Triggertrap, one of the first companies to develop technology allowing photographers to use their smartphones as a remote trigger for their camera, has announced it will be closing down.
In a blog post on Medium.com, founder and CEO Haje Jan Kamps explained that the company has failed to recover from an unsuccessful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter three years ago and will be shutting down its operations in a month’s time.
Kamps writes: “Triggertrap, like any startup, had some big highs and lows. At one point, we employed 15 staff; a team of photographers, coders, support, marketing, logistics, and operations. Ever since we announced that our Triggertrap Ada Kickstarter project failed, we’ve been in a downward spiral.
“For the past 18 months, we’ve been operating with just a few team members, who have been working their asses off to keep the lights on. But ultimately, we weren’t able to claw our way out of the hole, and the company now owes the company’s founders around $60k.
“With no realistic hope of ever paying that money back, and after ten months in a row of struggling to make payroll for our remaining staff members, we decided it was time to give up.”
Triggertrap launched, ironically, after a very successful Kickstarter campaign in 2011 when the company raised $77,000, way more than the $25,000 target, to release the initial product, which was a light, laser and sound-sensitive programmable camera trigger with built-in time-lapse function.
However, the company ran into trouble in 2013 when it launched another Kickstarter campaign to produce its follow-up product, the Triggertrap Ada, but the cost of components ended up being higher than originally quoted.
Kamps stated that remaining stock is being heavily discounted in the Triggertrap store; however, at the time of writing it appears there is very little left.
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