Hardware Workshop - San Francisco

I’m excited to announce our first Hardware Workshop in San Francisco on November 22nd and 23rd.

The workshop is a two day event for founders of hardware startups to help you learn how to get from an idea to market fit. The curriculum is broken up into a series of 60 minute sessions, taught by experienced hardware startup operators. This workshop goes beyond “how to crowdfund an MVP” to provide lessons applicable in building a successful hardware startup. We hope you leave the workshop with a deeper understanding of what it takes to turn your idea into a successful company.

WHEN?
Friday, November 22nd – Saturday, November 23.

Doors open at 8:30am
Sessions run every hour (except for lunch) from 9am – 5pm.
Followed by Happy Hour

WHERE?
Astro Studios, 348 6th St, San Francisco, 94103

COST?
$50.00

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

HOW DO I BUY A TICKET?
Sorry, but we are sold out.

WHAT WILL I LEARN?
Lots. We will have 14 different 60 minute sections, taught be experienced operators. The topics will cover some of the following:

Understanding customer needs
Defining your brand
Prototyping ugly, early
Refining to an MVP
Building a team
Raising capital
Picking the right supplier
Made in America
Building great software with hardware
The right roadmap
Retail ready packaging
Creating a platform
Growing Internationally

WHO IS TEACHING?

Marc Barros – Contour
Marc Barros is 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

Gregor Berkowitz – Moto Development, Cisco
Founder of Moto Development, one of the premier engineering firms in the Bay Area, before selling it to Cisco. He brings over 25 years of hardware experience, having worked with most of the major CE brands you see today.

Monisha Perkash – Lumo Back
Monisha Perkash is CEO & Co-founder at LUMO BodyTech which uses smart sensors and software to help people improve their health. Monisha previously served as CEO and Co-Founder of TuitionCoach (acquired by SimpleTuition in 2009), where she oversaw the financing, launch, and general management of the start-up. She has also held leadership positions at Siebel Systems, Pensare, and AmeriCorps. Monisha has an MBA from Stanford and a BA from Yale. She enjoys spending time with her family, playing tennis, skiing, running, and dancing.

Scott Miller – Dragon Innovation
Scott N. Miller 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. @dragoninnovate

Andre Neumann – Quantum, Flip
Andre Neumann-Loreck serves as an advisor to 4 HW start-ups in SF and is a consultant with the Pretium Consulting Group, focusing on strategy and supply chain. Prior to this, Andre was Vice President of Engineering, Manufacturing and Operations for Cisco Consumer Products. Before Cisco, Andre built and led successful teams at Pure Digital Technologies (Flip Video) where he was C.O.O. He also serves on the board of Marin Country Day School where he co-chairs the Committee on Innovation and Creativity. Andre holds a BA from Sophia University in Tokyo, and speaks German and Japanese.

Ariel Braunstein – Knowmia, Flip, Sega
Ariel Braunstein is Co-Founder and CEO of Knowmia. Ariel was Co-Founder and Head of Products at Pure Digital Technologies, which developed the iconic Flip Video line of pocket camcorders and was acquired by Cisco in 2009. He then was Head of Products for Cisco Consumer Products, where he oversaw Flip Video as well as networking devices and software from Linksys, Pure Networks and other consumer brands. Previously Ariel ran Interact Inc., a gaming platform startup out of Israel and led product development for FamilyWonder.com which was later sold to Sega of Japan.

Eric Klein – Lemnos Labs, Nokia, Sun
My passion is imagining, engineering, and marketing innovative hardware products. I’ve had the opportunity to found successful startups, manage teams in highly successful, multi-national corporations, and provide capital to early stage startups. I’m a Partner at Lemnos Labs, the San Francisco based hardware accelerator helping lead the worldwide hardware renaissance. I’ve previously enjoyed product roles at Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Real Networks, Palm, and Apple.

Aamir Virani – Dropcam
Aamir Virani is the co-founder and COO of Dropcam. Before starting Dropcam, Aamir was an early engineer at Xobni, where he architected and wrote Xobni’s profile management system and managed development of the invite system, a first-of-its-kind Outlook-based viral marketing scheme. . A data lover and avid runner, Aamir has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rice University and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Brett Lovelady – Astro Studios
Brett Lovelady is the co-founder of Astro Studios. Founded in 1994 as a design driven culture to blend creative skills, technologies and lifestyle perspectives into supercharged products and brands. In 2007, to further commercialize their design brand, ASTRO spun-off ASTRO Gaming, a venture backed, hi-performance video gaming products company, which was sold to Skullcandy, Inc. (NASDAQ: SKUL).

David Merrill – Sifteo
Dave is an expert in cutting-edge human-computer interaction and has developed multiple award-winning technologies, including Sifteo Cubes, a new hands-on game system for Intelligent Play. Dave holds a BS in Symbolic Systems and an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, and an MS and PhD from the MIT Media Lab.

David Schroeder – Reliance CM David is the Business Development Manager of Oregon-based contract manufacturer, RelianceCM. He focuses on helping startups bring their products to life. David organizes the PDX Hardware Startup Meetup Group to help strengthen the hardware community in Portland. His work at RelianceCM has made him passionate about the impact manufacturing has on our economy. David’s hands-on experience gives him a complete understanding on what it takes to manufacture products domestically. @RCMDavid

Ryan Vinyard – Highway1
Ryan is a Mechanical Engineer who currently works at Lime Lab and Highway1, both PCH International companies. At the Highway1 startup incubator, Ryan helps startups navigate through prototyping and manufacturing processes on the way to production. Previous to joining Lime Lab, Ryan was at Motiv Power Systems working on 100%-electric buses where he was responsible for all mechanical design releases, interfacing with vendors, and installing and maintaining modules on the bus.Ryan holds a B.S. in Product Design from Stanford University.

Lenny Richiuso – Flextronics
As Sr. Director of Product Technologies at Flextronics, Lenny leads an engineering team responsible for developing product technologies and manufacturing processes for consumer electronics. With over 20 years of experience in the design and manufacture of consumer products in Engineering Management, Product Management, R & D Engineering and Product Design, Lenny has held positions at Pentair Inc. and Eastman Kodak Company. An inventor with 13 patents, Lenny has a B.S. in Manufacturing Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology.

Jeevan Kalanithi – Sifteo
Jeevan is an entrepreneur and technologist specializing in user interfaces and consumer hardware products. Prior to founding Sifteo, Jeevan co-founded a design and technology consulting business with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to non-profits. Jeevan and his work have been featured at TED, MoMA, The New York Times, CNN and Wired. Jeevan holds a BS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University and an MS from the MIT Media Lab, where he was a National Science Foundation fellow.

Cyril – Ebersweiler – Haxlr8r
Entrepreneur, venture capitalist. Cyril is a venture partner at SOSventures and the founder of HAXLR8R (accelerator program for hardware startups – Shenzhen & San Francisco), China Axlr8r (the first mentorship-driven seed funding program in China – Shanghai) and LEAP Axlr8r (building the future of interaction design – San Francisco). He is mentoring at Techstars and 500startups, an advisor to the Global Accelerator Network.

WHO IS PUTTING ON THIS EVENT?
We are a collection of builders who believe that education is the key to success for future hardware startups. Turning hardware ideas into successful companies is hard and we felt events like this can help make the community stronger.