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Into The Forge Season 1: Shireen and Scott from Nima
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 9 of Season 1, Lemnos’s Eric Klein speaks with Shireen Yates and Scott Sundvor of Nima, formerly 6SensorLabs, a Lemnos portfolio company.
Shireen: It really started with a personal issue of mine. I had suffered for a number of years from not being able to eat out without getting sick. I had severe food allergies, and gluten, specifically, was the most intense. I had always gone out, lived a pretty social life, and then I got diagnosed in college. It completely changed my life to lead a diet-restricted lifestyle. Once I found out what I was actually allergic to, it was very hard to avoid some of those foods while eating in social situations. So, I had this issue and put up with getting sick. I met a lot of people who also had the similar issues. Then I had the great privilege of meeting Scott at MIT, and we had a shared passion about helping people live healthier lives.
Scott: My education was in mechanical engineering. I think that definitely helped a lot. It gave me a great insight into the product development process. That’s something that they really drill into you at MIT. When I met Shireen, I was working in consulting after I got my mechanical engineering degree.
Shireen: I have a background in online sales and marketing—as far out as you can get from hardware. When Scott and I actually got together at MIT to start building this product, my expectations were absurd. Scott had a lot of education to do that summer, but I sat down with Scott and the engineering team at MIT and said, “Okay guys, we have four weeks to prototype, so I expect to have beta users at the end of these four weeks.” We had absolutely nothing at that time. It was just an idea, and our product is complicated.
Scott: It was a lot of fun working with those extreme expectations. It was also definitely a learning process for me. I thought things would go a lot more quickly, and cost a lot less money than you realize that they do. One of the great things about working with someone who is so far removed from hardware is that you have this constant tension. It really pushes the engineering team.
Shireen: I’m going to surprise you; I was a total maker. I remember in middle school, I took a straw, drilled a hole in my toothbrush, and filled it with toothpaste. Then I drilled a hole in the bristles. My mom was like, “You know, those toothbrushes exist.” But I was like, “No, look. I’ve, simplified it.”
Scott: I guess Shireen and I had similar childhoods, because I did a lot the same stuff. I think my first introduction to engineering was probably through Legos. I was always taking things apart. Before you had the remote controls for your light and your fan, I made a whole pulley system in my room for that. It progressed naturally to taking physics classes in high school, and then going to MIT and being a mechanical engineer.
Shireen: No day is the same. But, typically, we have a mix of making sure that we’re on track with our product development team and managing the schedule that we’ve built. The business development side is about 20 to 30 percent of the day—looking at the market, getting consumer feedback, looking at s
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By Eric KleinIn 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 9 of Season 1, Lemnos’s Eric Klein speaks with Shireen Yates and Scott Sundvor of Nima, formerly 6SensorLabs, a Lemnos portfolio company.
Shireen: It really started with a personal issue of mine. I had suffered for a number of years from not being able to eat out without getting sick. I had severe food allergies, and gluten, specifically, was the most intense. I had always gone out, lived a pretty social life, and then I got diagnosed in college. It completely changed my life to lead a diet-restricted lifestyle. Once I found out what I was actually allergic to, it was very hard to avoid some of those foods while eating in social situations. So, I had this issue and put up with getting sick. I met a lot of people who also had the similar issues. Then I had the great privilege of meeting Scott at MIT, and we had a shared passion about helping people live healthier lives.
Scott: My education was in mechanical engineering. I think that definitely helped a lot. It gave me a great insight into the product development process. That’s something that they really drill into you at MIT. When I met Shireen, I was working in consulting after I got my mechanical engineering degree.
Shireen: I have a background in online sales and marketing—as far out as you can get from hardware. When Scott and I actually got together at MIT to start building this product, my expectations were absurd. Scott had a lot of education to do that summer, but I sat down with Scott and the engineering team at MIT and said, “Okay guys, we have four weeks to prototype, so I expect to have beta users at the end of these four weeks.” We had absolutely nothing at that time. It was just an idea, and our product is complicated.
Scott: It was a lot of fun working with those extreme expectations. It was also definitely a learning process for me. I thought things would go a lot more quickly, and cost a lot less money than you realize that they do. One of the great things about working with someone who is so far removed from hardware is that you have this constant tension. It really pushes the engineering team.
Shireen: I’m going to surprise you; I was a total maker. I remember in middle school, I took a straw, drilled a hole in my toothbrush, and filled it with toothpaste. Then I drilled a hole in the bristles. My mom was like, “You know, those toothbrushes exist.” But I was like, “No, look. I’ve, simplified it.”
Scott: I guess Shireen and I had similar childhoods, because I did a lot the same stuff. I think my first introduction to engineering was probably through Legos. I was always taking things apart. Before you had the remote controls for your light and your fan, I made a whole pulley system in my room for that. It progressed naturally to taking physics classes in high school, and then going to MIT and being a mechanical engineer.
Shireen: No day is the same. But, typically, we have a mix of making sure that we’re on track with our product development team and managing the schedule that we’ve built. The business development side is about 20 to 30 percent of the day—looking at the market, getting consumer feedback, looking at s