Dash and the two ton connected device [interview]

I sat down with Brian Langel recently. Brian’s worked for some diverse companies over his career, including HBO, McGraw-Hill, and Union Pacific Railroad. He has the distinction of being the only startup founder I know to work for a railroad.

Brian is the co-founder of Dash. Dash’s software turns your car into a connected device. Your jalopy won’t turn into a 2-ton iPhone, but it’s closer than you think. Read ahead to find out exactly how.

What is Dash?

Dash is a connected car platform. We build software to connect your phone to your car. You purchase an OBD dongle, plug it into your car, and it pairs via Bluetooth to your smart phone.

While you drive, it gathers statistics from car sensors and provides feedback about any car issues as well as your driving habits and behavior. This is all to improve fuel efficiency and safety.

What inspired you and your co-founder Jamyn Edis to start Dash in the first place?

A while back, we started working on a boxing project for HBO together. We taped a device under the boxer’s glove to measure punch speed and force.

One day, we drove to the Mohegan Sun for a boxing match to test it. During the drive, we kept talking about vehicles and vehicle safety. There are so many computers and sensors inside of a car that nobody was leveraging. All the data was ephemeral. No one was applying big data processes that could measure driving habits and behaviors. We asked “Is there any way for us to improve driving via data?”

We started looking, found out about the OBD port, and saw it was universal. That became our entry point into car sensors and allowed us to build Dash.

So there are a couple competitors in this space, i.e. Automatic. What differentiates Dash from your other competitors?

We’re a software company. There are already a bunch of OBD reader hardware manufacturers building high quality devices. We leverage existing hardware. We don’t mandate that you purchase an OBD dongle that we created.

Automatic is a hardware company. Their software is only compatible to their hardware. We think we can expose Dash and the sensors of your vehicle to more people by leveraging existing off-the-shelf hardware.

Can you talk a little bit about the OBD port? 

Dash/iOS compliant OBD dongle

The OBD port was mandated by the US government for emissions testing. Through it, the government verifies in an over-the-top way that car manufacturers are meeting the standards Congress sets. It’s also a way for mechanics to identify issues and repair vehicles.

OBD has a long history with many phases. It was really solidified in the early 90’s. OBD-II is in all cars manufactured from 1996 and on. It standardizes how you get data from your car and how to connect a physical device. That’s how Dash is compatible with any car in the US from 1996 and after.

What are the most popular use cases for Dash? I’ve heard you talk about parents using it to monitor their child’s driving. I love that. What else besides?

People use it for fuel efficiency. Since Dash gives you real time information via auditory alert on your driving, you can tweak your driving and save money every day.

And you’re right, parents may be wary of giving keys to their 16 year old. But many of them feel better if those keys come with Dash. They can be alerted if their child is speeding or driving recklessly. That sparks a conversation which makes the road safer for everyone.

Then often times, something goes wrong with your vehicle. A lot of people have no idea about what happens under the hood of their vehicle. The check engine light normally only has an on or off switch. So, do you as a driver need to pull over right away? Is the car going to break down? Dash will give you that information in real time without going to a mechanic immediately. We can tell you if your current issue impacts gas mileage or actually, it’s critical. Get it fixed right away.

Then there are a lot of users that really like seeing information from their vehicle. We can give you information to say your battery is draining. Perhaps we’ve plotted over time that your voltage is decreasing. Check it out, it can be indicative of another problem. Or your coolant is low. It lets you be proactive. Instead of you pulling oil levels, engine temperature, or battery levels, we can push it to you.

People are busy and they don’t have time to always check up on their car. So having Dash helps them identify and solve problems before they become real issues.

How different is the data analysis between electric cars versus traditional gasoline powered vehicles?

The OBD-II reader is only mandated for vehicles that produce emissions. Fully electric vehicles like the Tesla aren’t required to have it. But besides Tesla, all other vehicles, like the Nissan Leaf, do have the OBD-II port. They’re made by companies who have existing architecture.

We still haven’t figured out fully electrical vehicles. The energy consumption, it’s not just fuel, comes from a number of different factors. That’s something we still have to focus on, but it’s an engaging and interesting conversation we have internally.

