The Hardware Entrepreneur

My guest is Günter Faltin, professor of entrepreneurship from Germany and himself also a successful entrepreneur.

He’s an early pioneer of entrepreneurship education in Germany. He’s widely known in Germany because of his pioneering work connected to a concept called “component principle”. Last year I read his book “Brain vs capital” at around the same time as Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek book, and the connection between the two were obvious. Actually people in Germany buy these two books together, as I later found it out from Prof Faltin. Both books have been major eye-openers for me. Prof. Faltin and Tim Ferriss’ works are for ones who want to get results fast and sustainably, just prof. Faltin’s is more applicable exclusively to entrepreneurship. In the links below you can see actually an interview that Prof. Faltin did with Tim Ferriss, and it made me smile how much the two are in agreement.

Prof. Faltin is a very practical person despite being a professor. So by any means, he’s not sitting in his Ivory Tower. You’ll learn in this episode he’s had his quite successful business which is still thriving.

In this part 1 episode you can learn from Prof. Faltin how he systematically started his company, he’ll discuss his principles for how to stay lean and efficient even after the beginnings of a startup when one wants to scale. He’ll also bring up other examples besides for companies that use his principles. Enjoy.

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• Who is Prof. Faltin and how does his book relate to Tim Ferriss? – [3:32]
• How do you become the world’s largest importer of Darjeeling tea? - [4:58]
• A business model that looks beyond conventions - [14:36]
• The basics of progress – the component principle - [16:08]
• Entrepreneurship Summit in Berlin and how can you win a free ticket to it? - [17:03]
• How is the component principle applied in Teekampagne? - [20:07]
• An example of building a company organized 100% by components - [21:38]
• The advantages of using outsourced talent - [24:02]
• Another example of a business which uses the component principle - [26:38]
• “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” - [28:19]

My interview guest is from the US from San Francisco, Nick Pinkston, founder and CEO of Plethora.

In case you’re into manufacturing, and you should be, if you’re into into hardware, then this episode is for you.

Nick is a central figure in hardware in the Bay Area which you’ll learn about in this interview. He’s behind CloudFab, the world's first manufacturing-as-a-service API, HackPittsburgh, a collective workshop for the makers of Pittsburgh and he’s co-founder of the San Francisco Meetup. These topics will all come up in this episode.

His latest venture is Plethora which provides rapid manufacturing services that give you real-time design feedback and pricing when you upload your 3D file. After this step, their on-demand automated factory programs itself to make your parts. He’s essentially transforming the way we do manufacturing via digital manufacturing.

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• Where hardware startups fail when it comes to manufacturing and how to avoid that - [4:11]
• The God-like vision of Plethora and what it has to do with pizza delivery - [8:42]
• The company’s vertical approach and their 13 000 competitors - [12:27]
• How Plethora wants to scale the scaling itself - [16:18]
• Current situation of local manufacturing shops – the issue with specializing [18:20]
• The experience behind San Francisco Hardware Startup Meetup and how it has grown to other initiatives - [20:06]
• Escape velocity, or challenges in front of the company - [25:35]
• The main lesson the founders learned while growing the company and how the OODA loop concept applies to them — [27:04]
• If you could time travel and go back in time, what notes would you give yourself? – [30:45]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [31:34]
• Nick’s super structured routine – [32:27]
• Some observations Nick has made in terms of organizational culture – [36:45]
• What is the best way to reach Nick? – [36:2]

The interviewee, Mark Milstein, who I have in this episode is a very experienced serial-entrepreneur whose obsession is immersive media content. This includes VR, AR, 360 degree videos.

We talk about a topic that is often not talked about, that is what about the searchability of the immense amount of data you produce when recording immersive media?

Mark is an impressive person in digital photography, digital asset management (DAM), curation. He’s the founder of Microstocksolutions and DigitalContentSolutions, two of his latest companies which do DAM, curation, asset mgmt services for the visual media industry as well as Fortune 500 companies. Mark is also the founder of two of Central and Eastern Europe's most respected photo agencies, Northfoto and Red Dot. Red Dot was a significant company in that it was the region's first internet based photo agency.

