A ring that flashes and vibrates when it gets a notification from your phone. For this, Silicon Valley VCs ponied up $5.1 million.
Ringly isn’t saying publicly how many units it’s shipped, but allows as how they’ve pretty much sent out all their first round of pre-orders at $145 each. The new pre-orders will go out this Spring for $195.
The goods are nice: high quality metals and stones, and battery life of 2 to 3 days. But we do wonder: other than first-move advantage (which is not insignificant, especially when it comes to building partnerships in a white-hot market), what makes a teched-out costume jewelry company worth this much money to the sharpies at Andressen Horowitz and that crowd? (And while all the press says how much the funding round was, they don’t say what the total valuation was, which is unusual…)