The Engineering Entrepreneur Podcast

Blockchain-powered Gold - Nick Prouten - Ep 107

Nick is a veteran in public speaking and a team leader able to pitch projects, ideas and concepts. A firm believer that diversity is strength. Nicholas has worked in a wide array of industries ranging from cyber security, gaming, real estate, entertainment, tech and blockchain. 

We first discuss the basics of crypto and blockchain. Then we talked about how investing gold and silver is a good idea to diversify your investing risk.  

Number one tip: 

“If you don’t have a digital strategy, get learning now. Everything will be held on a blockchain in 10 years.” 

Contact info: 

Website: https://lode.one/ 

Twitter: @NicholasProuten

Raise Capital for Your Invention – Tim Cooley – Ep 106 

Tim is the author of the #1 trending book on raising capital, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors. He is the Executive Director for Park City Angels and a Partner at ViaCap. He has worked with 100s of early-stage companies in marketing, sales, product development, and fundraising. The companies he has worked with have raised more than $200M in Seed and Series A funding.  

We discuss how you can create an MVP (minimal viable product) so you can present to investors or put your product on Kickstarter (not supposed to this but it happens!) 

Contact info: 

Tim Cooley 

Author: The Pitch Deck Book 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/timlcooley/      

Online Learning, Evertus.com – Raunak Dutta and John Myers – Ep 104 

John and Raunak teamed up to create a new online learning platform called Evertus.com. 

John held a career in Logistics for over 4 years, for two of those years he was a mentor and teacher guiding people through budgeting and being more proficient in their careers. 

Raunak learned most of his professional skills from a learning platform called Lynda.com which is now called LinkedIn Learning. 

Because of each of their background, they both have a good understanding of the positives and negatives of other online learning platforms. One of the big issues with online learning is the wide variety of quality. They set out to bring the highest quality online learning to the world. 

In addition to details on the platform, we discussed the business model, which is a subscription model. 

Their number one tips: 

Raunak: “Choose your co-founders carefully. Find people who have a passion for what you are doing.” 

John: “Task itemization. If you can’t see a clear path to end goal, everyone is lost.” 

Contact info: 

Website: www.evertus.com 

Emails: [email protected] and [email protected] 

Software Product Developer - Ryan Frederick – Ep 105 

Ryan is a founder and product person at heart. He has had the privilege of being part of starting and growing several software and service companies over the years. Currently, he leads an elite team of 70 product designers and data problem solvers at his company AWH. 

We go into details of how you should go about developing a product and finding the customer needs. We both give real life examples of products we have developed and how we went about doing it. 

Ryan also discusses how he started and how he runs his software product firm. He has written 2 books about it. 

Contact info: 

https://awh.net/ 

https://www.ryanfrederick.biz/ 

Save Money with Solar Panels - Stephan Scherer- Ep 103 

Stephan Scherer was born and raised in Vienna, Austria. He attended the Technical University of Vienna (also took part in Duke University’s exchange program), then started work as an engineer in Siberia’s oil fields. He founded CraftStrom in 2017 after first, private work on mobile solar systems, while working as an energy infrastructure consultant. 

We talk in depth on the technology of solar panels.  

• Solar panels can pay for it itself quickly. 

Stephan also ran a Kickstarter and we talked briefly on some lessons learned from that. 

Number one tips:

Know your customer – don’t try anything without having spoken to customers. Reach out where your customers are. 

Contact info:

[email protected] 

The Engineering Entrepreneur Podcast is produced by Scott Tarcy, President of CADdesignhelp.com. You can reach me at [email protected] 

Nextime App, Send Messages by Scheduling them into the future - Emanuel Martín Haurigot - Ep 102 

Career Gig: Hire Talented Contractors - Greg Kihlstrom  - Ep 101 

Greg is a best-selling author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He is currently Co-Founder at CareerGig, after selling his digital experience agency, Carousel30, in 2017. 

Carousel30 was his marketing agency and he learned quite a bit about hiring freelancers. We talked briefly about the sale of Carousel30 and then moved into his current venture: CareerGig. 