In this episode Mark talks about what most companies, innovators concentrate on in immersive media field, what challenges he sees and how he wants to solve some of the problems of content creators. You can learn about his past as well, how his career naturally led up to this point and how his curiosity and lack of some knowledge actually helped him take risks others would not take. Enjoy this episode.

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• Virtual Reality - a field that is not a reality yet – [2:43]
• Main problems of the VR industry - [4:15]
• Trying to put a tyre on a horse, or what kind of barriers big stock media companies have to overcome - [6:40]
• Mark’s previous professional activities that led him to found his current companies - [8:07]
• The result of a decade long experience in metadata - [12:41]
• What is one question that Mark would like to be asked in relation to VR? - [15:22]
• Who can have the VRmeta tool even before its release? - [17:26]
• “Document everything” – importance of mistakes while developing a company - [18:36]
• The story of risk tolerance and the VRmeta tool – [20:52]
• If you could time travel and go back in time, what notes would you give yourself? – [23:26]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [24:22]
• Mark’s incredible information-ingesting morning routine – [25:19]
• Some striking cultural differences that Mark had to overcome throughout his career – [27:06]
• What is the best way to reach Mark? – [28:41]

My guest in this episode is Christian Smith, co-founder and President of TrackR. Their company is a startup based in California, outside Silicon Valley, at a remarkable place called Santa Barbara, and it is a quite successful hardware startup so lots of things to learn in this interview.

TrackR works in the intelligent personal item tracking space, so their products help you find your lost items. Since its start in 2009, it has grown tremendously from being a startup operating out of a garage to a global operation, with over five million devices shipped worldwide. TrackR is built into many products, as Christian explains it in this episode, from leading brands like Amazon, DoCoMo, HP, Cross Pens and more.

In this episode you get to hear the story of how they got their idea on the beach, what it entails to be passionate or obsessed about something. There are many many more topics we discussed as you can see below in the highlights.

Enjoy this episode.

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• A success story of 5 million+ devices – [2:30]
• What’s common between surfing and the idea behind TrackR? - [4:20]
• Being obsessed [not passionate] about giving humanity back 100 hours every single year - [8:08]
• The Lean startup method as a way to engineer great sales - [11:09]
• How did they validate the idea? - [13:22]
• Early failures the founders had while growing the company - [15:05]
• The law of equivalent exchange - [16:27]
• “Great marketing is built into the product” and how the company went viral - [19:38]
• The core value proposition of TrackR - [23:57]
• How will a tracking device look like in the future, according to Christian - [27:02]
• If you could time travel and go back in time, what notes would you give yourself? – [28:52]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [29:24]
• Christian’s super powerful morning routine – [30:14]
• Observations Christian made throughout his career in regard to cultural differences – [32:00]
• What is the best way to reach Christian? – [33:46]

My guest this time is from Silicon Valley, USA, Vibhu Norby of b8ta.

This is an episode that you should simply not miss - many many things to learn from and a guest to inspire you. Vibhu was before with Nest, the smart thermostat maker. This is where he had the realization that retail is far from optimal and that one might have to rethink retail to bring it up to date, to capitalize on today’s tech capabilities. b8ta is essentially a software-powered retailer.

In this episode Vibhu talks about b8ta’s contrarian belief on why brick and mortar stores are dying, how they want to bring back customers to the stores, and what the best brands do. Nowadays e-commerce topics is stealing the headlines, but contrary to this, people actually buy products in stores. You can also learn about conflict of interest between brands and retailers and how Vibhu wants to solve this conflict with his company. You can also find out how he validated his idea, what mistake he made during this time. He also walks us through the process what details make your brand sell or not sell inside a store. And many more topics will be covered, too. Enjoy!

