My guest is Keith Gunura, co-founder and CEO of noonee, producers of an exoskeleton-like device.

Keith developed the Chairless Chair® at the ETH Zurich in 2009 to help now production line workers.

We’ll discuss with Keith what Forrest Gump has to do with noonee’s technology, how the company was started, Keith’s way of simplifying things to attack a real problem. Keith will talk about how they got into CNN and how it happened that some people didn’t like this much. We’ll cover the future of exoskeletons, why they are working with an engineering company, a similar company to the one that was featured in episode 16 of this podcast.

Learn more about this episode via the highlights as seen below.

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

Enjoy listening.

Show highlights can be seen below:

• What problem does chairless chair solve and for whom? – [2:20]
• The story behind founding noonee - [4:29]
• Iron Man as main topic others focus on vs simplifying the problem? - [5:40]
• How to be featured on CNN – [7:31]
• What good could happen when journalists don’t keep their promises? – [ 10:35]
• BMW and Audi, the first supporters of the chairless chair, and their views on the publicity of the idea – [13:05]
• What is an exoskeleton? – [15:03]
• How do you know you’re on the right wagon? – [16:19]
• From a university spin-out to working closely with an engineering company or why you can’t do everything yourself?– [18:36]
• Chairless chair current stage of development – [20:43]
• What’s the near-term future for exoskeletons? – [22:22]
• If you could time travel and go back in time to your early 20s, what notes would you give yourself? – [23:28]
• Which book had the biggest impact on Keith’s career? – [24:02]
• Co-founders’ habits  – [24:52]
• The way they do business – [26:08]
• What is the best way to reach Keith? – [28:32]

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]