As the beat dropped and the lights glowed, an idea flashed through their minds. “What if we could make something like this … only better?”

Harrison Herndon ’14 and Nick Cate ’13 first conceptualized their noise-reactive DropShades while at a techno concert in Dallas in 2011.

They spotted some patrons decked out in light-up T-shirts that reacted to the music. Killer concept, for sure.

But they instantly spotted a major drawback: The shirts’ dimly shining lights were difficult to see. The pair of friends wondered: Why not create something more noticeable, something better able to interact with the music?

What they came up with might just give club goers in Fort Worth and around the world a sort of phosphorescent facelift. Herndon, Cate and business partner Skylar Perkins ’13 began shipping the first pairs of their DropShades audio-reactive sunglasses to customers in December. They have more than 3,000 orders to fill.

Coming up with the concept was the easy part. It’s been an intense process to turn a cool concept into a commercially viable product in less than two years. But this enterprising trio hopes other industrious TCU students take their lead and put in the time and effort to follow through on an idea.

“We’ve learned a lot from the process and how expensive it is to bring a product to market,” Herndon says. “We have what I feel like is a pretty good product here.”

Cate says the new shades fit a void for a fun party product. People are always looking for new ways to interact with the music, he says.

“When you wear DropShades, people notice you more,” Cate says. “You feel like you’re almost a part of what people are doing.”

Smart glasses

The trio describe DropShades on their website as the world’s first audio-responsive sunglasses that groove to the rhythm of the music. The effect is that other people at a concert or party can see the lights moving to the music on the wearer’s face.

“There’s glasses on the market that might have a blinky LED light on it,” Perkins says. “But if ours are smart glasses, theirs are dumb glasses. They stay on or they just blink. They’re not sound-reactive.”

Powered by AAA batteries, the Kanye-style sunglasses, which retail for $40, feature a tiny microphone connected to a signal processor. An automatic gain function allows the shades to analyze and adjust to the noise volume in a room. After a few seconds, the lights begin dancing to the volume range in a given environment and can groove for six hours straight, Cate says.

The glasses can even react to more subdued sounds, including a party in your living room. By contrast, that light-up T-shirt at the concert needs a particular volume “sweet spot” – a certain level of loudness – before it starts to get groovy, Cate says.

The light show is generated by six light-emitting diodes on horizontal bars of the glasses, which reflect the light stream away from the wearer’s eyes. They function like regular shades.

Sunglasses weren’t even their original idea. They toyed around with a light-up bandana but quickly gravitated toward shades. Cate, a Southern California native who majored in mechanical engineering, designed a couple of proof-of-concept pairs to start.

But in order to make their idea a product, Herndon and Cate needed a business partner and startup funds.

Enter Perkins, an entrepreneurial management major from California, who created a campaign on Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website that links entrepreneurs with donors inspired by cool ideas. Under the site’s rules, financial backers contribute money to a project with little promised in return – a sample prototype, plus Kickstarter rewards. If the idea fails to meet its funding goal, all the money automatically goes back to donors and the entrepreneur gets nothing.

The DropShades guys hoped to solicit $15,000 during a 30-day fundraising window.

It wasn’t close. More than 1,800 financial backers from around the globe contributed over $78,000, which the trio used to secure patents and strike a deal with a manufacturer.

“The Kickstarter campaign really proved to us and others that we have a viable idea here,” says Herndon, a senior from Overland Park, Kan., who works part time as a disc jockey in clubs and at music festivals.

And unlike many startup ventures, where products are sold from a garage to neighbors and friends, DropShades already has customers from as far away as Russia, India and other parts of Asia.

“With e-commerce and our Kickstarter campaign, we’ve been thrust upon the world stage and had to figure out things like customs and international shipping and problems that startups launching their first product don’t have,” Perkins says. “We’ve just had to buckle in and figure it out.”

The role of TCU

“Early on, we sat down with a lot of [business] professors during the napkin stage and … [they] helped give us some direction in getting started,” says Herndon, a political science major and energy minor, who took several classes in the Neeley School of Business to boost his knowledge of finance and marketing.

“We really did take many of their lessons to heart, and it saved us from some mistakes,” he says.

That’s how the Neeley Entrepreneurship Center can help, says its director, Brad Hancock, who met with the DropShades inventors. Students can receive advice on developing an idea or make connections with TCU alumni or community businesses that can take a startup further.
Students can also find resources on steps they should follow to vet an idea, acquire office space and, in some cases, meet potential investors.

Hancock admires the varied academic backgrounds of the DropShades partners.

“I really liked that the team came from different majors and disciplines at TCU: an engineering student, liberal arts student and business school student. The different backgrounds and expertise were helpful to them as they researched and launched the product.”
DropShades has turned heads elsewhere too. The Boston Globe, Mashable.com and AskMen.com and others have written about the “official party accessory of the future.”

For now, DropShades are available in three types: white, black and glow-in-the-dark. The partners are focusing on making sales online and at concerts and festivals. They’re also exploring vendor partnerships with specialty retailers. What they aren’t talking about is trying to come up with another novel idea – at least not yet.

“We would have to be pretty sure it was going to sell well before we went through the process of trying to develop another product,” Herndon says.

On the Web:
For more info, go to http://www.getdropshades.com.