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• How is the store model of b8ta reversing the trend of brick-and-mortar stores closing down? - [3:45]
• Previous professional experience that lead Vibhu to creating a platform for solving the retail conflict - [6:44]
• Important observations that evolved into replacing a whole system – [12:55]
• How did he validate the idea? - [14:28]
• Key ingredients that differentiate b8ta from their competitors - [17:23]
• How does the platform pay the makers? - [20:55]
• Importance of timing and speed of bringing products to market - [22:05]
• A walk through b8ta’s four-step customer journey that they analyse - [24:58]
• Plan for success – mistakes the founders made while growing the company [28:05]
• If you could time travel and go back in time, what notes would you give yourself? – [31:57]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [32:28]
• Vibhu’s everyday routine – [33:11]
• Some cultural differences that Vibhu observed throughout his career – [34:58]
• What is the best way to reach Vibhu? – [36:46]

I’ve had a very special guest, who I got to talk to. My interviewee, Dr. Milton Chang, is a serial entrepreneur with an impressive, long track record of building hardware companies.

Milton is currently managing partner of Incubic Venture Fund. He was president of Newport and New Focus, which he took public. In addition, the companies he incubated resulted in six IPOs and close to 10 acquisitions. He currently works with several companies, including Aurrion (acquired by Juniper Networks), MBio Diagnostics, YesVideo, and Protein Fluidics. He’s a Trustee of the California Institute of Technology and has recently served on the SEC Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies. He writes a business and management column for Laser Focus World.

Milton is also the author of Toward Entrepreneurship, a book that I consider as one of the best books on entrepreneurship - find out in this episode why.

You can find out in this episode what it means for him to found a company, to grow slowly or fast. You can also learn what you should pay attention to if you come out of academia to start a business, what separates a good from a bad business idea and many many more.

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• Toward Entrepreneurship - Milton Chang’s book – [3:48]
• Starting a niche business modestly versus rapidly growing a business in a hot field - [6:48]
• Bootstrapping explained with two examples from his own experience - [8:52]
• What were the critical ingredients that helped Milton start his companies? - [11:51]
• Ingredients that are typically missing in founders who start out right out of school, e.g. after a Master’s or PhD program? - [14:13]
• Self-actualization inside a company - synchronizing the employees’ and the company’s needs [19:02]
• What separates a good business idea from a bad one? - [21:50]
• Pros and cons of different sources for financing a start-up - [23:50]
• Fueling your own dreams - [27:37]
• The field of photonics as an enabler for other industries - [29:18]
• If you could time travel and go back in time, what notes would you give yourself? – [32:48]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [30:07]
• Milton’s morning routine – [34:43]
• Milton’s observations on Asian and European cultural differences – [35:30]
• What is the best way to reach Milton? – [37:10]

My guest has recently been Scott N. Miller, co-founder and CEO of Dragon Innovation, a company based in the US helping hardware companies.

Scott has a pretty remarkable career behind him so far with at least two decades of experience in hardware field, so many of you have probably heard from him.

A few companies they have worked with are e.g. Pebble which was the topic of episode 8 of this podcast or Bose, the audio equipment company. We’ll discuss manufacturing in China vs in USA regarding salaries, unit numbers to work with, and also the future of manufacturing in China, as well as why the current trends can be beneficial to manufacturing in the US. Scott will elaborate also on their latest soon-to-be released software tool, and their latest announcement of a joint effort with Kickstarter. We have many more topics to cover so enjoy this episode.

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• Differentiating factors between U.S. and China manufacturing in terms of quantity, wages and vertical integration - [3:42]
• China as seen through the manufacturing triangle - [6:09]
• Scott’s journey of learning how manufacturing works - [8:05]
• What does Dragon Innovation do? - [8:58]
• “A fishing guide” to help customers grow their business  - [10:58]
• Benefits of using Product Planner and how it’s different from Dragon Standard BOM - [13:00]
• Launching an initiative in partnership with Kickstarter - [17:43]
• Things you need to know and do before starting a Kickstarter campaign, as seen through the manufacturing triangle - [18:36]
• What is the future role of robots in manufacturing? - [22:25]
• The trends millennials are setting are good news for startups - [24:38]
• “That which does not kill us makes us stronger” - [27:12]
• If you could time travel and go back in time, what notes would you give yourself? – [31:24]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [31:57]
• Scott’s creative [morning] habits – [33:01]
• Observations he made while working and living abroad about cultures and people – [34:05]
• What is the best way to reach Scott? – [36:00]

I’m back on the show, just me, and I’ll talk about an announcement, that is I’m changing the publishing frequency from weekly to bi-weekly.

