt for iPhone 5 – a case, kickstand, magnetic mount, and earbud cord wrap – as well as a compatible wall mount, called JustMount.

When Logitech approached us, we were skeptical at first — our business plan didn’t include acquisition. But after speaking extensively with the Logitech team, it became clear that we share a vision for where the industry is headed and a passion for building great products. We realized that joining Logitech was an ideal situation – we get to engage the expert engineering, supply chain, distribution, and marketing minds at the company, while we get to focus more of our time on what we love most – designing great products with the user in mind.

We’re already hard at work improving and evolving the products we created at TT Design Labs. Today, you can pre-order the Logitech TidyTilt and Logitech JustMount. We’re tremendously excited for this next stage and the opportunity to help make great products here at Logitech.