Product Startup

Jonathan Bohun is the founder of Action Ship VR and Weedar, companies which are integrating the digital and physical world via augmented reality. Today Jonathan is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what augmented reality is, what opportunities are coming in the near future for augmented reality hardware, and different ways hardware startups can think of augmented reality integration with their physical products.

Click this link for This Episode's Full Info Page: https://productstartup.com/podcast/173-augmented-reality-technology-in-hardware-startups/

Today you will hear us talk about:

• Virtual reality is when you are fully immersed in a digital world
• Augmented reality is when you are partially immersed in the digital world, and partially in the real world.
• Wearable devices like augmented reality devices are going to be the first version of AR.
• We see mass adoption of 5G and satellite internet, so now there are reliable connections to the web that are fast enough to integrate your startup hardware products in a connected way.
• Processing power is very heavy for AR devices, and now computing is getting strong enough either on the device or on the cloud to be able to handle complex AR calculations.
• Power capacity of the device, aka battery power, is now getting strong enough to handle the complex computing power
• Right now the average AR device is 2 hours of experience
• Biggest companies in the world are working hard on this AR technology
• AR is starting to move beyond just glasses.
• AR to enhance user experience with products
• People want to use products together with other people, AR may be able to start bringing that together in the future.
• You can make packaging come to life, interact with the product, learn more information about the product on display
• Customization to different users in selling products on physical display.
• Companies today can start with learning about AR technology integration to their packaging
• Encourage everyone to look into the augmented reality and virtual reality space to see what it can do for your hardware

EPISODE LINKS:

Jonathan Bohun Links:

LinkedIn

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Pinterest | Twitter | https://www.youtube.com/@productstartup

Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Rob Colgan has worked for Mako Design for almost 10 years, working with well over 100 physical product startups on developing an invention idea into a real consumer product. He went to school for both mechanical design and industrial design, along with building many custom cars and motorcycles as a hobby. Today Rob is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can understand the key initial steps to developing a new invention idea, the product guidelines that start it all off right through to concept sketches, Computer Aided Design work, and visual renderings.

Click this link for This Episode's Full Info Page: https://productstartup.com/podcast/172-early-concept-design-for-a-new-hardware-invention/

Today you will hear us talk about:

• Features that function well
• Sketch products out
• Break down the components
• There are multiple different ways of sketching
• Quick doodles to get some ideas onto paper
• The problem with sketching is you lose the 3D element
• Start a new product on the skeletal level
• Figure out how that system of components works
• Skinning the product
• Ergonomics and user interaction
• Form follows function
• Don’t stress the aesthetics too much early on
• Think about use case.
• The initial view sparks a lot of questions
• Collaboration is core
• Fine-tune the initial components
• Transition from concept sketches into
• Modern design is clean and timeless
• Better not to follow trends, and think about cleanliness
• It’s not just you to appreciate the design, it’s the entire market.
• After concept ideation, get into serious CAD software

EPISODE LINKS:

Rob Colgan Links:

Website

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Pinterest | Twitter | https://www.youtube.com/@productstartup

Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Tony Ulwick is the CEO of Strategyn, a company that has been in business since 1991 doing strategy consulting for high-growth innovative hardware companies. He is the author of two books, and has had his articles published twice in the Harvard Business Review. He started out in the early days of his career as a design for manufacturing engineer at IBM. Today Tony is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on how to create hardware products that people want, why people buy your consumer product, and how to validate your invention idea through additive manufacturing in the market.

Click this link for This Episode's Full Info Page: https://productstartup.com/podcast/171-choosing-features-and-validating-your-invention/

Today you will hear us talk about:

• How do you create products that people want.
• Figure out what your customer wants.
• What is the reason that someone is buying your hardware product.
• Define the market as a group of people that have a job that needs done via a hardware product.
• Define the needs of the customer to figure out what they need to complete the job.
• Desired outcome statements that your hardware product.
• Dimensions to design something better are faster, more predictably, or great result. You should learn this about your customer.
• You want to address the most unmet need.
• An outcome of a job that is highly underserved. This is the most efficient path to growth.
• What are the fewest number of features that we could have to hit the largest segment of customers.
• Features come in all over the place as a hardware startup, so you need to be very clear on what features you need.
• Start with the feature that you want, then figure it out with the customer.
• How important is the feature to the customer, and how satisfied are you with the current solutions.
• If you validate the opportunity, ensure that you design a great product offering to match that.
• Short-run manufacturing is very helpful to validate the idea, at a low cost, and learn from your customers on what will fit the market in scale.
• He talks about only one feature.
• If you can have someone improve by 15% or more, you will have an amazing product.
• What is that one need that is underserved in the market.

