The Story Behind KOFENOT®
A cup of coffee on a Palisades Tahoe Tuesday afternoon ended the short life of a new MacBook Pro of a ski instructor, Lena Faber. At her lunch time she was building a Web3 space-time infrastructure for human history. Because once she was a journalist.
On a Thursday heavy storm, an elderly driver hit her car from the side. And action: Lena’s car flew down a steep hill like in a movie, bouncing over obstacles along the way. The car was killed, the driver got zero injury. Because once she was a car racer.
On Friday night she bought a new car, moved to Silicon Valley, and paused her larger venture, The Here®, to first launch KOFENOT®, inspired by an upside-down coffee cup she always placed under her new laptop hinge to deflect future spills.
The problem was carrying a coffee cup in a laptop bag.
When her upside-down eureka started to grab attention, she sketched a wedge, filed a utility patent, and 3D printed an ugly prototype, knowing that one day it had to look premium, feel good in the hand, work with laptops, phones, and tablets, and use no pins, magnets, or adhesives.
Then one engineer saw Lena struggling to beautify a piece of plastic and offered help. Lena raised the bar: the thing had to make a loud, satisfying snap when it closed. Not just close. Snap.
It took countless 3D prints to figure out the precise geometry of the opening and closing mechanism. Done. People stare at KOFENOT® as if it were a Rubik’s Cube, turn it around in their hands, open and close it a few times, and then ask the same question: how does this thing work?
KOFENOT® is a 0.9 oz flat-folding laptop wedge that lifts a laptop at the hinge, helps improve posture, and helps deflect spills away from the keyboard. It also serves as a stand for phones and tablets and has a front-facing area for custom branding, making it suitable for corporate gifts, conferences, trade shows, and promotional campaigns.