Why That Phone Charger Took Two Years to Arrive – NYTimes.com

Designing and fabricating a basic prototype was much harder than they had expected, and they spoke wearily of the process of obtaining permission from Apple to sell the case as a licensed accessory.

I am glad I keep reading this articles. I am reminded many times that people underestimate the manufacturing end of the product. It is great fun designing, marketing and branding, but hey you finally have to make the thing since you promised to deliver it. That is where the fun really is. At the last New York Hardware Meetup it was a abundantly clear from the panel that the manufacturing planing was a key thing that was underestimated.

Manufacturing plan is very important. The other item left out is DFM (Design For Manufacturability). People have forgotten about this too. Not forgot, but did not know they need to know that this is part of the product development and manufacturing process. The DFM process makes sure that your product is manufacturable. Without it you have no way of knowing if your product is manufacturable. It is best to keep DFM in mind when you are prototyping your product. That being said, there are many variables when it comes to DFM. In a nutshell you need to work with a person that has the skills and experience working with a factory to know what those variables are.

via Why That Phone Charger Took Two Years to Arrive – NYTimes.com.

Inno/Vention Power Pitch February 2014 NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering Pfizer Auditorium, Bern Dibner Library of Science & Technology 5 MetroTech Center Brooklyn

Last night I was invited to judge the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering Inno/Vention Power Pitch hardware (There was a software competition. I did not judge that) competition. This competition is a student run event sponsored by the EIA student club. I love going to these events to see and hear the product ideas the students have and how they plan on executing the business.

Inno/Vention Team List

This is how it works: At the start of the semester the EIA holds an event called the Sparkstart Kickoff/TeamHunt. At this event the students announce their ideas and hunt for people they would need to build their team. During the next several weeks the students attend educational events to help them develop their idea further into a business. They learn customer validation, market research, product development, business model canvas and various techniques from the great mind of Steve Blank. The students gave their first pitch at the event last night. Five teams are picked to move forward to the next pitch event. The student teams are given a stipend to spend on prototyping. There is a schedule for the Inno/Vention Competition here.

Our task as judges was to score the teams on various categories that are part lean startup model. After all the teams presented the judges collaborated and picked the five winning teams. The winners were:

Skinesiology
C-Cubed Robotics
Team Limitless
SensD
Listen To Your Wrist

Hardwired NYC Meetup February 2014, Hosted at Quirky

The walk was long (Ugh, from 7th ave to 11ave) , but I finally made it to the Hardwired NYC Meetup February 2014 event, Hosted at Quirky. Even though I was late I was early. People were just flowing in to Quirky’s offices located on the far West 28th street. As a life long New York’r going this far west is a trek. I am not sure I could get use to that commute. LOL

Before going to the event I noticed a link on the event page. I am did not see it before. So I may have missed it. The link was to Quirky’s NDA. I read it and it was simple, but strange that they would imply the use of this for this event. I have heard other people complaining about these NDA’s at events at the Makerbot offices. They require you to sign the NDA before you enter. At this event you did not sign anything, but the NDA was implied. I have no idea how Quirky could in force this, but anyway. We are here to hear peoples hardware startup stories. Of which I love to hear.

Brian Garret and Bram de Zwart, co-founder, 3D Hubs: 3D Hubs is world’s largest platform connecting 3D printer owners with people who want to print. We are on a mission to make 3D printing truly local and accessible.

First up are the gents, Brian Garret and Bram de Zwart, from 3D Hubs. 3D Hubs helps connect people that need something 3D printed to the people that have the 3D printers. They do this globally and by building a community of enthusiast that are in the know about 3D printing. They realized the need when they were working for Cubed. They saw that most 3D printers are idle about 98% of the time. Damn, that is a lot of idle time. I later asked them how long do you think it would take on average to use 3D Hubs to help pay for your 3D Printer itself. They said it was about 100 prints or about 2-3 months of constant use of 3D Hubs market place community. That is amazing. Makes me want to go out now and get a 3D printer now!! This could push me over the edge. I do own a Printrbot Simple, but I have not been liking it lately.

