In each of our podcasts, we ask top hardware entrepreneurs the same 10 questions to better understand the challenges and best practices in starting a hardware company. In Episode 1 of Season 1, Lemnos’s Eric Klein speaks with Chris Bruce, the CEO of Sproutling, which was acquired by Mattel.

I feel like I worked on a lot of products that are sugar water, to use the phrase from Steve Job’s biography. I wanted to work on something that I care about. I wanted to work on something that I could spend 10-15 years at, building a big company. It’s a very passionate project and it has to do with kids, which I have two of, and I love them dearly. That’s pretty much why I decided to focus on products that help families have better, easier tech.

Before my last startup, which was a social gaming company, I worked with Shawn Fanning at Rupture, which got acquired by Electronic Arts. That was a great experience just from complete chaos to an organized company. I think it’s a great, great time to do startups and create value from nothing.

I’ve always been one of these clichés. I have been coding since I was nine. Even early on, when I was in seventh and eighth grade, I started into electronics and built stuff that annoyed my parents—alarms that wouldn’t turn off from my room, CBs, robots and stuff. But software has always stuck with me. I felt like early on, when computers were young and not many people knew how to work them, it felt like I was inventing.

Unfortunately, it’s a little bit different than I think traditional entrepreneurs, because I have two kids. I’ve been in startups before I had kids and then after. For me, it’s really a time shift. I think what I have learned now is that I have to be much smarter about my time, much more effective with what I do.

My typical day is early, like maybe 5:00 a.m., and I get a little work done, and then I see my kids in the morning, then I head off to the lab. Other times, I do a lot of meetings, unfortunately. When you’re a CEO of a company, it’s endless meetings. The best days are the days that my nose is to the grindstone, and I can just sit in front of the computer coding all day.

One of the hardest things is, with software, I can work all night and have something. I don’t need to rely on any outside vendor. The hard things are dealing with shipping, like this particular chip because I need a board assembled and that chip happens to not be available, but it’s going to be available soon, so getting that. I feel like I’m waiting on components and other things. In a perfect world, I’d be able to just push a button and print out a PCB board and then have all the stuff on it.

I’ve started a couple companies, and I think I have a pretty good network and a good skill set for starting a company. But hardware is different. There’s so many things I didn’t understand about delivering a consumer electronics device. How do you get it on the shelf, how do you get the thing manufactured, what is a contract manufacturer, what are logistics? So I felt like we needed a hardware incubator to really help educate us on how to avoid those pitfalls and how to make connections with the investors. Lemnos has been invaluable. It’s also neat to work with other