Jamstack CEO Chris Prendergast was a teacher, engineer and amazing electric guitar player who identified a frustration every musician has dealt with: equipment takes too long to set up. It’s not ergonomic. It tethers you in one place.

These frustrations led to an idea so self-evidently awesome, Chris was surprised it didn’t already exist: a portable device that would attach to his electric guitar, connect to his smartphone, produce effects, and output high-quality audio.

At Cortex, Chris found a team with the design expertise to create a working prototype that would secure funding and bring Jamstack into production. He found a partner who had the manufacturing experience to shepherd his magnetic idea into the hands of consumers.

As Chris says, music tells you how to feel. From the outset, we realized that the Jamstack evokes a special feeling in everyone who sees it. Musicians want to play with it. Listeners light up when they see it in the wild.

Jamstack gives people superpowers, and that made us believers.

We wanted to invest in it, so we did.

The Insight

• The power of belief. Sometimes a product idea solves such a clear human need, it’s unbelievable it doesn’t exist. When this kind of idea walks through the door, it’s worth becoming a first mover and investing.

• A go-anywhere amp needs true accessibility. The device must attach to any guitar intuitively, simply and securely, so we created a universal mounting system that matches Jamstack’s promise. We also designed an ambidextrous smartphone mount that would work on both the left or right hand side of a guitar — important to many players, including Dylan, our left-handed President.

Cortex Fundamental Deliverables

• Services designed to grow the business. Our services produced growth for Jamstack at every stage of the process, from initial investment, to prototype design, production engineering and manufacturing liaison.

• The power of manufacturing relationships. Cortex leveraged our boots-on-the-ground approach and our network of overseas manufacturers to build the Jamstack on budget, with world-class audio performance. This included vendor identification, qualification, production liaison, post-market survey, corrective actions, and quality system.

The Result

• Our investment and design helped 10x the company valuation, and allowed Jamstack’s CEO to secure the private funding needed to bring Jamstack to market
• Jamstack’s CEO obtained two patents for IP created during development
• Jamstack is now in production and available for purchase