Emile Petrone, founder and CEO of Tindie (marketplace for hardware and “indie tech”)

Next up was Emile Petrone, founder and CEO of Tindie. Tindie is a market place for all things hardware and tech focused. An artisanal hardware market place. I have bought things on Tindie before. The interface is very simple and easy to use. He talked about how Tindie started. It started via a Reddit post. He asked the Reddit community about his business idea, got feedback and then knew he should try it out. If I remember correctly he mentioned he did a trial of this at an Apple WWDC event. Please correct me if I got this wrong here. Tindie does remind me of Etsy. The difference and similarity is that they both do products that focus on a type of product category. Handmade verus Artisanal Hardware. The value in this business is the audience (eyeballs) Tindie brings to their customers that setup a store front on the website. I am wondering though if after the uniqueness of this blows over what will they do to keep the eyeballs coming back. I hope they have thought of that. I love the idea of these market places. They give the maker-going-pro a place to tip their toes into ecommerce in a safe environment.

Alice Taylor, founder and CEO of Makie (custom 3D printed dolls)

The fabulous founder and CEO of Makie, Alice Taylor was up next. You have to love her. The Brits talk very smoothly and eloquently. Even with the jet lag she gave a great presentation. They make customizable 3D printed dolls for girls. I have hear very little of her company. I give them a lot of credit for entering into the toy business. Wow. Just wow. Their product is very very professional looking for a 3D printed product. I wonder, I forgot to ask, which 3D printer they use. Her presentation was a mix of how she got started and lessons learned. Their two revenue stream business is fascinating. They sell the customizable dolls and they are now starting to go into online gaming. Their first game is a dress up game. They may have a boy’s doll in the works. I know little about the toy business, of what I know is that it is a very hard business to break into. She has done it. I think it is cool that she has used 3D printing to create such a unique toy.

Hugo Fiennes, founder and CEO of Electric Imp (hardware and software connectivity platform for the IoT)

The last presenter, before the interview with the CEO of Quirky was Hugo Fiennes, founder and CEO of Electric Imp. Electric Imp is a platform for IoT. I have heard of them before, but never heard his startup story. He worked at some very important companies like Apple, Nest and IBM as an Electrical Engineer. He started Electric Imp while he was working at Nest. The idea of having a platform for how smart things communicate over the web is brilliant. It makes the job of the electrical engineer easier. From my standpoint our customers will get an IoT product prototype quicker. However, the downside is when you want to go to production and scale to higher quantities. As the number of products increase the manufacturing cost don’t scale because you need to include the SD card package in your product. However if they can shrink it down to a chip package and manufacture that in large quantities the costs will definitely go down and scaling will happen. He mentioned they are looking into that. Quirky is a partner of theirs and uses the Electric Imp in their smart plug. Check out some of the pictures below in the gallery section of this post. In them he shows a diagram of how Electric Imp works. I like it. Again I would love to give it a try.

Matt Turck interviews Ben Kaufman Quirky Founder

The interview of Ben Kaufman Quirky Founder by Matt Turck was interesting. Ben’s story is one of those “it is great to not know anything and just jump right in” stories. Just do it as on your Nikes says Ben. The interview was a bit uncomfortable at one point as Ben mentions how FirstMark, the VC firm that Matt works at, screwed him. From what I see from Quirky’s fab offices, they are not hurting in the least. The Quirky offices are beautiful. The comments got some groans and laughs from the audience, but obviously you could feel the energy was a bit tense. Matt was great at continuing and asking Ben questions to get the interview on track. Some Ben did not answer. Ben did talk about the Quirky process of which everyone knows about. I do think it is interesting that Quirky has created a global manufacturing community in which they do all the product development and heavy lifting for the manufacturing process. They even do distribution. If you are a manufacturer you have to admire them. Ben has a sense of pride in that they treat the designer and IP maker as king. Quirky owns the IP and the designer has a forever license. This creates a lot of value for Quirky as they bare all the risk. I admire them, their capabilities, their relationships with GE and their retail distribution channels. Way to go Quirky!!!

After the stage act was over the networking began. I saw a lot of old faces that I have gotten to know on the hardware scene. Until the next Hardwired NYC event.

Check it out. I have more pictures of the event below. Sorry for the low light conditions, but you should be able to make out the slides and the speakers ok. I did my best to caption the images. Enjoy.

