Every now and then I like to cast an eye down south to the great motherless land of venture vikings we call the OTC and see if I can’t find, you know, actual companies forming in the froth.
Long time weed pundit Jason Spatafora turned my head to a deal recently that, upon a long look under the skirt, appears to maybe be a unicorn in the making. Maybe.
LifeClips (LCLP) is in the retail camera business, which is not my favourite sector. They’ve created a GoPro competitor called the SoloVu that beats the established brand on image stability, motion-detected activation, and megapixel specs. Oh, and price.
In itself, that might be worth a punt, particularly as GoPro’s valuation is particularly bananas, with the stock down from $80 to $9.27 in a little under a year, with little to no value in the thing despite that drop (the market cap sits at $1.2 billion currently), and struggles afoot to maintain what they have.
SoloVu wants to be one of those struggles.
Granted, the GoPro has been places in quick time. Places like, space stations and on the backs of eagles and following bros as they fall to their death off cliffs.
But, for mine, you could take the SoloVu and the GoPro, apply a sledgehammer to them both, and turn them into outsider art. The real value in LCLP right now is (and it took me some time to come around on this) their recent announcement of an upcoming acquisition of Israeli company Batterfly, which has developed the Mobeego disposable phone battery charger.
Disposable phone battery charger? Stay with me here because I thought it was dumb too. Really dumb. I mean, here we are in the 21st century. Everything we use as a business tool needs batteries – or a wall outlet – to keep going, and we have all manner of chargers, cables, batteries, solar panels and hand cranks out there to help us keep that phone going.
So a disposable phone charger? That’s just dumb, right? In a world of rechargeability, why go backwards?
Because last Friday.
There I was, downtown with my laptop and phone, looking for a cafe with a power outlet so I could charge both and get through the day because, for some reason, despite all the advances in technology we still can’t get a laptop or phone to last a full day on a single charge.
I’d have to buy a coffee to warrant my seat in the first cafe I stopped into, so there’s five bucks gone, and once I had my caffeine, all the tables with access to power outlets were already in use. So what did I do?
I went to another cafe, paid another five bucks, and sat down at a table for an hour, basically just to get my equipment charged. Whatever you value my time at, I wasted too much of it in trying to just keep my gear alive.
Now, sure, once I have that power outlet, I’m fine. Everything is charged and environmentally friendly and green and functioning. But to get there, I spent ten bucks and whatever an hour of my time is worth. I pushed a meeting back to charge my stuff. That’s nuts.
So with Mobeego selling currently on Amazon for under ten bucks, that product, if available near me on a convenience store shelf, would now be sitting in my bag permanently. With a ten-year self life, you could buy three and never have to concern yourself with charging issues again. Plug them in, go about your business.
Well, at least until you’ve used them up because, once that’s done, they’re tossed. Or recycled but, let’s be honest, tossed.
this is what they look like:
I mean, come on, they’re even shaped like a traditional battery.
This is not a green solution. But it’s a solution that I particularly have use for, and since the world still spends billions on one-use batteries of the traditional type, why on earth should we not have one-use phone chargers? Should I spend $60 on an external rechargeable battery for my phone, or just grab a bunch of cheap Mobeegos whenever?
There was a time you’d spend $50 at a high end electronics store for a car-based phone charger, now you can get them for $5 from a convenience store and let the dog chew on them later. There was a time a charging cable cost $35 from that same high end store, now you can get them mail order for $3, to the point where there’s one in every room of the house, and one in the treehouse out back. I have one in my pocket now and may use it later to tie my skis to the roof of the car.
You could be driving a Tesla, but you’re not – you’re driving a car that uses disposable gasoline.
Let’s face it, disposable is bigger than ever.
So Mobeego, if the retail price makes sense, is a natural fit for a problem we all have and, with the share price of LCLP having moved from $0.25 to $0.63 in a month, on the back of the news of that proposed acquisition and a revolving credit line that will allow the company to cover big box store orders should they arrive, the first good-sized order should propel this thing over a buck.
I don’t own it. Not being paid to write about it. But I like where it’s headed and think there’s some value in the current price levels, especially if you’re prone to comparing with GoPro’s inflated/beaten down valuation.
Thanks for the heads up, Jason.
–Chris Parry
http://www.twitter.com/chrisparry