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“Test your idea. Make an inexpensive prototype, and patent for protection.”
SiDi Huang was a chemical engineer with a ridiculously baggy work shirt and student loan debt that ruled out a wardrobe overhaul. His solution: invent something. He went to a hardware store, bought fish tank tubing, headed to his parents' basement, and built the first ZipSeam prototype — a C-shaped insert that tucks excess shirt fabric into a clean seam without sewing.
After years of refinement, he launched on Kickstarter with a $2,500 goal and raised $2,000 on the first day alone — with no press coverage. By the end of the campaign, 3,000+ backers had funded over $59,000. He's since run two additional Kickstarters, launched a patent-protected version, and sold roughly $150,000 of ZipSeams across four years.
His biggest lesson: the Kickstarter traffic spike is real — and the crash afterward is real too. Have a plan for maintaining momentum once the campaign's spotlight fades. He didn't, and traffic dropped substantially each time.
SiDi is also a serial side hustler: he manages rental properties, rents cars through Turo, and flips items from Walmart. The ZipSeam was his proof of concept for making something from scratch — "if I could make nICE Mug work, I could make anything work."
"Test your idea. Make an inexpensive prototype, and patent for protection." Find ZipSeam at zipseam.com.
