M33 Labs, the high-tech, desk-making company that introduced the Space desk last year, is readying its next product.
The team, comprised of former and current ASU students, is building on its Space design as it develops its next product: the Luna Desk.
"We are actually going to have our consumer-ready product done and ready to be sold come the first week of December," Brandon Smith, a former technological entrepreneurship major and co-founder of M33 Labs, said.
After dropping out of ASU, Smith began working at Earnhardt Auto Center as the systems administrator while developing his own startup ideas on the side.
"This isn't my first rodeo," Smith said between puffs on a cigar. "I actually built a company called 'Triangulum' in Jackson, Michigan a couple years ago."
Triangulum designed smart board hardware and software for classrooms. While Smith no longer runs Triangulum, he has not forsaken the name. The name of Smith's first start up, Triangulum, is based on a galaxy known for its bright constellation of three stars. For his latest venture, Smith used the galaxy's alternate title, M33.
Space was the first device to come out of M33 Labs, its initial stab at a product.
"Space originally is a work space for creatives," Bryant Curtis, a member of the M33 Labs marketing team, said.
In its base model, the Space desk came with a built in desktop computer sporting an i5 Intel core processor, a 4-gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce CPU, and a 1-terabyte solid-state hard drive. M33 crammed all this into a computer that folded into the surface of the desk, allowing it to lay flush when not in use.
"Unlike most desktop computers, where you have to take it out of the box, put in the cords and build your desk and all that stuff, we eliminated all that," Curtis said. "Basically, with Space, all you had to do was take it out of the box — there's one plug, and there's one power button. Plug it in, push the power button, lift the screen up and 'Bam,' your whole work space was ready to go."
With Luna Desk, the M33 team hopes to expand on this vision.
"That's the one that's up on the horizon," Smith said. "Space has kind of been our underground project that we've been working on. It's got all of the bells and whistles. Luna Desk is the final version."
With the refined iteration of its smart desk, M33 has planned a marketing strategy to match.
"We are going to update our website and launch that in mid-December," Kaytlyn St Yves, a senior in elementary education and a member of the M33 business team, said. "Our official sale date will be sometime ... (in the) second week of January."
St Yves said that preparing for their big unveiling has been stressful.
"It's very exciting and nerve wracking because we've been working for so long, and we just want to see this fly and actually see it in the customers' hands," St Yves said.
Reach the reporter at sdeadric@asu.edu or follow @deadrick_sam on Twitter.
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