We are excited to announce our first Level 2 workshop! After 600 companies have been through Hardware Workshop, we felt it was time to take the next step in helping hardware startups build better companies.
What Is Hardware Workshop?
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?
We focus on teaching real, applicable lessons for building hardware startups. This Level 2 workshop in particular is the first content ever developed to help companies that are shipping a product (or very close to shipping) turn their product into a successful, scalable hardware business. We run these workshops on the side so we keep them cheap and incredibly high quality.
Who Should Attend?
This is a Level 2 program, which is for startups that have a product in market or are coming to market very soon. The content is focused on helping you go from a first product to a scalable hardware startup.
What Will I Learn?
Lots. We will have 10 different 60 minute sessions focused on helping companies turn their initial product into a successful, scalable hardware startup.
- How to build and ship a new product on time.
- Creating your supply chain quality process.
- Logistics, logistics, logistics.
- Building brand awareness and reaching customers.
- Building distribution the right way.
- Transitioning form a founder to a CEO.
- Building a team.
- How not to run out of money.
- Funding a hardware startup from Seed to Series B.
- Successfully launching new products.
When?
Thursday, April 30th – Friday, May 1st, 2015
- Doors open at 9:00am
- Sessions run every hour (except for lunch) from 10am – 5pm (Thursday) and 10am – 4pm (Friday).
- Followed by Happy Hour
Where?
PCH Innovation Hub – 135 Mississippi St, San Francisco, CA 94107
Cost?
$99.00
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 100 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 close to shipping a product. Otherwise the lessons we’re teaching can’t be applied. If your application is accepted you will get an email to purchase a spot.
How Do I Buy A Ticket?
Once you are accepted you will be emailed a code to purchase your ticket.
Who Is Teaching?
Marc Barros – Moment + Contour
Marc Barros is the co-founder of Moment, the best tools in the world for mobile photographers. 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
Elizabeth – Hamren
Elizabeth Hamren is an industry veteran with experience in product marketing, management, and development spanning nearly 20 years. Most recently, Elizabeth served as the Vice President of Marketing at Dropcam, a cloud-based Wi-Fi video monitoring service, acquired by Nest Labs, a Google company. Prior to Dropcam, Elizabeth was Vice President of Marketing at Plantronics and Vice President of Marketing at Jawbone. Previous leadership positions have included posts at OQO, Mayfield Fund and Microsoft. She is also serves on the Board of Directors at SNUPI Technologies and served as a Director of Cozi Group, Inc. Elizabeth has a BSE in Civil Engineering and Operations Research from Princeton University and a MBA from Harvard Business School.
Avidan Ross – Lion Wells Ventures
Avidan is the Founding Partner of Lion Wells Ventures, where he focuses his investments on connected devices, engineering tools, and data science. He is a maker / hardware hacker turned investor. Before founding Lion Wells, he hosted a Food Network show (which never aired!) called Weapons of Mass Consumption in which he and his team built the ultimate food robots, most notably an arduino-controlled afterburner powered pizza oven.
Alan Henricks
Alan has spent his career in high technology with a variety of early stage, growing companies. He has been CFO of both private and public companies, with a number of successful liquidity events. He currently sits on the boards and audit committees of Roku, Ellie Mae, A10 networks and Applied Predictive Technologies. He was CFO of Pure Digital Technologies (Flip Video) from its early days until its sale to Cisco. He has been advisor or consulting CFO to numerous emerging hardware companies including Tile, Athos, Soundhawk, LittleBits, Sifteo and Livescribe.
Stephan Ilberg – Anki
“Hardware is my passion.” Stephan has over 20 years of consumer and high tech marketing, business and product development experience. Before joining Anki in 2013 he lead Channel Marketing for Startups like Sling Media (Slingbox), Eye-Fi and other CE companies, implementing go to market strategies, finding ways to successfully launch new products and categories. His earlier years were defined by working in the US and Europe for large and mid size companies like Siemens, Silicon Graphics and Logitech.
Monisha Perkash – Lumo BodyTech
Monisha Perkash is CEO & Co-founder at Lumo BodyTech. They are the makers of the Lumo Lift posture coach, one of TIME Magazine’s 25 Best Inventions of 2014, and are shaking up the wearable tech space with innovative designs to help people look and feel great. Lumo is backed by Madrona Ventures, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, and Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures. 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. After the acquisition, she stayed on with SimpleTuition as VP Products. Monisha has an MBA from Stanford and a BA from Yale.
Blake Hennon – Anki
He currently is with the Anki team bringing Anki DRIVE to fans of gaming, racing, and fun as VP of Sales. Prior to Anki he was VP of Sales at Nyko Technologies where he launched a unique Android based controller. Blake also has held positions as Director of Trade Marketing at Warner Bros Interactive where he marketed Lego, Batman and Superman, worked at Activision driving sales of Guitar Hero, and for a marketing agency where he helped elevate the PlayStation 2 brand. Blake has an MBA from USC Marshall School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from UC Santa Barbara. He has lived, worked and studied in various places around the world including France, China and Guam.
Alex Selig – SoundFocus
Alex is the Founder and CEO of SoundFocus a company with a simple mission – to help the world hear better. Alex has a BS and MS from Stanford University in Product Design and Mechanical Engineering respectively. He previously worked at Microsoft and product design firms (Lunar Design and D2M). Alex was also a part of Y-Combinator (Summer 2013) and the Mayfield Fellows program at Stanford which is a 9 month fellowship in entrepreneurship.
Ryan Vinyard – Highway 1
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.
Gary Roberts – Moment
Gary is seasoned operations executive who has also managed multiple supply chains in China over the last 15 years. He has held leadership roles in large companies such as Palm, Apple & Cisco while also working in startups which include Pure Digital Technologies, Looxice, Contour, Lyve, and Moment. His passion is working with great people and helping them grow as well as optimizing business operations and driving decisions based on KPI’s.
Tyler Mincey – Stealth Startup
I was at Apple for 5 years managing the engineering development of the iPod product line as well as a few key new technologies like the touch screen for the first iPhone. On the education and mentoring side, I’ve been a teaching assistant and coach for the Smart Product Design Lab at Stanford. More recently, I was a partner at Fictive Kin building web and mobile products alongside partners like Betaworks and Atlantic Media, as well as organizing a conference called Brooklyn Beta. I’m currently running the product group at a stealth startup and trying to live a life I’ll be proud to tell the grandkids about.
Eric Klein – Lemnos Labs
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.
Ryan Petersen – Flexport
Ryan Petersen is the founder of Flexport.com, a global logistics company built around a modern web application. Backed by Google Ventures, Bloomberg, and First Round Capital. Flexport’s web-based platform makes it easy for companies to move goods between any two places on the planet. Our clients include many of the emerging powerhouses in the world of vertically integrated e-commerce and hardware manufacturing. Before Flexport, Ryan co-founded ImportGenius.com, the largest provider of data to the import-export industry. He has an MBA from Columbia Business School, a B.A. in Economics from UC Berkeley.
Thank You To Our Amazing Partners
Image Credit: “Golden Fog, San Francisco” by runner310 – Flickr: Golden Fog. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Golden_Fog,_San_Francisco.jpg#/media/File:Golden_Fog,_San_Francisco.jpg