#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Jeff Wigh, Founder & CEO, Bryght Labs
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Making STEM-focus Games More Approachable
Bryght Labs is a connected gaming startup dedicated to making STEM-based games more accessible. Based in Overland Park, Kansas, Founder and CEO Jeff Wigh walked us through the company’s beginnings, the success they’ve seen with their launch product ChessUp, and how Wigh’s extensive experience with patents has informed his views of the US patent system.
Tell us about your background; what led you to Bryght Labs?
My three co-founders and I previously worked for Garmin, a big consumer products company here in Kansas City, and our job there was to research, develop, and launch new products and technology. My co-founders and I all had some pretty good successes with Garmin and got curious about doing it on our own. So we headed out and formed Bryght Labs. First, we created a prototype of the chessboard concept we had, and we put it on Kickstarter. Before any of us moved full time to Bryght Labs, we developed prototypes—working nights and weekends—of ChessUp, our launch product. Our Kickstarter campaign did really well—we raised $1.7 million. From there, we left Garmin and founded Bryght Labs. Since we only had a prototype on Kickstarter, we had to finish all of the design for manufacturing and get that running. We are just now at the point where we're about to start fulfilling the initial production batch of ChessUp. So the history is pretty simple—four people whose job it was to make products for Garmin decided to go make products for themselves, or for their own company, and that's how we got here.
Can you explain a little more about your product, ChessUp? What drew you to chess?
One of my daughters was starting to get interested in chess, and as I was trying to teach her, we immediately ran into a bunch of problems. Kids just want to play; they don't want to sit there and listen to you explain that you can’t play a game right away. As a parent with a different skill level, you can either decide to crush your kid or go easy on them. One way or another, they won’t learn anything or they eventually realize you are throwing the match.
ChessUp came from the idea of making the learning experience of chess much more accessible and immediate, allowing kids to play a game right out of the gate. And they can also play with their family and not have to worry about the skill differences. So the idea turned into the invention of a chess board that communicates with players. When players touch a piece, the board lights up possible moves, and is combined with AI which gives guidance about which are good and bad moves. We also added a bunch of features to the product. Since it is a smart chess board, it can connect online to play with anybody across the globe. So it's not just your household—families can play anywhere. And we've created all sorts of lessons that go in a companion app and added a bunch of other features. But the initial interest was as a parent looking at this problem of teaching chess—it's hard to connect with people at different skill levels and at different locations, and our product basically solves that.
As you mentioned, Bryght Labs had a very successful crowdfunding campaign last year. What was that like? Are there any elements of the funding process that you think should receive more attention from lawmakers, especially from the startup perspective?
For product crowdfunding - Kickstarter and similar platforms are great for hardware companies.
For general business funding - Angel investor groups are a good fit for companies like us—individual angels might understand the product a little better and be interested. Policymakers can here help by providing better incentives for angels. We see a lot of interest at a state level—Kansas and Kansas City run some tax incentive programs for angel groups, where they get some form of tax benefits for investing in startups. I think that has been a very beneficial system; a lot of pre-seed and seed money here comes from local communities and local angels. Some extension of that at the federal level would be awesome.
Let’s talk a bit about patents. What’s been your experience with the patent system at Bryght Labs, and how does it compare to your experience with patents before your startup?
I am pretty well versed in the patent system, and am a patent holder on a dozen or so patents, including many from my time at Garmin. As a startup, we have to be really selective about our filings, and strategic about which parts of our technology we choose to patent. We cannot predict what is going to be a commercial hit. But we also cannot afford to seed 12 different patents, like a big company does, and then wait and see which of them end up working out to align with the actual products we ultimately release.
We have a patent on ChessUp, and do not have many complaints about the process. Just to tell you how we approach the process, we start with a provisional application and then we'll do a Track One filing because I think we get a better review and it gets done quicker. This means it's actually cheaper, even though it's not supposed to be, because it wastes less of our lawyer time. So I like the Track One system a lot, rather than waiting three years for a patent.
That said, there are some parts of the system that I’m not sure are the best for startups. For example: first-to-file. Provisional patents are great, because they allow us to start that clock and be the first file, but we can make up our mind a year later about whether we want to proceed with the application. It would be great if that clock were a little longer, though. For us, getting from idea to commercial success might take two to three years, but with the provisional patent application we only get 12 months before we have to file a full patent application. Increasing that timeline, to even just 18 months, would help. I like the system of the cheap provisional and then the full application later—that works for us. But a longer provisional clock will help a ton.
Are there any other policy issues on your radar, or things in Bryght Labs’ experience you want to bring to the attention of lawmakers?
Something that comes up for us is that, as a function of our Kickstarter campaign, we took orders from 70 countries. It’s hard for a small company to do fulfillment in so many places. Trying to export to the European Union, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and many more—we get to locations where we don’t have a contact, and figuring out customs clearance is a battle. Trade.gov offers paid consultants for this stuff, and I would like a way to try out that consultancy to see if it’s valuable before I have to commit and pay. And if we want to deliver just 8 units to a country, the help we would need is also lower scale. We might just need contacts in that country, and the U.S. government could maintain a common portal for those contacts.
We are also, of course, dealing with chip shortages. We usually would order processors a few weeks in advance, but now we have to pull inventory much earlier. Inventory financing incentives would help us a ton. We don’t have a three-year sales history, and cannot finance all that inventory. So we are going to have to order a year ahead of time and cover those costs. But if there were a way to incentivize private lenders to extend credit to startups earlier, to cover inventory costs, it would help solve one of our main problems. This will be a long-term problem in the supply chain, as we have to cover costs we normally would not have to; and while it is affecting everybody, it is especially damaging for startups like us.
What are your goals for Bryght Labs moving forward?
Right now, we're working on fulfillment and getting ChessUp out, and then hopefully having a quality product where the software works and the product lasts. So our goal is to make a good impression with this first batch and to make sure people love our product. Beyond that, we're looking at expanding into scholastic programs—chess is great for teaching. But some schools struggle to implement chess programs or don't have the faculty with that knowledge, so we're eyeing that opportunity. And then, in 2023, we're looking at our next product. So for us, it's growth, trying to finance that growth, and maintaining a quality product.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
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