The Hardware Entrepreneur

My guest is Alan Klement, Entrepreneur&Innovator, and thought-leader on the Job To Be Done (JTBD) framework. This is a concept that every innovator should hear about.

This episode is all about JTBD, one of my favorite topics.

Alan has the mission to help teams and individuals become great at making and selling products that people will buy. His own experience as a successful innovator and entrepreneur is what make him effective at helping others. He has applied successfully Jobs to be Done theory to his own businesses and has helped many others do the same.

On October 2nd 2016, Alan released the first book dedicated to Jobs to be Done (JTBD): "When Coffee and Kale Compete". It develops Jobs to be Done theory and features interviews with entrepreneurs who've applied Jobs to be Done to create successful companies and products. It is a book dedicated to helping you become better at creating and selling products that people will buy.

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

Enjoy listening.

Show highlights can be seen below:

• When coffee and kale compete – [3:26]
• How customers really view competition – [4:16]
• Schumpeter, Karl Marx and the concept of creative destruction – [6:10]
• What started Alan’s deep dive into the topic of JTBD – [7:55]
• What is exactly JTBD theory and its connection with Sigmund Freud, Steve Jobs, Ferrari, Porsche – [10:22]
• The story behind the unexpected failure of chotuKool – [14:20]
• What are people going to stop doing when they start using your product? – [19:30]
• Switch or not to switch from using “Tide” detergent – [21:35]
• What if Apple had introduced the iPhone in 2000? – [22:30]
• Don’t out-innovate the customer – [23:10]
• What if there was no iPod first, just an iPhone coming out? – [23:55]
• If you could time travel back to the time when you were in your early 20s, what notes would you give yourself? – [25:00]
• Books which had a big impact on Alan’s way of thinking and career – [25:25]
• Alan’s creative habits – [26:41]
• Cultural differences between Westerns, Eastern Europeans, Chinese – [28:00]
• Best way to reach Alan – [31:00]

My guest is Mike Vladimer, cofounder of Orange IoT Studio in Silicon Valley, the innovation strategy office of Orange, one of Europe’s biggest telecommunications operators.  

Mike was previously Director of Business Development at Neura, an Internet-of-Things (IoT) startup. Mike holds an MBA from Berkeley-Haas and an MS Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon.

I had an in-depth discussion with him on a framework for thinking about this important hot topic - violate it at your own risk. We’ll talk about examples as well, such as how IoT is different from a conventional device like a garage door opener. He’ll moreover outline the four elements of a successful product, discuss our feelings towards IoT products vs our phone.

Enjoy listening.

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

Show highlights can be seen below:

• Orange IoT studio in short – [2:23]
• Internal and external collaboration in Orange – [3:17]
• Why did Mike co-found Orange? – [4:25]
• Mike’s background and his connection to the IoT – [5:25]
• A three-layer recipe on how to or not to think about IoT - [8:38]
• What it takes to have an IoT device? – [10:20]
• What are some wrong assumptions about IoT? – [12:09]
• What are some organizational or technological challenges for developing and adopting an IoT device? - [18:53]
• Mike’s position on the controversy of the IoT – [20:42]
• Security, one of the biggest roadblocks for developing IoT, and how to solve this issue – [21:33]
• Segmenting the security issue with IoT – [24:52]
• What’s the business model of Orange IoT Studio and what services do they provide? – [27:00]
• If you could time travel and go back in time, what notes would you give yourself? – [30:25]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [31:43]
• Mike’s interesting white board habit  – [33:55]
• Some striking cultural differences that Mike had to overcome – [36:45]
• What is the best way to reach Mike? – [42:30]

My guest is Karoly Molnar, co-founder and CEO of ProDSP Technologies, Hungary.

ProDSP Technologies, a hardware engineering company, which works with many hardware startups as advisors, contract developers, as well as giving manufacturing services.

Running the company as CEO in Budapest, Hungary, Karoly Molnar, is an electronic engineer in his heart and soul. The company supports the whole product life-cycle: specification, embedded hardware and software design, algorithm development, prototyping, product realization and manufacturing.

