Hardware Workshop Coming To SF

We are excited to announce that Hardware Workshop is coming back to San Francisco on September 17th and 18th.

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.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
This is our Level 1 program, for startups that are going from an idea to successfully shipping their first product. We have 12 different 60 minute sessions, taught by experienced operators, covering a variety of topics from defining your product to picking the right suppliers to successfully launching your company.

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

Building press relationships.
Driving consumer awareness.
Creating your brand.
Hardware prototyping on a budget.
Selecting a supplier.
Navigating manufacturing.
How to build press relationships/
Building your initial team.
Certifications.
Funding a hardware startup.
IP and patents.
Hardware founder panel.

WHEN?
Thursday, September 17th – Friday, September 18th.

Doors open at 9:00am
Sessions run every hour (10am – 1pm, Lunch, 2pm-5pm).
Followed by Happy Hour

WHERE?
PCH International, 135 Mississippi St, San Francisco 94107

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 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 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.

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

Ben Einstein – Bolt
Ben Einstein is an experienced product designer and entrepreneur. Ben is currently the Managing Director of Bolt, a seed-stage fund that invests capital, personnel, equipment, and expertise in hardware startups. Bolt provides companies with capital, staff, shop equipment, and extensive expertise with manufacturing and commercialization. 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.@BenEinstein

Renee DiResta – Haven
Author of The Hardware Startup: Building Your Product, Business, and Brand. Renee is currently Vice President of Business Development at Haven, an online platform for buying and selling ocean freight capacity. She recently departed O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), where she invested in seed-stage technology startups with a focus on hardware, manufacturing, and logistics companies. She is a cofounder of the Penchina Internet of Things AngelList Syndicate. She lives on the web at http://reneediresta.com and @noupside.

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.

Lisa Feterman – Nomiku
Lisa Q. Fetterman is the founder and CEO of Nomiku, the first home sous vide immersion circulator. She was recently named Forbes 30 Under 30. Lisa’s culinary sensibilities were honed at the best restaurants in the world like Babbo, Jean Georges, and Saison. She has a sophisticated writing and editing background with a BA in Journalism from the prestigious NYU Arthur L. Carter of Journalism. She’s worked for Hearst Corporation in their digital media department and has helped publish multiple New York Times Bestsellers with SMITH Magazine.

Vijay Chattha – Wareness
Vijay Chattha is recognized for his aggressive and creative approach. In 2013, Chattha built Wareness.io, a marketing accelerator and seed investment fund for hardware startups that mixes all forms of marketing but is driven by creative storytelling. The results thus far have been historic. Coin, Tile, Moov, Navdy, Vessyl, Osmo, and Ringly have become some of the most successful hardware crowdfunding campaigns of all time.

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. Avidan spent eight years as CTO of CIM Group, a $15 billion investment firm. There he focused on infrastructure investing in vehicle telematics, smart grid, and alternative energy. Avidan has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Columbia University.

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.

Peter Miller – Run8 Patent Group
Peter Miller is a registered Patent Agent and founding partner of Run8 Patent Group, a San Francisco Bay Area patent prosecution firm specializing in building high-value, highly-effective patent portfolios for technology startups. Drawing on his bachelors and masters degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University and his backgrounds in mechatronics and manufacturing, he has filed several hundred patent applications on a broad range of hardware and software technologies, including medical devices, manufacturing systems, vehicle technologies, food systems, drones, Internet security, agricultural systems, and wearable devices.

Rachael Stefanussen – Astro Studios
As a product designer at Astro Studios, Rachael has worked with numerous clients including Proctor & Gamble, Nike and DirecTV to name a few. Rachael earned her Bachelor’s of Science in Industrial Design from University of Cincinnati’s School of Design, and is adept in all aspects of the product development process. Her CAD work and model building skills are only matched by her desire to collaborate with the teams and disciplines she works with. If you’re looking for Rachael and not getting a hold of her, there is either no cell phone reception at the top of a mountain she just biked, or she’s practicing piano with her headphones on.

Michael Sakamoto – UL
Michael Sakamoto is the Regional Sales Manager for UL, a global accredited compliance testing and certification company. He manages the high-tech customer base for the San Francisco Bay area with EMC, Wireless, and product safety testing for North America and access to global markets. He has been with UL for 5 years and comes with strategic sales and business development background from working at Sony Electronics for over 15 years managing sales distribution, supply chain and logistics.

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.

Cyril Ebersweiler – HAXLR8R
Cyril is a venture partner at SOSventures and the founder of HAXLR8R. He built and run the first mentorship-driven seed funding program in China, Chinaccelerator, home of the Techcrunch Disrupt winner Orderwithme. He also founded HAXLR8R, an accelerator for hardware-related startups based in Shenzhen and the Bay (if you are reading this here, yeah it’s me who will kick your ass hard every single day).He is mentoring at Techstars, 500startups, OnLab and East Ventures Alpha, an advisor to the Global Accelerator Network as well as a board member/advisor to a few startups including Leap Motion.

Andre Neumann-Loreck – Ops On Tap
Andre Neumann-Loreck is the founder and principal of Ops On Tap, a company which provides Operations Services to startups and growing companies. Andre also serves as an advisor to HW startups including Anki, Faraday Bikes, Sproutling, Stratos Card and others. 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 the first Ops hire and later became C.O.O. Andre holds a BA from Sophia University in Tokyo, and speaks German and Japanese.

Rob Stevens – Advisor
Rob has spent almost twenty years working in sales, marketing and business development for high-tech startups. Most recently Rob was VP Marketing and Business Development at GrabCAD, a community for 1.5+ million mechanical engineers and provider of SaaS tools for mechanical engineers. Before joining GrabCAD Rob led sales and marketing for Backupify, the leading provider of cloud-based backup for SaaS services. Prior to Backupify he helped robotics manufacturer Kiva Systems in a variety of roles including VP Sales, VP Business Development and VP Strategy. Rob holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University and a MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management