Uber for umbrellas is exactly as bonkers as it sounds – and Kickstarter loves it

We’ve all been there: you’re walking through heavy rain under the comfort of your umbrella. Yet you can’t help shake the feeling, “Wouldn’t it be nice to share this umbrella with a complete stranger using an app?”

If the guilt of keeping your umbrella to yourself proves too much, fear not. A startup from Hong Kong is bringing Uber-style ride sharing off the street and onto the rain-soaked sidewalk.

Umbrella Here is a small donut-shaped device that latches to the top of your umbrella. Using an app, the umbrella owner can make the device light up. As the Kickstarter campaign describes, “When the light is on, it represents that strangers are welcome to come in and share your umbrella.” (No money is exchanged for the use of said umbrella.)

The app also works as a social network for umbrella owners. Users can stay in touch with the random pedestrians they’ve shared an umbrella with, presumably to talk about their shared interest in staying dry.

Why does Kickstarter love umbrella-tech so much?

Last year, a campaign for the “Air Umbrella” hit Kickstarter. It was a tech-for-the-sake-of-tech startup that decided to replace our trusty umbrellas with heavy fans on sticks, which sprayed rain away from users. We called it – in what was, really, an understatement – “everything that’s wrong with Kickstarter gadgets.” It raised more than US$100,000 and has not yet shipped a single unit.

Likewise, Umbrella Here has seen success on Kickstarter, becoming a “Staff Pick” and raising more than US$15,000. Umbrella Here is more legit than Air Umbrella – they’ve already shipped units to their Kickstarter backers – but it certainly feels familiar.

For some reason, the Kickstarter community is really unhappy with how umbrellas work. Dozens of umbrella projects are listed on the website, each promising to revolutionize, disrupt, or otherwise reinvent the concept of holding a thing above your head to stop rain. And Kickstarter loves them: several umbrella-tech startups have become Kickstarter staff picks, and more than a few have blasted through ambitious funding targets.

A New York-based campaign raised more than US$50,000 for a phone-tethered “smart umbrella” that would be more difficult to lose. A British startup making a “revolutionary inside-out umbrella” raised close to US$400,000.

A solution in search of a problem

You could argue that, if there were ever a place for umbrella-tech, it would be Hong Kong. The city’s residents are some of the most tech-enabled in the world and, well, it rains a lot there.

Someday…