Karoly and I studied together in Hungary so I have known him for quite some time. In this episode, we will talk about his company’s mission, circumstances that pushed them to found the company, choosing organic growth, details about their sources of revenue, types of prototypes they develop, and many many more.

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

Show highlights can be seen below:

• Short definition of the company’s mission – [2:42] 
• Circumstances that lead to founding the company – [4:32]
• Comparison of running the company to a certain game – [5:52]
• The not so romantic steps of founding – [7:34]
• Slow but organic growth – [9:09]
• Startup scene in Budapest – [12:14]
• Domination of one source of revenue – [13:52]
• Menu for hardware startups to choose from – [15:46]
• Two types of prototypes explained – [17:02]
• Merging the two prototypes into one – [20:13]
• The importance of working together, and their company’s added value – [22:49]
• Karoly’s sources of inspiration, experts to follow – [23:55]
• What notes he would give to his 20 something self – [25:40]
• The book that impacted his career – [28:28]
• Habits, productivity techniques he uses: email processing, time-management – [29:54]
• Critical cultural difference he has come across and how he creatively solved it – [31:42]

I interviewed Sandy Diao, Director of Strategic Programs at Indiegogo. She works with companies to help them bring their hardware projects to life.

You might know that Indiegogo is one of the two major crowdfunding platforms. But you might not know that It stands out as one that brings out more and more special support for hardware projects.

Sandy started her career incubating an ads auction system at Pinterest, then moved into music technology at The ONE Smart Piano. After she learned piano through the Smart Piano product and raised half a million through crowdfunding, she joined the Indiegogo team to share her learnings with more entrepreneurs. Her hobbies include learning musical instruments spanning from Erhu to acoustic guitar, and practicing her ambidexterity in writing languages, like Chinese and Korean.

Please have a look at the highlights below and enjoy listening. Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

• Back to the roots of Indiegogo – [2:17]
• When was Indiegogo created? – [3:33]
• What does Sandy actually do at Indiegogo? – [4:30]
• Why did Sandy join Indiegogo? – [5:04]
• The three ways in which Indiegogo and Kickstarter differ from each other – [6:13]
• At which stage of product development should a startup turn to Indiegogo? – [8:30]
• What is the situation with successfully crowdfunded projects and their exits? – [11:24]
• What kind of companies turn to Indiegogo? - [14:00]
• Major recent initiatives by Indiegogo and the shift Sandy expects in the future for crowdfunding – [14:25]
• What’s the engagement of the startups with the new offerings by Indiegogo? – [16:54]
• If you could go back in time and meet your earlier self, what kind of notes would you give yourself? - [17:54]
• Books which had the biggest impact on her entrepreneurial career – [18:43]
• Sandy’s productive habits – [19:36]
• Critical cultural differences that one might encounter in a global environment – [20:46]
• The best way you can reach Sandy – [22:11]

My guest is Damien Ng, co-founder of Backers, a chain of stores in Asia that wants to help crowdfunded projects bring closer to the consumer mass market. To my knowledge they’re the first such initiative in the world.

With Backers Damien saw a gap experienced by crowdfunded projects: they take place in the virtual world whereas because most of the time those products are physical, they should actually be experienced physically.

I met Damien in their office in Hong Kong, where I conducted this interview.

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

Show highlights can be seen below:

• Identification of the problem…the beginnings of Backers - [2:21]
• Their motivation - [5:08]
• The beginnings: testing - [7:09]
• What major challenges did you have during founding and now? - [9:04]
• How does the funding situation look like in Hong Kong in hardware? - [10:18]
• Tips for running a crowdfunding campaign - [12:10]
• Your biggest strengths? - [13:55]
• His sources of inspiration - [15:17]
• if you could go back to the time when you were in your twenties - what notes would you give yourself?- [16:35]
• Which books had the biggest impact on your entrepreneurial career? - [17:25]
• What routines do you have? - [18:50]
• We interact with different cultures - what cultural aspects were challenging?- [19:39]
• The impact of food on business - [21:21]
• What is the best way to reach you? - [22:12]

I have as guest Andreas Braendle, co-founder and CEO of Battere.

Battere manages to stand out in a crowded market and it’s a great example about how a company can innovate by thinking hard and executing on a novel business model instead of trying to make money on innovating on the battery-technology.