Hardwired NYC #7 Feb 2014

Emile Petrone, founder and CEO of Tindie (marketplace for hardware and “indie tech”)

Alice Taylor, founder and CEO of Makie (custom 3D printed dolls)

Hugo Fiennes, founder and CEO of Electric Imp (hardware and software connectivity platform for the IoT)

Matt Turck interviews Ben Kaufman Quirky Founder

Emile Petrone, founder and CEO of Tindie (marketplace for hardware and “indie tech”)

The Joy of 3D Printing at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

This past Saturday I spent the day at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014. It was a perfect day for an indoor activity because of the snow was falling sideways and would hit you in the face if you were walking west.

The show was in a small event space called The Metropolitan Pavilion. The space gave the event a cozy fell. I did not attend any of the speaker events as the nothing on the schedule was of interest to me. The discussions were of topics I had heard before many times over. So I thought it best to hit the showroom floor and see if there was anything new to be seen.

There were a few interesting things that I had not see before. I had not experience getting myself scanned so I tried it at the Fuel 3D.

Fuel 3D at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

Fuel 3D is a low-end or Prosumer 3D scanner. I have seen a lot of these do a Kickstarter. Fuel 3D was no exception, they did a very successful Kickstarter. Luckily there was not much of line which meant that I became second on the list to get my face scanned. See title picture above for how it came out. It looks very detailed. The operator took the 3D image in seconds, then transferred it to a computer and then manipulated it so that only my face was showing. The software looks very very easy to use.

I then stopped by a high end machine that cost thousands of dollars. While the imaging was a bit more detailed it did not needed to be. The low end technology is catching up to the high end. Below is my image scanned by the higher-end machine. Take a look at the detail, but also see how more complex the software is. The UI could be made to be more user friendly.

I saw a hugemungus 3D Printer company called BigRep. Their 3D printers can print full-scale objects. What I saw were prints that looked like they needed a lot of finishing. And some prints that looked like they had problems being printer. The object pictured below being printed would take up to a week to complete. This is not ready for primetime yet. Nice idea and maybe it will happen, but not now. The prints were very bad looking.

BigRep at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

I stopped by another booth that had some amazing 3D prints of what looked like complex textiles. I would say it was sort of like chainmaille, but close to being made into clothing.

3D Printing Services using laser sintering at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

The feeling of these 3D prints was excellent. They had great detail. You could make this into a garment if you could print enough of it. The company uses laser sintering machines. These machines use lasers that solidify a powder. After printing the print goes through a finishing process. The process unfortunately produces 50% waste of the powder. That is a lot of waste that gets produced. What a shame. 3D printing is suppose to be good for the environment and not produce waste, but the reality is that not all 3D Printing methods can do that.

There was fashion gallery and an art gallery. Both rooms housed some interesting 3D prints. The fashion gallery looked like it had mostly accessories and 3D prints mixed into text tiles clothing. One of the most interesting ones was the 3D printed glasses. See picture below.

Fashion at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

Imagine the possible designs you could do. The designer created ones that fit on your nose snuggly and ones that had flexible temples. The flexible temples looked like they were the most practical.

The lamps in art gallery were amazing. The organic feel and look of them made it like they just grew there. See picture below.

Art Gallery at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

On the way out of the show I could not help come away with the feeling that the market for consumer/prosumer 3D printers was getting crowded. Makerbot is the big gorilla in this market and they are sucking the air out for the competition. While I did see a few new players they did not have anything new to offer that would be any better. There are still the two markets at this point, the maker market that wants to tinker and maybe build a 3D printer like PrintrBot and there is the consumer/prosumer market that wants it to work with good detail out of the box. It will be interesting to see if expired patents will spur any more innovation into the market to produce anymore viable players. It would be great if someone could figure out how to combat the 50% waste problem.

Welcome to the Era of the Hardware Startup | LinkedIn

Welcome to the Era of the Hardware Startup | LinkedIn.

What I love about hardware startups is their willingness to take on and transform dauntingly complicated industries. Until recently, manufacturing had been almost exclusively the domain of big companies that can afford to build at scale. Now, these makers are turning the tables and showing the value of being both adaptable and close to your customers.

I agree. From talking with many hardware startups the momentum is definitely there. I often talk about this as we are now where we were in the 80’s 90’s when software development and computing was transforming from being obtainable only by big companies with deep pockets to everyone who has a PC can now code to create a program that is of value.

Hardware is very different than software. You can not develop a hardware product in a few days to a week. It takes time, patience, and more capital. It requires more relationships that last for a longer period of time.