Right now, we give the state of their battery level, but we still have to dive deeper for electric vehicles.

Can you relay the story about how you collected the car code meanings and then relevant repair costs? It’s a great hack.

When we set out for Dash, we knew that there were engine light issues. When a mechanic reads it, they see an esoteric code, something like P0100. The mechanic knows what that means, how to fix the issue, and what rates to charge.

We wanted to go a step further. We didn’t want to just say, “Hey, here’s P0100, and it means X” because X is often mechanic-speak. We wanted to translate it to something meaningful for users.

We know one mechanic who teaches at the Henry Ford Institute in Detroit. He teaches what these codes means to future mechanics. He agreed to use a website we built as a teaching tool. For homework, these future mechanics would log into the website and fill out what each code means and costs. We basically crowdsourced the whole thing.

I read the dongle can allow you to remotely control some aspects of your car. How far can you take the car as a connected device?

Depending upon your vehicle and the dongle that you purchased, you can control many aspects of your car. For instance, all Dash users can clear their check engine light so long as it’s not for a severe issue. Through the dongle, we physically control the car and turn off the light. That’s all we currently allow for all vehicles.

In the future, we want to expand that. Some of that will require purchasing proprietary information from the car manufacturers. For instance, the ability to turn off the headlights of your vehicle can be accessed through this OBD-II port. So with your phone, you can say “Hey, make sure my headlights are off” or “Make sure my car is locked.” We’re working on some of these advanced features now and you’ll see them more frequently in the next 5-10 years.

So you were part of 2013 Techstars class, can you tell me about that experience?

It gave us exposure to tons of mentors, investors, and journalists that we wouldn’t have otherwise had access to. They really helped hone our pitch and our business strategy. They also gave us some resources to develop the product further.

Being a Techstars alum continues to be valuable today, especially in networking. We still meet with other CEO’s and CTO’s of Techstars companies and bounce ideas off them. When we’re looking to move into another country or hire for a certain role, we draw on their experience.

I saw on Github that you built a command line interface tool for Trello. Can you talk to me about it?

Though Dash has a hardware component and I’ve done other hardware things in my career, I’m really a software guy. Trello is a great tool, but as a developer I’m often in the command line. I’m always building and compiling code. I don’t like to interrupt my flow by switching to the browser and getting out the mouse. Developers are most productive in the command line.

There was no command line interface for Trello so I went out and wrote it. It was a great project and it was fun to do. I hope others can benefit from it.

Let’s talk jobs! What positions are you hiring for at Dash right now?

We’re looking for senior level Android and iOS developers, a junior level data scientist, and a backend engineer. We hired after a seed round of funding and built out the team. But now we’re looking to expand. I think within the next couple of months, we’ll really push and hire those roles.

Last question. What’s your favorite connected device besides your car?

A little while back, it was my Nest. I really enjoyed that. I have the Nest and their smoke detector. Those gave me piece of mind. We see Dash in a similar light. We bring new technology and analytics to something old that may have been a black box before.

Now I have this wearable watch and I’m really enjoying it. This is the LG. I got it at Google IO. I’m getting the Moto soon. I can get my emails and reply to them. It has voice recognition and lets me text away. I find it very useful.

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.

Public Service Announcement: More Interviews

Under the advice of Chris Yeh, I started blogging in early 2012. It’s some of the best advice I’ve received. Everyone should write.

I used the blog as an entree to people that were previously unavailable. I got great interviews and made some good relationships. Sometime in 2013 I stopped interviewing people. Over a year later, I’m going back to my roots. I’ve already started again.

Specifically, I’m talking to hardware makers. Hardware and connected devices are still nascent but growing wildly. With hacker spaces, maker spaces, and tons of nightly events, accomplished makers are already accessible. But I don’t think the word is spreading far beyond those confines.

When I speak about Arduinos, drones, 3D printing, I get blank stares in response from friends (whether they’re involved in startups or not). The interviews will answer some basic questions but they’ll also dig deeper. Let’s fix that knowledge gap.

If you’ve got any suggestions for who to speak with, drop me a line or drop ’em in the comments.

Interviews: allow me to re-introduce myself.