EPISODE LINKS:

Tony Ulwick Links:

LinkedIn | Website

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Pinterest | Twitter | https://www.youtube.com/@productstartup

Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Paul Sagar is the Vice President of Product Management for the CREO software line at PTC. Paul started as a design engineer, then spent the last 25 years building CAD software for PTC to best match the needs of hardware design teams. Today Paul is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on the latest trends in new product development for hardware startups, including best practices in composite materials, the electrification of products, and additive manufacturing for first manufacturing runs.

Click this link for This Episode's Full Info Page: https://productstartup.com/podcast/170-current-trends-of-modern-product-development/

Today you will hear us talk about:

• Composite design. Composite materials in the design. This is stuff from aerospace and racing.
• More consumer product brands are starting to incorporate high-cost and high-quality composite materials into a relatively simple product
• Composites can allow you more design flexibility while ensuring strength and quality with lightweight properties.
• Composites can lead to more sustainability in hardware product design.
• Composites have been historically very expensive to buy and manufacture; however, it is becoming more accessible.
• Low-volume production capital cost is low, so you can focus on quality at low volume for a new product startup brand.
• Electrification of everything is already happening.
• Fundamentally design is needing to incorporate more electronics and more electrification.
• Electronics need to collaborate more with mechanical engineering than ever before. Collaboration more than linear design.
• Production design, especially in additive manufacturing, is evolving extremely quickly.
• Additive manufacturing used to just be for rapid prototyping, but now additive manufacturing is being used for final part design, especially for first manufacturing runs.
• Short-run additive manufacturing is far cheaper in regards to up-front capital costs (tooling costs).
• There are some advantages to what you can actually design with additive manufacturing.
• Additive manufacturing gets you to production faster.
• Speed, quality, up front cost reduction, and increased design options.

EPISODE LINKS:

Paul Sagar Links:

LinkedIn | Creo | PTC | OnShape

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Pinterest | Twitter | https://www.youtube.com/@productstartup

Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Ryan Margolin is the CEO of Professional Hair Labs, a cosmetic company with dozens of products with tens of millions of dollars in sales all over the world. He has spent 25 years in the consumer product sales and marketing industry, and is also a TEDx speaker. Today Ryan is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what the foundation of smart consumer product testing is, what the different types of product testing are and at which stages in the development process, and how to leverage a pilot manufacturing run to ensure a strong brand alignment with your customers.

Click this link for This Episode's Full Info Page: https://productstartup.com/podcast/169-critical-testing-stages-in-new-product-development/

Today you will hear us talk about:

• Marketing Brief is the scope of the product.
• Most products aren’t going to speak to everybody on the market, so figure out exactly what your solution is and to what specific types of people.
• What types of testing are required for your product.
• Compliance tests. These are tests the ensure your product meets the regulatory requirements.
• Compliance testing is generally a base line
• Reliability of those tests
• You never get a second chance to make a first impression
• Reliability is what the client will expect, which will be compared to best in class, which is a lot higher quality than compliant or regulatory testing.
• Global sales is easier than ever to achieve, so if you put yourself to a high global calibre, you can sell worldwide.
• The global marketplace is more accessible now than it has ever been.
• Pilot production, which is customer testing
• Get the product to be as reliable as can be, then do a pilot production run to test the customers.
• This is a critical phase of ensuring that a few potential customers are tested.
• Get paying customers to pay for the product if you can, even just a few, so that you can learn as much as possible.
• This is the key separator between the companies that go big and the companies that constantly struggle is those that put the effort up front to test and validate their products as opposed to going to big production runs out of the gate.
• The more testing you do earlier, the exponentially less expenses and headaches you have down the road.

EPISODE LINKS:

Paul Rowan Links:

LinkedIn | Company

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Pinterest | Twitter | https://www.youtube.com/@productstartup

Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Paul Rowan is the Co-Founder of Umbra, a household product company that designs, manufactures, and sells hundreds of consumer products all over the world. You likely have at least one of their products in your home right now. Paul ran Umbra for for 37 years, starting the entire company with just one product. Today Paul is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can use both strategic purpose and higher purpose to create a great first product and your first product business. From there, how do you leverage those principles to scale into a global product brand as he did with Umbra.

