The Hardware Entrepreneur

In this episode, you’ll hear a short, dense analysis on the rise and demise of a well-known company, Pebble, which produced the first smartwatch. I chose to talk about this topic as the latest news from them was a shock. The goal with telling you their story, their shocking ending, as always, is that you get to learn from others, in this case from a company’s story that had its highs and in December its low moment. So hopefully, you’ll get some actionable insights.

Highlights can be seen below.

• The goal for this episode - [0:25]
• How can a company that broke records two times on Kickstarter end up being sold and having to stop producing? - [1:40]
• Pebble’s beginnings - [2:00]
• The single most important reason for the not so happy end - [3:17]
• Other reasons leading to insolvency - [6:15]
• Two ways out of this problem of margin vs scale  - [8:18]
• The third, often not considered way out of the margin vs scale problem- [9:35]
• Marketing styles necessary for consumer brands - [10:30]
• Job To Be Done concept applied on hardware - [12:16]
• Summary - [14:07]

My guest is Radu Diaconescu, co-founder and Business Development Manager at Swie.io.

Swie.io is an industry 4.0 company, which is building the world’s largest distributed manufacturing network. They believe that electronics manufacturing should be easy and accessible to everyone. Swie is the next-generation platform for agile electronics manufacturing, guaranteeing the shortest lead time in the industry.

Radu is an electrical engineer, with M.Sc. in Management of Technology from EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, and industrial experience at Honeywell. He is currently managing Swie.io's business development efforts and sits in the Board of Directors.

In this episode we elaborate on the topic of agile electronics, the highlights being as seen below.

• Balint’s introduction during the interview
• Can you tell us about your company and the reason for co-founding it?
• What is your added value when working with factories?
• How does your company deploy industry 4.0?
• Do you work with off-the-shelf components or you develop your own?
• Their mission
• Considerations about volumes of manufacturing: low and high
• What factories do you work with?
• What is your uniqueness on the market regarding lead-time reduction?
• How did you reach the current business model?
• What were some major challenges and how did you overcome those during founding as well as later?
• What challenges did you see regarding funding and at which stage are you?
• How do you see the funding situation in Switzerland or in Europe?Next steps for your company?
• If you could go back in time, what notes would you give yourself?
• If you had to name a book, which one had the biggest impact on your career?
• What morning routine or other routines do you have throughout the day?
• Which cultural difference you wish you knew about beforehand and how did you resolve issues related to that?

In this episode my guest is Junyang Woon, co-founder and CEO of Infinium Robotics, LLC.

Infinium Robotics is a company which has been active in the field of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), and Vehicles (UAV) since 2009. Initially they focused on GPS-denied environments and multiple-UAV coordination technologies. They developed multiple patent-pending solutions over the past few years. Most notably, the company has developed a low-cost, low computational solution for a conflict-free and collision-free Unmanned Air Traffic Management Software that can be deployed on a wider scale internationally.

Junyang Woon, with notable academic titles of M.Sc. in Engineering from Stanford University, USA, B.Sc. from University College London, UK, has had his hands dirty in the field of drones for quite some time now. He started dealing with drones when serving in the Navy for 7 years, where he got vast experience working with military UAVs and today he hopes to apply the technologies for peaceful purposes. In his spare time, Junyang enjoys spending more time with drones, tinkering with his personal DIY drone, and plays golf, as well as spends time with his wife, daughter and son.

I reached out to Junyang because I read about his company in various news outlets and I find their story fascinating, as well as the promising technologies they work on. In this episode, we will touch on many topics, with highlights as below.

My guest is Federico Bürsgens, one of three founders and currently Managing Director of Finances, Hardware & Software at GNA-Biosolutions. He is one of many who was born for entrepreneurship as he started his entrepreneurial career in high-school.

He did his undergraduate studies of physics in Germany, at University of Münster and at Universities of Würzburg, followed by Master’s in Physics in the USA, at University of Texas at Austin. Afterwards, Federico moved back to Germany where he did his PhD work in physics at Center for Nanoscience at University of Munich or LMU in 2008. He is author/co-author of 16 scientific papers on detection technology.

I met Federico during my PhD studies in Munich and I got to know him as an energetic person who could later transfer his energy into building up a company in one of the toughest fields to choose, that is the heavily regulated biomedical field. In this episode we uncover what it means to found such a company, working over multiple years until the imminent market launch.

I’ve interviewed Michael Stausholm, founder and CEO Sproutworld, a company based in Denmark. His company is a green tech company with a very successfully working business model which is rare in the field of sustainability. He is behind the startup with the world’s only plantable pencil and other green consumer products. 

Sprout has a remarkable client-base such as Disney, Bacardi, Bank of America, WWF, Marriott, Coca Cola. Sprout has offices in Copenhagen, Denmark and in Boston in the US and sells more than 450.000 pencils a month to over 60 countries.

Michael Stausholm has been an expert and consultant in sustainability for the past 16 years. Before founding his company, for 15 years he worked in Asia with sustainable production within the textile industry, advising clients such as Walmart and Nike.

I reached out to Michael after reading about their story in a flight catalogue and his case is an example that a product does not have to be technically complex with many features and functions to find success on the market. In this episode, which is infused with Michael’s enthusiasm for sustainability we uncover many topics, on how to make a company successful in greentech, which success factors are transferable to other industries too.

My guest is Bernhard Petermeier, founder of CargoSoul, community leader of Technology Pioneers at World Economic Forum from Geneva, Switzerland. CargoSoul was active in the technology development towards the holodeck concept we know from Star Trek.

My guest is Anya Cherneff, co-founder and Executive Director of Empower Generation. Her company is a social enterprise that connects women in Nepal with global hardware suppliers, which provide solar technology.

This is the first episode of The Hardware Entrepreneur podcast. In this episode, I’ll elaborate on why I started this podcast and how you, listener, can benefit from listening to the episodes.