CareerGig is set out to build a network of the best freelancers. It benefits companies as the freelancer on it need to verify if they have the skill required. Freelancers benefit because they can get benefits like health care if they do enough hours.  

Contact info:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom/ 

The Engineering Entrepreneur Podcast is produced by Scott Tarcy, President of CADdesignhelp.com. You can reach me at [email protected] 

Celebration Show 100 Episodes – Ep 100 – Scott Tarcy 

Well, we did it. We hit 100 episodes. In light of that, I thought I would review some of my favorite topics and mentions some projects I have done recently. 

1. Episode 2, Rick Daley and licensing 

• Don’t have to make actual product but a prototype helps a ton 

• Can also use CAD renderings 

• Can make a lot of money from licensing 

2. Episodes 14 with Andrew Bougie and 53 with Matt Holling about 3d scanning 

• Scanning is a great way to reverse engineer complicated existing parts 

• Point cloud – stl file – to solidworks file 

• Good scanner will cost 10k-30k 

3. Episodes 70 with Alex Hobson and Ep 56 with James Wilson about Patents and IP 

• In these episodes, we covered how the entire patent process works and the steps you should take when you have a new invention idea. 

• Should first check on uspto.gov to see if patent already exists. My recommendation is to look at images. 

• If you don’t see, file a provisional patent. It’s cheap and gives you one year protection before you need full patent. 

4. Some projects I was hired for: 

• Condiment bottle – printed in durable resin and works just like a blow molded PP bottle. 

• AutoCad blocks – conveyor system that the client could drop in on his manufacturing plant layout to make sure it fits. 

5. Tonal shelf 

• Always looking to create new products that will create passive income. 

• Can’t remember exactly how I thought of creating a product for tonal users, but when I looked at the cost of buying a tonal, I could this was a good market. 

• If someone is going to spend $4000 on an exercise machine, they have plenty of disposable income. I should be able to sell for $100. 

• The machine has 4 different handles, so need place to store the extras. 

• Created a shelf to hold these, make it by 3d printing. Tooling would cost a fortune. 

• Gave a local guy free samples in return for testing it out for me. Took 9 revisions before I sold the first one. Based on feedback made one more revision for a total of 10. 

• It has been very successful. 

The Average Joe Tech Startup Founder – Shawn Livermore – Ep 99

Big episode this week! Last one before reaching triple digits. I’ll put together a special episode for 100.

Shawn Livermore is a tech startup founder, entrepreneur, and technology consultant for over 20 years. He the author of the best-selling amazon book “The Average Joe”.

He didn’t go the traditional path many think of when they think of tech founder. He taught himself while working full time and became Microsoft certified. He then raised capital for 2 different business, both in the tech industry.

Shawn learned many lessons that he shares but many focus in determination and learning to deal with failure as an entrepreneur. Take it from me, it’s going to happen!

Number one tip: Proximity is a great replacement for talent. Be around with great people.

Contact info:

Shawn runs Product Perfect, a software consultancy, in Southern California.

Follow Shawn on twitter @shawnypants https://twitter.com/shawnypants

The book website is www.averagejoetechgenius.com

The Slow Create Framework is at www.slowcreate.com

Hire Shawn for your next software project at www.productperfect.com 

Invention: Making your Phone Battery Last Longer - Nick Kshatri – Ep 98 

Most people nowadays know that phone batteries seem to lose their ability to hold charge over time. There are multiple reasons for this, but one of the big reasons is that when you charge your phone, a lot of heat is generated.  

Nick and his team solved this by creating a product that works as follows: When you plug it in, it will charge for some time, but then it will take a break from charging, to allow the battery to cool back down. Then it will resume charging. This cycle of charging can double the length of your battery. 

We discussed how Nick came up with the idea, how they got funding through a competition, and how they developed and prototyped the product. They also filed for a patent on the product. 

Finally, we talked about how they set up and ran their Kickstarter campaign. 

Number one tip: If you have an interesting idea, you should pursue it. Don’t hold yourself back. 

Contact info: www.canalbatteryguard.com