The Amp Hour

An Interview with Christina Cyr

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Welcome Christina Cyr, CEO of dToor and the Cyrcle Phone

  • This was their 5th year at CES. Mostly hanging out at Eureka Park, which is the startup area
  • 2 years ago saw companies doing encryption for voice data because of creepy speakers, now they have gone mainstream.
  • Startups are only allowed to be there for 2 years.
  • This year dToor got coverage on BBC, CNET, The Daily Mail
  • Enclosure company didn't finish, so Christina 3D printed
  • CTA is Consumer Technology Association. $97 to join and worth it.
  • Wyze cameras, selling for $19.99
  • Random connections from having a booth
  • Christina works out of WeWork. Previously she was at Extra Slice in Bellevue, wanted a landline (LAN connection) for older builds of linux
  • Metrix Create, Sodo also shut down
  • Volunteers at their booth:
    • Aileen McGraw, WeWork Labs Manager
    • Xuny Haley, CoMotion Labs Manager
    • Nalin Chuapetcharasopon, Crowdfunding Expert
    • Anna Chuapetcharasopon, EdTech Consultant
    • Former guest Scotty Allen dropped by.
    • How did this phone get started?
    • Phone wasn't fitting in a pocket in 2014
    • People wouldn't take cardboard prototypes seriously
    • Decided to use Seeed Studio's phone kit with a different "skin"
    • Presented as a phone for women, that was a mistake
    • Featured in the telegraph out of context
    • Demographics were 50/50
    • Marketing tech products to women
    • Apple Watch is taking the place of similar kind of role
    • Joel Telling (3D printing nerd) goes to the hospital, after his watch alerted him to tachycardia
    • Unity (software)
    • The 4G version of the phone has
      • Dual SIM
      • Two headphone jacks
      • Qualcomm Snapdragon
      • Transitioning from micro-b to USB-C
      • Working with vendors
      • 4 vendors that have the snapdragon
      • Tier 1 and Tier 2 companies
      • Vendors want to hear 100K units
      • Navigating working with vendors
      • Looking at doing testing in China for FCC
      • Dealing with Tariffs, as batteries and LCDs are coming directly from suppliers
      • CES Tech Talk - Caught in the Crossfire: How Tariffs Impact Tech with Austere Sage Chandler, Vice President—International Trade, Consumer Technology Association (CTA)
      • Harmonized Tariff Code 
      • Different goods have different Tariffs
      • Should have been an LLC instead of an S Corp or C Corp
      • NRE for a completely custom display is $6M!
      • Circular display is off the shelf, with 800x800 outer dimensions
      • The 4G LTE phone will have a "tangential foot" (see image below)
      • Module comes with Android 9
      • Christina put together a document for hardware startups in Seattle, might be useful to listeners even if not in Seattle
      • Cyrclephone.com
      • @CyrChristina
        • ...more
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        The Amp HourBy The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)
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