Click this link for This Episode's Full Info Page: https://productstartup.com/podcast/168-the-future-of-hardware-product-design-thinking/

Today you will hear us talk about:

• Sales can drive hardware ideas, what a great way to sell when you already know what your big buyers want.
• The culture of work in hardware product design in the future.
• Hardware designers are going to have a lot of options for developing work-from-home products, mental health issues, more collaborative office space environments and products, and many other emerging opportunities for the changing landscape of design.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• AI cannot compete with human intelligence.
• AI is not a threat, it is the next tool.
• If you embrace the tools, this will exponentially improve the caliber of your hardware startup.
• Humanistic direction or robotic direction
• Purposeful, sustainable, human. This leads to long term.
• Short term vs long-term value
• How can you differentiate yourself by adding humanistic values to your company.
• If you don’t set the bar on good design, you won’t even get to market.
• Bad design cannot even be put on the shelves.
• To increase beyond great design, add humanistic values
• You can compete with big corporate easily on humanistic values as a startup.
• Sustainability, carbon footprint, sourcing, labor practices.
• Put your name on a product
• Don’t be afraid to put your name behind your brand.
• When you’re in the decision tree of short-term problem solve or long-term value, go for the long term value as that has become more important than ever for modern businesses.
• Long-term thinking will encourage significantly more success
• Test and test until you get it right in prototyping, use design thinking.
• The human behind the design

EPISODE LINKS:

Paul Rowan Links:

LinkedIn | Umbra | PaulRowan.ca

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Pinterest | Twitter | https://www.youtube.com/@productstartup

Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Jackson Wightman is the co-author of The Tech PR Playbook, a book that synthesizes 20 years of PR knowledge into a single resource. He is also the co-founder of Proper Propaganda, a public relations firm that primarily works with hardware startups and scale-ups. He is also an instructor at McGill University with an MBA, Masters in Poli Sci, and a BA. Today Jackson is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what earned media is, specifically for hardware companies, why earned media and press is so valuable, and what are the best practices for getting free coverage from major hardware journalists and publications.

Click this link for This Episode's Full Info Page: https://productstartup.com/podcast/167-get-free-earned-media-for-a-new-hardware-product/

Today you will hear us talk about:

• Hardware startups generally don’t understand what earned media is, and especially how to best utilize it for your product
• Defining what is earned media is for a hardware startup
• Editorial media coverage.
• Why earned media can be so valuable to a hardware startup
• You are not paying for it, and thus it is heavily trusted by readers.
• Earned media is far more trusted than advertisements.
• Earned media can be repurposed to help sell your product or increase the visibility to your various stakeholders, not just customers and investors, but also partners, and prospective employees.
• There is a huge amount of power in brand equity.
• Articles that are earned are evergreen, meaning that they last forever.
• Things to stand out and differentiate to get great earned media
• To get in, first understand that it is competitive to get into a journalist and media outlet
• Then think then about how you can differentiate your product and product story from what is already out there.
• The second thing is to target the correct media. Pitch the correct journalist, reporters, and the correct media outlet for your specific type of hardware.
• Have good assets, make sure the prototype works and make sure the instructions work.
• Try and get someone who is new to the product to test out your samples.
• Feature-creeped products are the hardest to get earned media.
• The Tech PR Playbook

EPISODE LINKS:

Jackson Wightman Links:

LinkedIn | Book | Agency

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Pinterest | Twitter | https://www.youtube.com/@productstartup

Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Steve Multer is the author of Nothing Gets Sold Until The Story Gets Told which can be found on Amazon and all major book retailers. He has done over 20,000 presentations and worked with major hardware brands such as Cisco, Panasonic, Siemens, HP, Philips, Xerox, and over 100 more, all on crafting product and brand messaging. Today Steve is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can understand what corporate storytelling is, what the main components of a well-crafted sales or brand story has, and best practices around both launching a new hardware product but also maintaining the brand connection for long-term customer loyalty.