As for Andreas, he is PhD dropout who first founded a music teacher platform-based startup called instrumentor, which still operates today. His latest venture is called Battere, which he founded 4 years ago out of his passion for hardware and electricity distribution.

We’ll discuss how they iterated on the business-model to get to the current state, the idea behind changing between b2b and b2c orientation, their pricing strategy, and many more. Enjoy.

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

Show highlights can be seen below:

• Problem of doing business using rechargeable batteries - [2:59]
• What’s the problem with charging your phone on the go? – [3:44]
• How does a company earn profit in an environment of mass manufacturing? – [5:09]
• How is it possible to iterate: from beginning of Battere to their current business model - [6:15]
• How does Battere combine sustainability with profit making? – [7:22]
• Who’s behind Battere and their unique team spirit? How did they evolve? - [9:30]
• Fixing the price point: considerations of price of coffee - [12:02]
• Relying on organic growth or investors? - [14:12] 
• Again talking more about iterations: on the product with customers and getting early traction - [15:55]
• Some technical issues: hardware, software – [18:50]
• If you could go back in time to your early self, what notes would you give yourself? - [20:52]
• Books which had the biggest impact on his entrepreneurial career - [24:12]
• Memorable cultural differences that he has encountered from nationality point of view? - [24:12]
• How to reach Andreas - [25:57]

In this episode my guest is Florian Simmendinger, co-founder and CEO of Soundbrenner.

Soundbrenner is maker of the world’s first wearable smart device for musicians. Their product is called Soundbrenner Pulse and their ambitious goal is to help every single musician on the planet to achieve rhythmic perfection. Their Indiegogo campaign on their first device, a smart vibrating metronome, was very successful with pre-orders in total of around $250 000. This market validation of their product then allowed them to receive a seed funding of of $0.5 million and most recently an additional $1.5 million USD of financing.

I met Florian’s company at Global Source faire in Hong Kong where they exhibited their exciting product. In this episode their fascinating story will be presented. We will touch on many topics, on their motivation for founding, their journey so far, including details on successful crowd-funding, manufacturing, elements of his personality, etc.

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

Show highlights can be seen below:

• What was your motivation for founding the company, and your story briefly so far? - [3:24]
• What music and music instrument do you play? - [7:28]
• What other mobile platforms do you cover besides iPhone? - [9:09]
• How did you find this idea, identified the problem? - [10:28]
• Could you elaborate on your setup of being in Berlin and Hong Kong? - [11:37]
• Pros and cons of having a startup in Berlin - [12:03]
• At which phase did you move to Hong Kong? - [13:27]
• How was your funding during crowd-funding and afterwards? - [14:16]
• When to follow the crowd-funding route and when not to? - [16:14]
• What are the essential elements of a successful crowd-funding campaign and why did you choose Indigogo versus Kickstarter? - [18:15]
• Do you still get orders because Indiegogo would allow you to do that? - [21:14]
• Where do you manufacture and where are the other steps of product development done? - [21:57]
• What is your biggest strength and your team’s? - [22:59]
• The notes he would you give to his twenty something self and the key to being unstoppable - [25:56]
• If you had to name a book, which one had the biggest impact on your career? - [27:48]
• Do you have some routine in your life, morning, evening and so on routine? - [28:31]
• Cultural differences when working, especially during their participation during the accelerator program - [30:58]
• What is the best way to reach you? - [32:58]

My guest is Bay McLaughlin, co-founder and COO of Brinc, a remarkable hardware accelerator focusing on IoT. This is the first interview on an accelerator on this show.

Brinc is a global IoT accelerator and platform based in Hong Kong with offices in Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

Bay, who co-founded Brinc about 2.5 years ago, has long years of startup experience. He has spent half of his career in or founding startups. He was founding team member of Apple’s global SMB channel and founder of their first Entrepreneurship Evangelism channel. With 8 software and 14 hardware portfolio holdings, he’s successfully made the transition from digital to physical and from San Francisco to Asia.

