How MakeSimply makes hardware doable [interview]

Alan Hyman is the co-founder of MakeSimply. In this interview, we cover how he started his company, why hardware’s time is now, his best advice, and yes, we talked body augmentation.

MakeSimply helps people bring their productions to reality. It’s idea to production simplified. They help with almost every phase of hardware: product development, outsourcing, manufacturing, and logistics. They’re a much-needed source of leadership and advisement for hardware startups.

How did MakeSimply come to be?

In 2009, a friend who wanted to create a tracking device approached me. The device was for small animals and used the iPhone. I used my connections at NYU to arrange some meetings. Everyone we talked to asked, “Where is your prototype? We want to see it working.” My friend wanted to approach a factory to ask them to build it.

I was simultaneously getting my master’s at NYU with my future co-founder to be Allen Shieh. One day, he gave a presentation on his family’s business. His family has been in manufacturing for over 30 year and has incredible relationships. They can’t do everything hardware companies need, but they could facilitate the relationships with partners who did. Those partners can do PCB, PCBA, metal machining, and injection plastic molding. They could do it at variable levels of scale and with inexpensive pricing.

I was floored. I needed this, so other people must need it too. I approached Allen about my friend’s product. He told me there was no chance a factory would build us a prototype. That’s okay. I decided to build it myself. I used a couple of Arduinos and a jailbroken iPhone and built it in two weeks.

Two people besides me were involved in the project. One person’s reaction was anger. I did something that she didn’t want me to do. But the other person was relieved. She was relieved because this could actually be built. She was secretly terrified it couldn’t be. That really drove the point home of how important prototypes were.

The project concluded. Allen and I connected again. We asked ourselves what’s going on in the community?

I was involved in hacker spaces. I was into the Open Hardware Summit, the Maker Faire had just begun. We looked around and the time seemed right. We came together, wrote a business plan, and decided to create MakeSimply to help hardware companies execute.

We both agree hardware is a really exciting place. But people have talked it up for years. Why do you think hardware’s time is now?

Moore’s Law. Moore’s Law is where processing power doubles every six months while prices drop. Realize this: the power in your iPhone would have taken up multiple large buildings in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Now it’s a small little chip. That’s incredible! That also has tons of ramifications.

The biggest is democratization. Now anyone can play with powerful chips. These chips don’t cost hundreds of dollars anymore. The chips from the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi are in the dollar figures. The cost of experimentation is significantly cheaper. I can get a lot of power at a cheap price and not be concerned about blowing the chip if I do something wrong.

These cheap components are what led to the Arduino in the first place. Arduino is an open source prototyping platform. It does complex things in simple ways. It’s electrical engineering with a community that builds libraries that in turn let resources spring up around the Arduino. If you want to see how you send a command in serial to the Arduino, Google it. Find the code, cut and paste, you’re done. It’s instant gratification. Or create your own code, post it online, get peer reviews, revise, and go forward. It lets you be creative. You need to know some basics, but it’s all well documented.

And think about this: the Arduino costs $29. In 2009, I was looking at other prototyping platforms that cost $10,000.

The cost for hobbyists and tinkerers to get started is now practically zero. Everyday people can get into hardware and play. Community gets built. There are places like SparkFun and Adafruit. LadyAda is amazing. Go to her website and get code to do anything with Raspberry Pi or Arduino. You can find out how a whole catalog of parts work and can be integrated into your product. What amazing resources people have created!

Hardware’s hard. You hear that phrase more than anything else. That said, where do people trip up most?

Mostly in manufacturing expectations. Manufacturing just is not that flexible. It has benefited from various technical advances, but as a startup you don’t have access to them. You can’t go to Foxconn and tap into their capabilities. You need a reality check on what resources are available to you.

Next, people don’t realize that when you’re prototyping you don’t have a manufacturable product. You need to have somebody to analyze the prototype to make sure it can be manufactured within your cost structure.

Besides cost, there are real world constraints. I’m working on an electric pen project right now. We have a sketch of it, but that’s not what the manufactured product will look like. The rendered piece is beautiful, but there are collaborations and trade offs that need to happen to bring it to reality.

It’s worth saying that while hardware includes software, hardware has a totally different knowledge base. People get software development. It’s well documented. Hardware? Not yet. Engineering is still an academic field. You learn it in college. It hasn’t been made less technical. I think that’s changing. The language will eventually become more mainstream.

From an investment standpoint, what do you think is the most interesting in Internet of Things?

I’m intrigued by fashion and technology. It’s all about the design, brands, and the marketing. Fashion can be designed to enable technology in very subtle ways. The user experience can be very well planned out.

We’re also coming towards the end of wearables. People have figured out what all these sensors do already. Are there any new sensors beyond heart rate and steps? If a startup tries to do steps, what differentiates them from every other tracker?

So the next logical step is body plus technology, like body augmentation.

Body augmentation is a loaded phrase. It can freak people out.

I wouldn’t label it augmentation. I’d call it body enhancements. But it’s much more than a wearable.

The medical applications are interesting. Companies are making attachments to the iPhone so you can detect various ailments by examining someone’s eyes. Google now has contact lens that measure glucose in your blood.

What’s your favorite connected device?

My phone. I carry it with me everywhere.

I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m wearing a very old style Casio watch. I collect digital watches. They’re geek sheek. I think they’re kind of fashionable again. Products like the Pebble are nice, but I think after a while they get annoying. I don’t need to be notified about everything that’s happening to my phone.

That’s a problem with wearables: there’s too much information. They release too many notifications. We need another level of computing power evolution, where we have things like Siri, Cortana, and Google Now to be that in between layer.

That’s my favorite connected device of the future. An assistant that can skim through anything I could be interested in reading and surface an article written by someone who I may not even know but it’s still relevant for me.

Contextual assistants that can surface long tail information for you.

Exactly.

What other advice do you have for potential hardware investors?

Make sure the company has a working prototype. It doesn’t need to be beautiful but it needs to work. Especially if you’re not an engineer, you can be sold on something that’s not physically possible.

I go to a lot of startup presentation events. I remember, at one of these events, an angel investor who judged a business plan competition. A company presented a product and portrayed it as simple solution that can change your life by accomplishing X, Y, Z. The angel, tells them flat out, “This sounds like an infomercial. Why don’t you tell me how you’re really going to do this? Your team has no one on it who can execute.” My advice to hardware startups is to make sure you have a balanced team, technical and business. The team is everything.

What advice do you have for would-be hardware founders?

If you want to do hardware, do it as a fulltime job. Don’t do it part time. You need to dive in and build your prototype. You’re going to have bumps. It’ll take you seven months, maybe even two years, to reach a manufacturing stage.

Know that beforehand, realize it takes that kind of dedication, and do it.