I was in college studying for an engineering degree. I was in the library at some insane time at night and I wanted coffee, but I didn’t want to go back to the dorm. I also didn’t want to spend my money at the cafe in the library’s lobby. I realized that if there was a mobile coffee maker where I could brew coffee right there, right in the library, I wouldn't even have to move. That's basically when the light bulb moment went off. I waited a few more years, built a team with a couple of my friends, and after banging our heads together for a while, we developed VacDrip™ and decided to launch the product.

My teammate and I are mechanical engineers, so we were able to develop the product basically on our own. We studied different ways of brewing coffee until we landed on a unique demonstration of vacuum/siphon brewing. We combined that concept with what we knew about traditional drip coffee and were able to design a genuine coffee maker that fit into a tight space.

We've put in a lot of work to ensure the brewing process all the way to drinking the cup of coffee is simple with a high level of usability and coffee quality. You can either use the mojoe™ Reusable Filter and add your own coffee grounds or our biodegradable mojoe™ To Go Cups capsules. You open the mojoe™ lid and just drop the reusable filter or capsule into the top half of the mojoe™. Then, you simply add water to the water reservoir, which occupies the other half of the top view of the mojoe™. Once you have your coffee and the water in place, you just screw the top back on, plug it in, and push to start. It has LED notifications to let you know what's going on with the brewer before, during, and after the brewing process. If you forget to put your water in or want to wait for the coffee to cool, you'll have a certain series of red or green LED blinks that will tell you what you’re doing. Once the mojoe™ is done brewing in 10-12 minutes, you can drink right from it because the lid is just like your average travel mug.

We are actually in the manufacturing phase for those units right now – the last step to getting all of the Kickstarter orders out to the people. That will become our official launch. During our Kickstarter round, we had our initial prototype, and it worked well, but after going to different conferences and trade shows, we had a lot of users who loved it but it recognized some usability issues that needed to be addressed before releasing it. We made the changes and updated the design, and that's what we'll be launching into the market in a few months after the Wefunder campaign.

A portable coffee maker. You would think that it has done before, but nobody has launched a genuine portable brewer. In a world where we drink coffee every day, at home and on the go, we thought there should be an option to brew a single cup while you are away from home.

Right now retail is going to be $99 on our website. The price point is very much based on the actual costs to make the product, coupled with the volume that we're looking for. When you look at the price of other single serve brewers, mojoe™ turns out to be one of the lowest cost options. The smallest Keurig is $89. All of the other brewers have an average cost of about $160, and those are the company’s low-level brewers. The mid-level brewers, the ones that the majority of their customers purchase, are $250 to $300 per brewer. When you consider that, we felt that our price point was comfortable because we offer the unique value of portability.

Our competitors are going to be Keurig, Green Mountain, and other single-serve brewers, as well as Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and McDonald's, the top three leading fast food style coffee chains. We all occupy what I call the “convenient coffee” market. In the convenient coffee market, consumers require a  high-level of convenience, and we’re all trying to satisfy that demand. We just do it in different ways.

Supply chain risk. It is critical that we keep up with demand and that our supply chain works smoothly. We have put in significant effort to mitigate risks at all points in the supply chain by implementing supplier audits, hiring third-party quality control teams, and working with reputable manufacturers that work for Fortune 500 companies. It is impossible to remove all risk, but we have focused on this element of our business to a large degree in order to ensure smooth operation and efficient production.

Before I began this project with MoJoe in 2013, I worked in construction management for a Fortune 500 company where we built huge multi-million dollar buildings for our clients. In this line of work, you are working with multiple contractors — typically a different contractor for each part of the building (i.e. bricks, concrete, roofing, etc.) — and million dollar contracts over a period of two to three years a time. It is essential that you are not only able to understand the “big picture” as a whole, but also have a high-level understanding of each individual piece and how they affect the other. I was able to master this project management concept and it has been directly attributable to how I run MoJoe Brewing Co. I quit that job to run MoJoe, so now I do this full time. I apply those same exact principles to what we do here. Way back in 2013, I was able to visualize all of the little pieces that needed to go together to build this company and build a great product. Now we're almost there to fulfill that high-level goal that I saw way back then.

I am also a Mechanical Engineer (UMBC ‘11), which lends to the type of work we are doing, but in terms of engineering and design, Ezekiel Kolajo’s contribution and capabilities are enormous, and we lean on him for his expertise. His experience in mechanical engineering systems and manufacturing have empowered us to complete all of the engineering work on our own. Our ability to self-perform some of the most technical and challenging elements of our work really gives us a leg up and puts us in a great position to be successful.

Alex Wing’s skill set rounds out the core team and the company’s ability to self-perform and get things done quickly and at low cost. As our creative lead, his design and marketing expertise gives us the ability to showcase our product with high-quality branding and creative assets. Almost everything MoJoe-related has been conceptualized and designed in-house — from choosing brand colors to packaging, to our cool videos — everything.

All of our skills and experiences directly lend themselves to what we are doing with MoJoe Brewing Co. and put us in a great position to successfully grow this company.