There are still many hurdles to over come such as:

How do we make the product development process streamlined or lean?
How do we integrate in design for manufacturability into the process from the beginning?
Where is the book of the shelf that people can go to with out a degree in supply chain management to learn how to talk to the factory?
And funding…Will funding for hardware startups get easier over time?

There are a lot more questions to be asked and answered in this journey. I can’t cover them all here. In the future, I will write more about the process of hardware development. I am going to tell stories from the trenches. What happened, what didn’t, how we solved the issues and how to approach these things in the future so it does not happen to you.

We have been seeing some great things from our clients. For most of them this is their first business. It is great to see them fill out their first Purchase Order ever. It is a great moment for them and for us.

Proto Labs Cool Idea! Award Gallery Event

Past and present winners. The Soloshot product is cool. I like that it has a great design, looks high end and is new tech functional. It uses robotic like technology to solve a reporter style problem.

2014, The Year of Wearables and Hardware Startups

Happy New Year everyone. There is nothing like a new year without predictions and statements about what is to come (or not) in your industry for the new year. So to start this year off right I have selected three articles to comment on for the new years blog post. I saw these articles during the holiday break. The first article is by Anthony Wing Kosner from Forbes online. I have come to read Forbes every now and then, but have become disturbed by their ads that interrupt and show up all the time. I digress. I agree with him that Hardware is the new Software. From the discussions I have had with people in the Hardware Community in NYC we all agree on this. When I talk with people about this I usually say that where we are now, with Hardware, we once was with Software in the 90’s. I feel it is like a blast from the past. During that time in our past, big companies were the only ones that could afford to make their own software. They had the funds to buy the servers and the software packages. Now look what has happened, startups can use development packages for free (open source) and they don’t need to buy servers they can rent time and use cloud services. Something similar is happening with Hardware Prototyping. Now you can use cheap development boards to prototype with. However, there is no foundation yet for the development of hardware products yet. Big companies have been doing this for awhile and so they have developed their strategies, but big company strategies do not translate to small company strategies.

We have project management techniques and Product Managers for software products, but not for hardware. Not yet. I see it happening and evolving in that direction. Hardware is very different than software (I have mentioned this and explained it in my other posts.) it needs a different kind of management and strategy. We are developing something along those lines at MakeSimply. That then leads me to the next article also from Forbes online by Rakesh Sharma. This article is a great start to the discussion of what makes a successful hardware business. It requires rethinking things and adapting new ways. I also believe there are always was to streamline the process. Make the process open to the customer and easier to implement. The last article is a post to Google+ from Robert Scoble. I mention it here as Google Glass is a new type of wearable hardware product. I am relieved to see that one of the biggest fans of the product has seemingly come to his senses and realizes that the product is not ready yet. I say exactly, that it is too early. It needs more time to cook. The ideas and use cases are solid, but the technology behind it is not ready. The battery does not last long enough, the processing power in the small package is not good enough and the OS is not easy to use. Not to mention the social implications of wearing such a device in public. This reminds me when Microsoft brought out the TabletPC. You can see the use cases, but the technology was not there yet. Also people were not shown the proper use cases that would make them buy the device. I also remember the head stares I would get when I showed up with my HP TC1100 TabletPC. Wow it was a wonderful device, the batter lasted for two hours or less, and it took forever for word to startup, but I loved the saucer separating machine (Star Trek Next Generation reference, look up HP TC1100 to further understand the reference). It took almost six years after Microsoft came out with the TabletPC and until Apple came out with the iPad that technology and the market were in sync with each other. If Google Glass would come onto the market today it would be relegated to niche industries and will not be ready to be a consumer device. 2014 already looks like it will be a great year for Hardware Startups!

The Tech Chronicles

A blog about startups, business, hardware and Science. Just about anything business and technology related — Really.

Hardware Prototyping

Why That Phone Charger Took Two Years to Arrive – NYTimes.com

Inno/Vention Power Pitch February 2014 NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering Pfizer Auditorium, Bern Dibner Library of Science & Technology 5 MetroTech Center Brooklyn

Hardwired NYC Meetup February 2014, Hosted at Quirky

The Joy of 3D Printing at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

Welcome to the Era of the Hardware Startup | LinkedIn

Proto Labs Cool Idea! Award Gallery Event

2014, The Year of Wearables and Hardware Startups

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