Why do I do this?

I enjoy podcasting very much, it’s my passion, as well as helping you guys, connecting you with others and to sources of information. I love my guests as well and of course all of you, who take the time to listen to the episodes.

Instead of creating a kind of blog post out of answering the why question, I encourage you to listen to the episode as it’s a pretty short one - fast-forward it if you want to listen to it even faster.

Highlights can be seen below. A big thanks again for listening to this show! I can’t wait to bring you more inspiring guests and contents.

Further info at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• The announcement - [0:49]
• The reason - [2:32]
• What resources do you use in your entrepreneurial life? - [3:00]
• My message to you - [4:12]
• Outlook on next week’s episode - [4:54]

My guest is from the US, from Texas, Chris Hsiao, co-founder and leader of Gossamer, a startup for startups that became known for developing the Teal drone, the fastest production drone on Earth.

As for Gossamer, it is a full stack product design and engineering firm that focuses mainly on hardware startups. You’ll learn in this episode how Chris started his venture, their being acquired recently, the story of the Teal drone and another project that is important to him because of the potential impact.

Enjoy this episode.

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• Why is Gossamer not a conventional startup? – [2:08]
• What makes the company different from hardware accelerators? – [3:48]
• Gossamer’s geographical focus - [6:26]
• His previous ventures and how it all started - [8:14]
• A remarkable project example - Teal Drones – [11:55]
• Another project example and Gossamer’s part in its development - [14:55]
• What changes took place after the company was acquired by Tekzenit? - [18:24]
• Mistakes the team made while they were growing the business - [20:54]
• The stress issue of startup founders - [22:56]
• If you could time travel and go back in time, what notes would you give yourself? – [24:42]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [25:37]
• “Never take your shoes off” and when do the great ideas come? – [27:49]
• Some cultural differences that Chris had to overcome throughout his career – [29:58]

Again, I’ve interviewed Joshua Spodek, a professor at NYU and an entrepreneur. He was a guest in episode 22 of this podcast because of his hardware entrepreneurship background and his leadership teaching that we can all learn from. He’s back since we have something important to talk about which concerns Earth’s physical resources which I alluded to in episode 1 and I didn’t want to wait long to start to publicly discuss this topic.

Briefly about Josh: he’s a best-selling author (“Leadership Step by Step” book), holds five Ivy-League degrees, he runs regularly marathons, writes intensely (daily blog posts, articles on Inc magazine).

In this episode we’ll talk about leadership again but this time on applying it on one specific topic, on sustainability. We hear constantly about facts on climate change, the consequences of our not taking actions, the green technologies’ slow adoption. “If information was the answer, we’d all be millionaire with perfect abs” says Derek Sivers. Maybe there’s another, potentially more effective way to decrease climate change, by talking less and acting more, a certain point Josh makes, which he thinks has been almost completely overlooked.

Enjoy this episode.

Just one more thing since it’s a call to action: let me know or Joshua if you want to do something on this topic, e.g. joining an accountability group, or contributing in any way to this initiative.  

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• The importance of climate change topic - [2:40]
• Joshua’s view on sustainability and climate change – [3:57]
• Do you turn on the aircon on a hot summer day or you bear some uncomfortableness? – [5:10]
• The most common perception of behavioural change for reducing climate change - deprivation - [7:05]
• His practical recommendations - [8:36]
• Joshua’s journey to becoming environmentally conscious - [15:11]
• We need to do different things if we want to see different actions - [19:10]
• A simple technique I developed for changing my behaviour even before facing pain - [21:28]
• How about a website for the listeners to sign up for personal challenges to start taking action? - [23:25]