The Nuwa Pen is a three-camera ballpoint pen that promises to turn your scribbled notes into digital form and then use OCR and AI smarts to pull out relevant data. At CES in Las Vegas in January, the Nuwa Pen was presented with a fully functioning prototype that was able to digitize note images. When the founder for the company, Marc Tuinier, allowed TechCrunch to try out the device four months later, it was found that the prototype wasn’t pulling off the task they had promised, and had limited capabilities. Despite the prototype’s current shortcomings, the Nuwa Pen launched a Kickstarter campaign that doesn’t reflect the current status of the product.
The video portion of the Kickstarter campaign, “Nuwa Pen: The Journey So Far… How We Got Here?” features Tuinier saying that one can see an exact digital representation of their scribbles with the Nuwa Pen. However, the Nuwa Pen is not yet able to project its product in the exact same representation due to the protoype’s current limitations. The Nuwa Pen dev team indicated to TechCrunch that they had the majority of the complex tasks done, with the final integration step of putting all the electronics into pen still in progress.
The Kickstarter campaign has raised some concerns, as it may be hard to argue that it represents a showing of good faith and transparency. This is a challenge for the Nuwa Pen, as Kickstarter rules state that creators “show backers the development of your product, both honestly and transparently,” and that “hardware and product design creators are required to show working prototypes of their projects.” Tuinier stated in regards to risks and challenges that funding via Kickstarter will help Nuwa Pen’s future, and their timeline has been updated to shipping the first batch in December and the Kickstarter batch in March.
The Nuwa Pen team has taken steps to show progress, such as providing a video that appears to show the current version of its pen, connecting wirelessly to the app, and carrying out multiple pen strokes, and recognizing the word “hello.” It is still a ways away from what was projected in the Kickstarter video, but it shows progress.
Nuwa Pen is a startup based in the Netherlands. The company was founded by Marc Tuinier, a highly experienced entrepreneur and business executive, who is also a seasoned technology and AI evangelist. He has 15 years of experience in building products and services related to B2B, fintech, and travel, and has knowledge in the areas of mobile, IoT and AI. He is the founder and CEO of the company, and is passionate about developing products that simplify day-to-day tasks.
