Archive for the ‘Start-up’ Category

Adaptics is building hardware applications that will allow you to collect and visualise measurement data using pocket-sized electronic tools — even a complete measurement toolbox — that connect wirelessly to your phone. Tim Redfern tells us about their line of products for measuring voltage, current, distance, area, and even the weather.

What idea did you start with, and how did it start to evolve?

We initially planned to design an electrical measuring circuit from scratch, but it’s much more practical to use this chip that manages the whole instrument.

Multimeters are used by electricians and people who design electronics, to measure voltage and current, but there’s a burgeoning market for artists and hobbyists who work with electronics, and that would be the market we initially envisage would be interested in [our product, Electic]. It’s quite niche, but the world market for multimeters is about 75 million — it’s not a market that’s going away anytime soon.

And since we started with LaunchPad, we’ve come to think of [Adaptics] as being a family of products, rather than thinking about it as being just one thing. We started thinking about a whole phenomenon of hardware and software products.

Can you describe what you mean by hardware apps?

We’re thinking about them as hardware apps because they’re products that have both a hardware and a software component.

It connects to your device via bluetooth and lets you make measurements. The advantage of it is that the kind of user interface you can make on a smartphone, and the features you can provide using the smartphone are much more advanced than the low-end multimeters. You can buy a basic multimeter for 20 euro, but with the smartphone, you can record the information, have a much more sophisticated interface, and save the information.

Higher end meters that do graphing can cost about 500 euro, but we’ll be able to offer features that are on a higher end at a lower price, and a lot more portable.

What else are you working on?
We started focusing on another measuring device that has wider appeal. It’s a sensor accessory that uses a laser to measure distance, and would have another couple of related sensors that will also have what’s called an inclinometer, which is like a spirit level. It will have a measuring wheel, which can be used like a tape measure to measure around curved things, or say, a path on a map. It can do things like measure area and volume.

We call it Constructic, and our initial research shows that loads of people will use it. We’re also hoping to keep them all below a hundred euro.

 

Tell us more about your approach

There’s never been an app that had a manual — the whole philosophy demands that everything has to be self-explanatory. And we want to make these products from that starting point, to blur the distinction between software on the screen and the accessory it works with.

The instructions for using it will be on the screen of the app, and you’ll be able to download it for free and preview it. Obviously you can’t do anything without the hardware, but the app will be a strong business lever for it — you can make the purchase inside the app.

Eventually we will be able to offer different versions of the software, once you’ve bought the hardware, and it will be more specific about what you’re using it for.

What was your engagement with Inventorium like?

I’d been to quite a few Inventorium events and was enjoying the discussions about devising ideas for tech startups and pitching them. It’s a different way of thinking about things, and I hadn’t had that background. I’ve been involved in creative industries and media, but the idea of actually making things and selling them is quite alien.

How did the team form?

On the round of LaunchPad 4, I was having a few chats with Jack, whom I worked with for Playhouse — a large-scale media project where we turned [Dublin’s] Liberty Hall into a big display — and a few other things. We thought it would be interesting to do something, and this was based somewhere in the centre of our interests, knowledge and abilities.

I’d been more involved in the electronics and low-level programming. Jack’s been more involved in hardware and physical design, and [fellow co-founder] Johnny, is focused on user interface and user experience design. Patrice is Johnny’s sister, and has been advising us on marketing and financial things.

It’s hard to start a business with a bunch of creative people. It would have been easier if we had someone to just take on the business end.

Where is the business now?

We’re working with a product designer who is hopefully going to come on board. We have to look closer, and look at the costs of getting into the small-scale manufacture of a prototype range. Then we’ll put them in front of people who will review them. Once we get funding together for the physical prototypes, it probably be a 3-to-4 month process to produce them.

And what else is on the horizon?