In this episode we bring you the story of Brinc. Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• Definition of an accelerator - [1:55]
• What is Brinc? - [2:42]
• The strengths of their program and challenges of hardware startups - [4:04]
• A free program feature - [6:23]
• The motivation behind founding Brinc - [7:10]
• Competition among hardware/IoT accelerators - [9:34]
• Two main things that make Brinc stand out among other accelerators - [11:48]
• The importance of Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Honk Kong - [13:07]
• “Trial by fire” - [14:30]
• Exits in hardware - [15:15]
• Biggest challenges for a hardware startup - [16:20]
• Are you seeing the entire chess game? - [17:15]
• Internet of Sh and how Brinc picks the topics to concentrate on - [19:00]
• Why are investors scared? - [21:38]
• Who is Bay inspired by? - [22:27]
• If you could time travel back to the time when you were younger, what notes would you give back to yourself so that you can improve? - [24:20]
• Books which had the biggest impact on his career - [24:44]
• His hardcore routines - [25:26]
• Critical and memorable cultural experiences Bay has seen globally - [26:55]
• What is the best way for listeners to reach him? - [28:07]

Today I have a special guest. If there was a black belt in his field, he would certainly be one of its holder. He’s a master of a type of project management and innovation style, agile, specifically he’s into scrum, which is the most commonly used agile framework. My guest is Joe Justice from the USA, President of Scrum @ Hardware at Scrum Inc, and CEO, founder of a company called Team WIKISPEED.

In this episode we elaborate on the topic of scrum. Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com and show highlights can be seen below:

• Nokia’s story coming to an end - [3:23]
• Can you describe the Scrum method? - [4:36]
• What the New Zealand All Blacks #1 rugby team has to do with Scrum - [7:09]
• Some companies that use Scrum, especially in the hardware field - [9:17]
• Situation with Scrum for startups in the hardware field, and small or medium sized enterprises? - [13:11]
• Examples where Scrum has been scaled up, specifically for hardware - [16:12]
• Tesla and their job postings; WIKISPEED competing against Tesla - [17:59]
• How to think like Elon Musk? - [19:37]
• The connection between Kanban, Lean Startup, Lean Canvas and Scrum -  [19:50]
• Two major obstacles for implementing Scrum framеwork, especially in the hardware field? - [24:10]
• Countries approving Scrum - [29:17]
• “the last of the old will still be the first of the new” - [30:16]
• How the leader, the Scrum master or the product owner, can motivate the team? - [31:43]
• If you could go back in time, when you were younger, what notes what would you take back to that time to keep it to yourself? [37:43]
• Books which had the biggest impact on his career - [39:44]
• Joe’s incredible routines to be super-efficient, super-energetic - [43:12]
• Memorable cultural differences he has encountered - [46:00]
• How to reach him - [48:47]

My guest is Ákos Dömötör, CEO of OptoForce, Hungary.

Ákos Dömötör, with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and two Master’s in Management, started out in the global graduate program at LEGO, then taking up a position in Denmark. He then left the creative space in Denmark in 2014 to be the CEO of his venture, OptoForce, in his native land, Hungary. In 2015 OptoForce, producer of force/torque sensors for industrial and service robots, gained a huge revenue growth of 600% and now works with some of the most important robotic companies, universities in the world.

In this episode we bring you the world of robotics closer to you, discussing how they feel, i.e. how they touch, trends in the robotic field, how Ákos and his team differentiates their company from competitors, how they iterated on the business model a number of times to reach the current version that works. We talked about manufacturing aspect, challenges and many more.

In this episode we elaborate on the robotic sensing, the highlights as seen below.

• Balint’s introduction - [1:47]
• OptoForce’ technology defined - [2:44]
• Motivation for joining the company - [3:54]
• Field of robotics today - [5:28]
• Differentiation of company from competitors - [9:23]
• Sensing using light - [11:08]
• Technological maturity when Ákos joined the company - [14:03]
• Iterating on the business model - [17:40]
• Major challenges at the early phase - [19:57]
• Keeping manufacturing in-house or outsource? - [23:07]
• Advice to his younger self, while being satisfied with himself - [26:05]
• The book that most impacted his career - [26:01]
• His effective morning routine - [28:24]
• Cultural difference against which he spoke up and the difference he embraces - [30:00]