We are excited to announce that Hardware Workshop is coming back to Seattle on March 26th and 27th, 2015.
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 sessions.
- Hardware development process.
- Defining your product (customer need -> final product).
- Creating your brand.
- Prototyping, protoyping, prototyping.
- Picking a supplier.
- Crowdfunding.
- Hardware by the numbers.
- Building a team.
- Funding a hardware startup.
- Building press relationships.
- IP and patents.
- Building initial distribution.
When?
Thursday, March 26th – Friday, March 27th
Doors open at 9:00am
Sessions run every hour (except for lunch) from 10am – 5pm.
Followed by Happy Hour
Where?
Synapse Product Development – 1511 6th Ave, 3rd Floor, Seattle, WA 98101
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.
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
Kristin Toth Smith
Kristin is currently the CEO of Code Fellows, a digital trade school seeking to close the gap between the supply and demand for software developers. Prior, she served as Vice President of Supply Chain and Operations at zulily where she led the development and scaling of supply chain, logistics, and fulfillment processes, systems, and teams that were pivotal to the company’s rapid growth and sustained success from a $30MM run rate to a $400MM run rate. Prior to zulily, she held several leadership positions in eight years at Amazon.co. In addition, she is a mentor for TechStars Seattle and on the boards of advisors for several startup companies. You can find her @ktothsmith.
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.
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.
Becky Brown – FiftyThree
Becky Brown is the Art Director for brand at FiftyThree, Inc., – maker of the award winning iPad app Paper, and the new stylus Pencil. Becky’s focus is the creation of meaningful connections between hardware and brand. Before joining FiftyThree, Becky worked on design language for Courier and Xbox products at Microsoft, and served as Art Director at LUNAR in California.
Marcus Gosling – Highway 1
Marcus is Design Lead at Highway1. With a career spanning 25 years in design and new product development, Marcus brings a strong emphasis on customer discovery, validation and experience design to the Highway1 program. In 2004, Marcus co-founded IMVU.com with Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup. In 2010, he left IMVU to lead design at Rypple.com — acquired by Salesforce in 2011. Graduating in 1999 from the Royal College of Art in London, Marcus joined IDEO San Francisco, serving clients including Kodak, Intel, Microsoft, AT&T and Hewlett-Packard.
Erik Hedberg – Moment
Seattle-based designer / powder surfing enthusiast. Working on @Moment.
Jeff Mills – Oculus / Facebook
A firm believer that great products happen through tightly integrated design and engineering, Jeff has led a range of multi-discipline projects for top medical and technology companies. He is currently working on bringing virtual reality to the world with Oculus VR.
Nathan Theilman – UL
A Lead Engineering Instructor and Staff Engineer for the Consumer Technology Division of UL. He currently teaches public and private workshops and advises manufacturers on methods to effectively addresses product safety and global regulatory requirements. And over his 16-year career with UL, he conducted over a thousand product certifications in accordance with various national, regional and international product safety standards and directives. His areas of expertise includes Audio/Video Equipment, Information Technology Equipment, Power Tools, Office Furnishings, Power Supplies, Motors and other electrical components.
Kyle Hart – Rhino Camera Gear
Kyle is the founder and CEO of the Puget Sound start-up, Rhino Camera Gear. Established less than three years ago in Kyle’s garage, their small team has raised almost $500K from crowd-sourcing platforms to bootstrap their way into the highly competitive camera gear industry. Rhino’s passion is for quality film making accessories that make compelling and cinematic video available to anyone from the amateur to the seasoned Hollywood professional.
Ian MacDuff – FiftyThree
Wrangler of electrons, weaver of firmware, and herder of cross-functional teams. Ian has spent his career developing consumer electronics and medical devices from inertial navigation systems and touchscreen remotes to drug delivery robots and defibrillators. He’s currently helping the world capture their creative ideas by putting Pencil to Paper.
Roger Wylie
Roger is the Managing Partner of Kilpatrick Townsend’s Seattle Office. He focuses his practice on patent prosecution and counseling, and advises start-up and established corporations, venture investors and other intellectual property stakeholders with regard to all aspects of patent prosecution and acquisition, counseling, licensing and litigation. A prior Materials Engineer, Roger brings deep experience with hardware, medical devices, complex machinery, consumer goods, and software
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Image Credit: X-Weinzar via Creative Commons