Seeing the other side

As with everyone, COVID-19 has presented us with some unique roadblocks. We were all ‘ready to go’ before Chinese New Year, but when we started getting the silent treatment from factories, we knew that this virus wasn’t just going to blow over. Honestly, we didn’t really have a plan B on how to move forward - we’d been pushing so hard to get the money we needed based on a specific quote, and now faced with the prospect of having to take a different route, we knew the money we raised wouldn’t be enough.

At first, we went into turbo mode and applied for any and every grant we could find. And then, after many ‘no’s’, we crashed. Neither of us knew if immi could survive this and the only thing that felt doable was to take a break.

We finally saw a glimmer of hope after hearing we were through to the final stages of the Hong Kong Cyberport Creative Micro Fund grant. We prepped HARD. We spent so long polishing a 6 minute presentation and script, timing it exactly. (When it came to the pitch, my audio crashed at the beginning so our carefully planned script didn’t make it!).

The news that we won the grant was quickly followed by an introduction to a small prototype team in London, Embedism, who used their skills and creativity to help us navigate the best way to prototype with our limited resources.

What a ride! We’re now about 6 weeks away from having our first immi watches!