Click this link for This Episode's Full Info Page: https://productstartup.com/podcast/166-storytelling-tips-for-hardware-product-launches/

Today you will hear us talk about:

• What is corporate storytelling
• Metrics of a product (what investors want to hear) vs corporate storytelling (what the public wants).
• Don’t tell the customer what you want to tell them, tell them what they want to hear. This requires knowing your audience.
• The platform / pillars of a great story: Value, passion, and connection.
• How do you change people’s lives, for the better, with their product.
• Make sure to maintain your personal passion in advertising.
• How connect with people by telling them a story that they recognize and that they become a part of.
• You can be the best advocate to your own hardware product, you are the story.
• Investors invest in you as a human being.
• Combine your product with your story.
• Trust yourself to sell your own story, and bring the human passion in.
• Stakeholders, buyers, investors will be more lenient when they believe in the story and the passion behind that story.
• Build a community first.
• How do you sell
• How do you keep customers
• What is going to sustain and grow your hardware product and thus product brand for 10 years or more.

EPISODE LINKS:

Steve Multer Links:

LinkedIn | Book

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Pinterest | Twitter | https://www.youtube.com/@productstartup

Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Kyle Dumont spent many years as a hardware developer for iRobot, then got a Masters of Science and an MBA dual degree at Harvard, then spun out AllSpice which is a software platform for managing electronic engineering feedback and revision tracking amongst other things. Today Kyle is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what iterative hardware product development is between manufacturing runs, who the feedback loop stakeholders are, and how to collect, organize, prioritize, and execute on that iterative feedback information to ensure the best improvements to your physical consumer product design.

Click this link for This Episode's Full Info Page: https://productstartup.com/podcast/165-iterative-design-processes-amp-tools-for-hardware-development/

Today you will hear us talk about:

• What iterative design in hardware is between manufacturing runs
• Legacy design is based on a waterfall model of design
• Software has done a great job of iterating very quickly.
• Get designs in the hands of engineers, or even better, users.
• Iterative design can sometimes be forced on you if you need to make changes, so better to have the processes
• Who are the stakeholders:
• Customers, the most important stakeholders (both current and potential customers)
• Cost reduction
• Engineering design, multiple different disciplines (hardware, software, firmware, PCB, visual, industrial design, etc.)
• Procurement, product managers, Manufacturers
• Get hardware product engineers in front of customers
• What tools can be used to collect, organize, prioritize, and implement
• Version control is a great way to organize version control / revision control. This is the foundation.
• Start to consider comparing versions.
• Do you have the channels and tools to be able to have the various product stakeholders to provide input on the product.
• Integrating tools together so that the most information
• Avoid silos of different departments, ideally, you have all information together.
• Use priority flagging to tag the importance of issues or opportunities.

EPISODE LINKS:

Kyle Dumont Links:

LinkedIn | AllSpice

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Pinterest | Twitter | https://www.youtube.com/@productstartup

Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Tim Uys has spent 25 years as a senior design, leader, and lecturer in the industrial design and mechanical design engineering world. He has worked for Nike Golf, Dell, Qualcomm, Ironman and many others while the director of design for IDOne, which was one of the top Austin design firms back in the early days before it was acquired. For the past 8 years, Tim has been the head of design for our very own Mako Design out of our Austin, Texas office. Today Tim is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can understand what each of the key 3 types of prototypes are, the order of those prototypes, and the importance of each of those phases of new product prototyping in order to manufacture a great and successful hardware product.

Click this link for This Episode's Full Info Page: https://productstartup.com/podcast/164-the-3-prototyping-phases-for-new-product-development/

Today you will hear us talk about:

• Mock Prototype / Rough Prototype
• Costs are relatively low to iterate and for parts
• Focus on big picture items, not the details, is key in a first prototype
• You can even have a series of rough prototypes or prototype parts to test a number of different things
• Mechanical / Functional Prototype
• You can do pieces of a prototype either in tandem, or linear,
• Mechanical test prototypes use more complex parts, so it requires more advanced prototyping parts so that you can much closer mimic the final production mechanics parts.
• Even if costly, in the end, you are solving the problem.
• You cannot go to production without going into proper prototyping.
• There is a tremendous amount of value in building mechanical features that closely represent the manufactured product, so that you can perfect those mechanical design elements.
• Refined / Presentation Prototype
• A final prototype is usually used by hardware startups for selling, but also for manufacturing.
• Manufacturers need to have the product fully vetted out in order to get a reliable manufacturer to take on the project.
• Iteration in produce development is very important

EPISODE LINKS:

Tim Uys Links:

LinkedIn | MAKO Design

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Pinterest | Twitter | https://www.youtube.com/@productstartup

Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter