About the Hand Stylus Team

Steve King, designer of the Hand Stylus, co-founded a small design firm with his business partner, Christine Gonsalves, that creates green products for nonprofit institutions such as the San Diego Zoo, the Smithsonian, and the Georgia Aquarium. Steve grew up in Silicon Valley and graduated from Yale with a double-major in Art and Environmental Studies. Steve produced the day-long event California Celebrates the Whale for Governor Jerry Brown, led whale watching trips to Baja, Mexico for fifteen years, helped construct several life-size whale models, and conceived, worked as a producer, and appeared in the first hour-long documentary about blue whales that aired on ABC and which won an Emmy.

Along with a desire to create the world's finest stylus, we want the Hand Stylus to be as green as possible. This is why the Hand Stylus and its packaging are made from recycled or easily recyclable materials, and why we purchase carbon credits to offset our use of nonrenewable energy. We work in a well insulated building with white roofs that requires no air conditioning and little heating. The building was recently retrofitted with 100 LED lights that lowered the energy used for lighting by nearly 85%. All in-house printing is done on duplexing printers using paper made from bamboo and we're ardent recyclers. Our next goal is to install rooftop solar panels to further reduce our carbon footprint.

Without the support of 7,500 Kickstarter backers, the Hand Stylus would not have been possible, as the cost of the molds, tooling, and dies needed to fabricate the Hand Stylus were prohibitively expensive. Of the two dozen styluses that have debuted on Kickstarter the Hand Stylus set the record for most backers and funds raised.