The third one, Meteotic, is the idea of a weather sensor, a mini weather station. It’s a wind speed measurer and thermometer, and measures moistures in the atmosphere. The idea would be that you could crowdsource the weather through it, mainly for outdoor activities. And we’re talking about one that’s even simpler and more mainstream, which is basically a scales for measuring weight, and it would tie in with recipe wizards. It would be a really neat, featureless cylindrical disc that you sit things on and it measures things for you. We’re quite excited for it.

In the build up to next weeks workshop in Coleg Harlech it was interesting to read about some novative approaches being taken with the youth of America; Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel is conducting a high-profile experiment: Put $100,000 apiece in the hands of 24 entrepreneurial teenagers and give them free rein to pursue innovative ideas.

The condition? They have to leave their studies and classmates, and vow to stay out of college during the two-year fellowship.

Thiel’s endorsement has been followed by some quick successes; Eden Full, 19, won a $260,000 social entrepreneurship award for her efforts to improve solar energy in developing countries. Dale Stephens, 20, landed a Penguin deal for his book Hacking Your Education.

With startup success stories tempting undergraduates to quit, universities have raced to add entrepreneurship to their curricula. Stanford has StartX, an accelerator for student-run startups. Similarly, last year UC Berkeley created FounderSchool, which prepares students to raise venture money. James G. Boyle, managing director of the Entrepreneurial Institute at Yale University (which lost four undergraduate students to Thiel fellowships) agrees that more colleges should help kids start companies, but he says that most students benefit from an environment where they can test ideas without betting their future.

Read the full article here

In contrast there are examples that the potential to innovate improves with age, Vivek Wadhwa of the Technology Review writes; the young understand the limits of the Web world, but they don’t know their own limits. It’s proving to be a powerful combination. Since they don’t know what isn’t possible, the Zuckerbergs can come up with new solutions to old problems. That is why they lead the charge in starting innovative mobile and Web companies.

But great ideas by themselves don’t lead to breakthrough technologies or successful companies. Ideas are dime a dozen. The value comes from translating ideas into inventions and inventions into successful ventures. To do this, you have to collaborate with others, obtain financing, understand markets, price products, develop distribution channels, and deal with rejection and failure. In other words, you need business and management skills and maturity. These come with education, experience, and age.

Read the full article here

Having worked with both the youth and the more senior amongst us – surely the way forward is to combine the experience of one with the unlimited potential of the other. In Wales we have mentoring schemes but maybe we need to look at taking this a step further?

What happens to your eureka moments? Do you write them across your hand? Do you scribble them on the back of an envelope? There’s an app for that and now there’s a forum, too. Inventorium’s Open Mic Idea Jam series was part of Innovation Dublin 2011, and offered an audience and a microphone to anyone with an idea and three minutes to spare. Below is a review of the events and details of the Open Mic Idea Jams planned in Wales and Ireland in 2012. 

The Idea Jam was intended as a place to share ideas at all points of development, network with like-minded and compatibly different people, and contribute to a climate of idea-sharing, mutual encouragement, and constructive critique. There were potential investors and mentors present, too, but for most it seemed a chance to open up new conversations about ideas. Eighteen people spoke at the first event in the Stag’s Head, beginning with Conor Lynch of Connector.ie, and his idea for a website for skill sharing. The pitches ran the gamut from an idea for an eco-friendly and cost effective way to dry clothes without a tumble drier, to a travel website targeting walkers in Wicklow aged 50+, to a cloud hosting service called Astroboa, described as “like a WordPress service for data”.

There was a similar mix of digital, service and physical product pitches at the second Open Mic event at Odessa, including a novel idea for car sharing that sounded like a cross between Airbnb.com and Gocar.ie. Along with this were some very early-stage, more amorphous ideas like Lisa Feay’s idea for a jazz radio station, and some other arts focused concepts, like Castle Variations, an annual week-long musical mashup in a castle.

The Idea Jams bring together a wide range of people and ideas that wouldn’t otherwise end up in the same room on purpose. They’re as useful for the audience as they are for the people pitching, a few of whom seem to have gone home with business cards for potential collaborators, partners, investors or customers. However, what was striking but perhaps not surprising was the fairly low representation of women, not just pitching, but actually attending the event. Is it because there are fewer female entrepreneurs? Or is a woman less likely to air publicly an idea that isn’t quite ready yet?

