{"id":3845,"date":"2015-07-02T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-02T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/?p=3845"},"modified":"2015-10-28T11:58:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T18:58:46","slug":"hardware-startup-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/development\/hardware-startup-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"Hardware Startup Advice: Confessions from a Founder"},"content":{"rendered":"

A founder shares\u00a0hardware startup advice<\/a><\/span>, including lessons she’s learned\u00a0while creating the world’s first\u00a0wearable educational device for children<\/em><\/p>\n

I briefly alluded to the fact that \u201cbuilding hardware is hard\u201d in my previous blog post<\/a>,<\/span> but I didn\u2019t say how<\/em>\u00a0hard.<\/p>\n

Of course, to most of the outside world, we’re\u00a0taking it all in stride. “Totally killing it,” in fact. And in large part, that’s true.<\/p>\n

But there are definitely plenty of new things to learn and, above all, building hardware takes time, which is sometimes hard for outsiders to understand.<\/p>\n

Here are 10 pieces of hardware startup advice I’ve learned along the way:<\/h2>\n

1.\u00a0Even Your Biggest Supporters Won’t Always Get It<\/h3>\n

A recent conversation with\u00a0my wonderfully supportive mom nicely sums up what I\u2019m sure a lot of other people are thinking when I tell them what I\u2019m working on, about our team, when we\u2019ll be launching, etc.<\/p>\n

Me:<\/strong> \u201cMom, we\u2019ve just hired<\/a> another firmware engineer\u201d [bringing the total team size to 8].<\/p>\n

Mom:<\/strong> \u201cI don\u2019t understand why you have so many people. It\u2019s not like you have a product to sell or anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Me:<\/strong> \u201cSigh \u2026 right, exactly. That\u2019s why we have people, to build the product we\u2019re going to sell. An analogy if I may \u2014\u00a0you don\u2019t think that your car just magically appeared without months or even years of engineering work, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mom:<\/strong> \u201cBut a car is big; what you\u2019re building is tiny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Me:<\/strong> \u201cExactly, making it tiny makes it much harder!\u201d<\/p>\n

2. You Never Know When Inspiration Will Strike<\/h3>\n

The idea behind VersaMe<\/a> germinated while my co-founders, brothers Chris and Jon Boggiano,\u00a0and I were at Stanford together.<\/p>\n

\"Hardware<\/a><\/p>\n

We came across Anne Fernald<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 now an advisor of ours \u2014 whose research is building on previous findings that the number of words spoken to a child between 0 and 4 is the greatest predictor of success later in life.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll never get bored of this fact because I still find it staggering: 90%\u00a0of brain development happens before a child starts\u00a0kindergarten.<\/strong><\/p>\n

To assess the number of words spoken,\u00a0researchers use a recording device that is placed on a child (the research subject), which is then returned to the lab and the recording analyzed.<\/p>\n

Chris and Jon are both fathers. We tried out the device on their\u00a0children and had some challenges with the required special clothing, privacy over recording, and a lack of real-time feedback. But we loved the idea and the output.<\/p>\n

It turned out Chris\u2019s nanny wasn\u2019t speaking as much as he thought she was, Jon\u2019s children were hearing more over lunch than over breakfast, and of course there was the discussion about whose children were hearing the most!<\/p>\n

3. Ask Questions (of Yourselves and Others)<\/h3>\n

The experiment led to a question: Why can\u2019t we make a user-friendly wearable device for babies that doesn\u2019t record and gives real-time feedback? And that is how the Starling was born.<\/p>\n

Many successful startups begin with the founders solving a personal problem<\/a> or pain point in their life. What we\u2019re building does to an extent solve a problem but a somewhat nebulous one: How do we give our children the best chance of success in life?<\/p>\n

4. Be User-Centric in Your Design Process<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Being at Stanford, the d.school had worked its magic ways on us, and we wanted to be totally user-centric in our design process<\/a>. So with our device idea parked in our brains, we went back to the drawing board with extensive user interviewing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What are the biggest pain points for parents? How and when do they think about education? Where do they get their information from? What products are most useful? Most useless? How do they feel about technology around children?<\/p>\n

5. First, Build an MVP<\/h3>\n

Simultaneously \u2014 again following the Stanford-inspired Lean Startup approach<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 we built a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), a word counting app, to test out the concept of monitoring and giving feedback on the words your child hears. We used this ourselves and tested it with family, friends, and some innocent but willing strangers.<\/p>\n

Feedback quickly confirmed our hypothesis \u2013 the data\u00a0was interesting but the medium was totally impractical. Having a smartphone around a child is an invitation for distraction, both for the child and the parent!<\/p>\n

6. Then, Build a Prototype<\/h3>\n

The next step\u00a0was going from the MVP (the\u00a0word counting app) to building the first\u00a0hardware prototype.<\/p>\n

The initial\u00a0one\u00a0(pictured below) was thrown together and involved a pen lid. I’ll admit that it wasn’t hugely baby-proof but it proved to be enough to demonstrate the concept to investors while wearing ourselves.<\/p>\n

\"Hardware<\/a><\/p>\n

7. 3D Printers and Glue Are\u00a0Your Friends<\/h3>\n

It was about this time in fall 2014 that we raised a round of seed capital<\/a>, enabling us to hire a team and be a little more sophisticated!<\/p>\n

With our expanded resources, we created a number of 3D-printed prototypes. Version one is modeled below by Jon\u2019s daughter Isabella with the companion app displayed in the foreground.<\/p>\n

A lot of improvisation, plenty of glue, and overly generous beta testers were essential to get through this phase!<\/p>\n

\"Hardware<\/a><\/p>\n

8. Take Advantage of All Resources at Your Disposal<\/h3>\n

Having been lucky enough to raise money, at this point we decided to hire an external firm to assist us on the industrial design of the device<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We were lucky enough to have plenty of resources around us \u2014 from Stanford and later from StartX<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 to tap into\u00a0for recommendations on partners and eventually selected Whipsaw<\/a> in large part because of their personal passion for our mission.<\/p>\n

9. User Research\u00a0Never Ends<\/h3>\n

User testing<\/a> remained front and center throughout the design process, and the founders are passionate about it remaining so.<\/p>\n

We are very mindful that designing for babies\/children and their parents is very sensitive. Parents are sleep- and time-deprived, so we constantly think about how we\u00a0can\u00a0make their lives\u00a0easier, help them enjoy parenting, and reduce stress rather than increasing\u00a0it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve clipped dozens of devices \u2014 from our own prototypes to bike lights to existing wearables \u2014 to Jon and Chris\u2019s children! But we are also lucky to have plenty of willing volunteers to help us.<\/p>\n

Both our startup team\u00a0and our wider support network are passionate about what we’re doing, empowering every child to fulfill their potential.<\/p>\n

10. Keep Going!<\/h3>\n

In addition to the three founders, we now have five engineers \u2014 three on the hardware side, one on the software side and one data scientist \u2014 and a family of contractors, researchers, and interns. We need more of everyone, of course, but we\u2019re doing our startup best with our resources for now!<\/p>\n

VersaMe\u2019s first device, the Starling, will be launched via a crowdfunding campaign<\/a> in the fall. We hope you’ll stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicki Boyd, co-founder of Versame, which is creating the first wearable education device for children, shares hardware startup advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":4293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[85,232,75,300,68,228,160],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHardware Startup Advice: Confessions from a Founder<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Nicki Boyd, co-founder of Versame, which is creating the first wearable education device for children, shares hardware startup advice.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/development\/hardware-startup-advice\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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