Info

Helping hardware founders build better companies.

Boston

Hardware workshop is a two day event for hardware startups. Taught by experienced operators, it’s purpose is simple: Teach important lessons to the next generation of hardware entrepreneurs.

What makes this workshop unique is the quality of the content, the deep operational experience of the teachers, and the long term connections you will make. Hand curated, each teacher covers a unique topic that falls within the startup’s life cycle from an idea to reaching market fit.

WHEN?
Friday, March 28th – Saturday, March 29th

  • Doors open at 9:00am
  • Sessions run every hour (except for lunch) from 10am – 5pm.
  • Followed by Happy Hour

WHERE?
Bolt – 110 Chauncy Street, Boston, MA 02111

COST?
$75.00

This includes two breakfasts, two lunches, beverages, and happy hour.

Being entrepreneurs we are sensitive to charging for events, but we found a minimum amount enables us to make the events better (good food, audio/video equipment, location, organizer help, etc), while ensuring you are committed to the event.

HOW DO I ATTEND?
First you have to apply. We only have 75 open spots. We are looking for startup teams who are working on a hardware product and who really want to attend. We aren’t judging what people are building, just verifying people are actually building hardware. Otherwise the lessons we’re teaching can’t be applied. If your application is accepted you will get an email to purchase a spot.

APPLY HERE

HOW DO I BUY A TICKET?
Once you are accepted you will be emailed a code to purchase your ticket.

WHAT WILL I LEARN?
Lots. We will have 12 different 60 minute sections, taught be experienced operators. The topics will cover some of the following:

  • Refining to an MVP
  • Defining your brand
  • Customer Development Personas
  • Getting your first, 1K, 100K, and 1MM Fans
  • Funding a Hardware Startup
  • Building a team
  • Partnering To Get To Market
  • Prototyping, prototyping, prototyping
  • Picking the right supplier
  • Being retail ready
  • Suppliers and Operating at Scale
  • Succeeding at kickstarter

WHO IS TEACHING? 

Marc Barros – Moment + Contour
Marc Barros is the co-founder of Moment, amazing lenses for your mobile phone. Prior to Moment, Marc was a co-founder and former CEO of Contour, a hands-free camera company that makes action video easy to capture and share. Shortly after graduating from the University of Washington, Marc co-founded Contour in 2004 and led the organization from a garage to a multi-million dollar company with hundreds of thousands of customers around the world. @marcbarros
Hardware Workshop - BenEinstein
Ben Einstein – Bolt
Ben Einstein is an experienced product designer and investor. Ben is currently the Managing Director of Bolt, a program built from the ground up to help promising early-stage hardware companies develop their products and get to market. Prior to starting Bolt, Ben ran Brainstream Design, a product design and development consultancy in Massachusetts. Ben has been directly responsible for bringing a long list of products to market covering diverse sectors including consumer electronics, high-performance audio, sporting goods and green energy.
ScottMiller_150px
Scott Miller – Dragon Innovation
Scott is the CEO of Dragon Innovation, a company whose mission is to help hardware entrepreneurs succeed in every phase of the journey from a crowdfunding to manufacturing at scale. Prior to founding Dragon, Scott spent 10 years at iRobot and was responsible for setting up and leading the team that manufactured Roomba, Scooba, Looj and ConnectR. Scott is also a General Partner at Bolt, and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Olin College and taught the Mechanical Design and the Design for Manufacture courses.
EranEgozy_150px
Eran Egozy – Harmonix Music Systems
Eran is the co-founder and chief technical officer of Harmonix Music Systems, one of the pre-eminent game development studios in the world, having developed more than a dozen critically acclaimed music-based video games. Harmonix developed Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2, fueling the explosive growth of the music games category to over $1 billion in sales.
MaxLobovsky_150px
Max Lobovsky – Formlabs
Max is a Co-Founder of Formlabs, creators of the Form1 3D printer which raised close to 3 million dollars on Kickstarter in October 2012. They have been shipping their high resolution, resin based printer since last summer and recently raised a 19MM Series A round to continue their growth. Prior to Formlabs Max was at the MIT Media Lab.
ChenElaine_150px
Elaine Chen – MIT
Elaine is a seasoned product development executive with a background spanning product development and product management. She is a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan and has served at the VP level in engineering and product management at several startups, including Rethink Robotics, Zeo, Zeemote and SensAble Technologies. She is also the founder and president at ConceptSpring, where she provides strategic management consulting and product development services to teams developing disruptive new products.
HardiMeybaum_150px
Hardi Meybaum – GrabCAD
Hardi is the CEO of GrabCAD, a Cambridge based startup helps engineering teams manage, view, and share CAD files in the cloud. The GrabCAD community now has over 1,000,000 users and over 300,000 open source models. Hardi’s background is in manufacturing and holds a MSc in production development from Tallinn University of Technology.
AndyPayne_150px
Andy Payne – Revenio, Angel Investor
Andy is a Boston based angel investor/advisor with several companies including Pebble, GrabCAD, Care.com, and HubSpot. He was the CEO and Founder of Revenio, an engine for executing sophisticated, long-running multi-channel marketing programs. Revenio’s patented flagship product is now shipping as Vignette Dialog. Andrew also co-founded Open Market (one of the first eCommerce IPOs) in 1994, where he co-invented and co-designed the company’s commerce architecture.
1-Jamey-Coffee150x150
Jamey Bennett – LightWedge, Bookwire
Jamey is the founder of LightWedge, a hardware company he started in 2001 and exited in 2013. Prior to LightWedge Jamey was the founder of BookWire (sold to Reed Elsevier) and co-founder of LendingTree (Nasdaq: TREE). In twelve years in the consumer products business, Jamey has designed, manufactured, and established distribution for hundreds of items – and shipped millions of units into retail channels around the world. Jamey is currently advising early stage consumer products and retail clients.
eric-paley_150px
Eric Paley – Founder Collective
Eric Paley is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Founder Collective, an early stage venture capital fund started by a team of entrepreneurs that launched companies and led them through successful exits. Investments include Uber, Makerbot, Harvest Automation, and Custom Made. Previously, Eric was the CEO and a co-founder of Brontes Technologies, which was acquired in 2006 by 3M.
BenSpear150px
Ben Spear – Brand Hack
Ben is a strategy consultant in Boston. He has 10+ years of experience as a graphic designer, market research consultant, and corporate identity designer. Ben is a co-founder of Brand Hack and has a BFA in Graphic Design from Boston University. He has worked with organizations including Berklee College of Music, Proctor & Gamble, Harvard University, and MassChallenge.
Sweeney_Paul_150px
Paul Sweeny – Foley Hoag
Paul is a partner in the Foley Hoag and focuses on venture capital financings, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and related business transactions. Paul’s clients range from start-up and venture-backed portfolio companies to well-established public companies, and operate in a wide array of industries, including networking, computer security, information technology, enterprise software, and life sciences.
Mike Phillips – Sage Devicese
Mike is the founder of Sage Devices, a Cambridge, MA based company focused on services and devices for home energy management. Previously he was Co-Founder and CTO of Vlingo and Speechworks, both acquired by Nuance Communications. Mike has been active in the speech technology world for over twenty years.

A SPECIAL THANKS
To Chris Quintero and Ben Einstein for helping to organize this event. They are staples in the hardware and Boston community and this event would not have been possible without their help.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS
Hardware Workshop - Bolt

 Atmel Logo - Hardware Workshop

Hardware Workshop - Foley Hoag

 

 

Image Credit: Werner Kunz via Creative Commons