The most striking thing was this: digital companies, organisations, would-be entrepreneurs and innovators can learn some important lessons from people who make physical products, or sell services. We know already that starting something successful, whether it’s for profit, for fun, or for the greater good, means understanding who your customer is, what that customer needs, and being really clear what problem you’re solving. Your sweat equity, your money, and your passion is tied up in this great new idea. It’s easy to think that you’ve thought all of the important things through everything else can be clarified later.

For a video of previous Open Mic nights click here.

More Open Mic Idea Jams are planned for 2012:

Wales: 17th April, Fat Cat, Bangor

For more details and to register visit the events section of our website.

The word “innovation” is more often than not associated with technology or science. However in⋅no⋅va⋅tion [in-uh-vey-shuhn] in the pure sense of the word can mean two things:

1. Something new or different introduced: numerous innovations in the high-school curriculum.
2. The act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.

This means that innovation can be applied in every different field. Entrepreneurship is one of those fields. The process of starting or running a business venture has seen a lot of changes recently. A lot of these changes are technology driven, meaning that new new technological advances (or the mainstreaming of existing technologies) drove innovative changes in this process. Previously running or starting a business venture followed a more or less set pattern; you had an idea, worked out a business-plan, invested some of your money and time to develop the product/service, found some customers and then got some outside funding. Work was mostly based in a office or at meetings.

Nowadays things have changed a lot, yes you still need an idea to start out with however the advancement of technology combined with a decrease in costs have lead to a situation where a software start-up can develop an application and have a 1st release out of the door and available to the general public in 6 months or less. Irish start-up Auctomatic for instance was developed into a market ready service in mere months through a stint with new style incubator Ycombinator. Auctomatic went on to be bought by Live Current Media. This clearly illustrates that with a good idea and very little money you can crank out a first release product quickly and stake your claim in the market. Another major change is that working in teams and collaboration on a project does no longer mean that all members need to be in the same location at the same time. Online collaboration tools such as those offered by ZOHO, Google Apps, Microsoft Sharepoint and others allows people to work on the same venture form different locations across the globe. Combine this with cheap audio & video conferencing service such as those offered here and you can bridge geographical & timezone gaps. This allows for instance for coders to work on changes recommended by a product designer while the designer is asleep in a different timezone. Productivity is kept at a maximum when working like this.

Another thing that changed is the location where work is carried out. the wave of new powerful portable devices (netbooks, smartphones etc) and the increased ubiquity of wireless broadband (wifi, wimax, 3G/UMTS etc.) have made it possible to work from almost anywhere with an Internet connections. Especially now that a lot of the software tools are hosted in the cloud. This has also led to an increase in hot-desking & co-working facilities. Entrepreneurs want to work wherever they can and whenever they want. No longer do they want to be tied to an office of boardroom.  Work can be done in public spaces and meetings can be setup on an adhoc basis in whatever location is suitable and nearest.

Interaction between entrepreneurs has also changed. Like the actual work it’s no longer office bound. Interaction takes place in a less formal way, Open Coffee Clubs, Linkedin Groups, Facebook, Blogs and other online interaction are the preferred networking methods. The approach to networking has changed also, no longer is it about the hard sell. Networking has become about sharing knowledge & information which could eventually lead to a sale or business deal but the focus has shifted away from this as the primary goal.

These trends will continue and evolve throughout  the next decade. We will see more and more new ventures. Some of these will fail quickly but the short run-in period will allow entrepreneurs to ramp up projects quickly and often. The low costs of starting a new venture will also mean that an entrepreneur can start up multiple projects and test these in real market environment without requiring large investments or commitments. People will have multiple projects/ventures running concurrently and will stick with those that prove the most successful. In all the whole process of doing business will become much more fluid and fast as a whole.