Over the course of the past two years, HWTrek hosted 80 hardware creators and accelerators to visit Taiwan, Beijing, and Shenzhen on Asia Innovation Tour 2016 (April), Asia Innovation Tour 2015 (August), and also on the first tour in April 2014. We’re organizing the next tour in November 2016 to Shenzhen, Osaka, and Kyoto. You can register on the HWTrek platform and create a project to apply to join the Asia Innovation Tour Winter 2016 cohort destined to meet manufacturing industry experts, see assembly lines in China and Japan, and gain insights about their consumer markets for smart, connect devices.
Applications for HWTrek Asia Innovation Tour 2016 are open! See more and apply here.
We reached out to a participant in our most recent tour, Ksenia Vinogradova (CEO and Founder of FlipFlic) who joined the HWTrek Asia Innovation Tour, April 2016. FlipFlic successfully raised $93,471 from 619 backers on Kickstarter in March. Here’s what she had to say about the tour while in Shenzhen:
“I am CEO and founder of a smart home startup. We are working on the small device – solar powered – that automates existing window blinds, and it has sensors that make them smart in seconds. It’s too easy to install. We are here looking for manufacturing partners because we just got funded on Kickstarter. So now our main purpose is to find a fulfillment partner; I am so glad that we found HWTrek and have seen all the companies here in Shenzhen, China, and especially that we got here to Kingbrother. We are all very impressed with the quality of products they have already worked on. We are just a small startup, we just really hope they will work with us as well. This will be a great autumn for us.”
In addition, Ksenia wrote a wonderful blog series, Where the Stuff Gets Made or Shenzhen Manufacturing Tour for Hardware Startups, about her experience on Asia Innovation Tour, which you can read here:
Please introduce yourself and your project?
I am the CEO and Founder of a hardware startup working on a new smart home device – FlipFlic. FlipFlic is a small gadget that clips on magnets to your existing window blinds. It is fitted with a motor, sensors, and runs on smart algorithms to control your blinds according to changes in temperature and time of the day.
What’s the inspiration for your project? What problem does it solve or address?
The idea came from a very practical need. 2 years ago my family was renting a huge sunny apartment with 12 window blinds installed. We were adjusting them several times a day – in the morning for sunlight, in the afternoon – to block glare, in the evening – for privacy. It was a trivial, but the time-consuming, task to do manually and we were looking for some easy and affordable solution, but couldn’t find one.
Window blinds are there to regulate incoming heat and light, but it is nobody’s job to open and close them several times a day. Such a simple, but annoying task has got to be automated, just like many other things at home.
What solutions did you use for hardware design? What challenges or needs did you face that led you to choose it? What are three words that describe your experience working with Autodesk Fusion 360?
Autodesk Fusion 360. It allows for designing the device from inside out and align components layout with the ID. It is much better than what we did before – started with concept design and then tried to figure out how to squeeze all the components inside. It solved the biggest issue in product design – married beautify (ID) with functionality (ME). As a result, our current design got much sleeker.
It is a great product, free for startups and intended to substitute different tools you used before with one. So the three words would be speed, consistency, and innovation.
What solutions did you use for prototyping?
Keil123D and OpenSCAD.
What resources have you used for sourcing and supply chain management? What were the most difficult things to source for your project and how did you source them?
We partly outsourced sourcing to our EE contractor and partly sourced components ourselves.
The most difficult are motors and solar elements – it is very difficult to find the consistent quality throughout hundreds of options.
Is your team co-located or do you work with remote team members? What tools, if any, do you use for real-time collaboration on your project (with team members and partners)? What’s the greatest challenge working with a team?
We are usually co-located but sometimes separated with our Designer-Co-Founder. We always collaborate on Slack and Asana even if we are in the same room.
The greatest challenge is to keep everyone from working too much and find the right balance of rest and hard work.
What have been the significant challenges or obstacles you’ve faced on the project? How were they resolved?
It took nearly 2 years of R&D and 4 major iterations to come to the current design, actually two different designs for two different types of blinds horizontal and vertical blinds.
From the very beginning we stick to several principles in the design:
- The device shall be external so that no mechanical change to the blinds is needed, which posed high requirements to the enclosure design, as it shall stay sleek and good-looking.
- It shall be very easy to install with no tools, in one snap, which posed high requirements to mechanical design, as it should work with most popular types of blinds and be as simple as possible.
- It shall work on sensors by itself, which posed developing automation algorithms and lots of user and field testing.
Ksenia interviewed by HWTrek CEO Lucas Wang
What are the takeaways and lessons learned from working on this project that you’d like to share with other hardware startups? What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time to the beginning of your product development?
We should have switched to solar and started integration with smart home systems much earlier.
If you are planning the new version of your project or future devices, what will you differently?
What we really want to do is to bring the cost down. Every iteration takes us now less time as in the beginning, so I guess we’ll be coming out with the new model or version every half a year.
We all know the phrase “hardware is hard.” Is there something that was much easier than you had initially thought when you started out on your hardware journey?
So far nothing has been really easy but I would rephrase it as “hardware is long”. It really takes a lot of time to develop the product and bring it to the market. We don’t find difficulty in getting the interest from potential retailers and resellers, and it is really surprising that they find us themselves all the time.
What trend do you see that is changing your sector/industry or what shift would you like to see happen?
I see many platforms are acquired by big companies, which means that the smart home market is about to hit its peak and become mainstream. I would like to see all our homes smart and blinds automated!
What’s next for your project?
We have one more models coming out soon and two more on the roadmap. We’d plan to develop a solution for office and public buildings with cloud integration, analytics, and shared access.
Ksenia at the HWTrek Meetup in Shenzhen
You joined the HWTrek Asia Innovation Tour to China this past spring, what did you learn or what are the significant takeaways you have from the experience?
Yes! I liked the fact that we had a chance to see several companies doing same at different level and scale so we could compare, as well as the full range of the companies we will need – from prototyping to packaging.
Let’s move on to some fun questions:
Do you have any recommendations for a must-read/watch/listen to article, book, blog, film, or podcast, etc.?
Hot Seat by Dan Shapiro is a must-read for Startup CEOs
Joy – this movie about a female entrepreneur will tell you more about running a startup than Steve Jobs or the Social Network
I also read the Fictive, HWTrek, and HAX blogs – all you need to read about hardware.
What’s currently on your playlist, what are you listening to these days?
Classical Russian and Italian music.
What fuels you when you’re low on creative juice, what is your #1 method to get back on track?
Sleep and the Sea.
In your travels, where do you recommend to visit?
I have lived in 3 countries and visited 13 countries since I started this company, all for business. My favs are Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria, AHAA Center in Tartu, Estonia, and the Panda Center in Chengdu, China.
What gadget would you love to have from your favorite science fiction film or book?
Time Machine!
