Hardware is less hard with accelerator

Habrahabr, Hello! Almost a year ago I wrote about the project Petcube gadget to play with Pets. Since then, it took a lot of time, we have advanced in the development, received a patent, announced a product on the Western market and received hundreds of publications, in particular in Wired, NBCNews, CNet, and other major media. Total spending on the project totaled about $40K of own savings of the founders. This summer, we took a third-party investment and decided to participate in the program of hardware accelerator haxlr8r has, which is located in the Chinese city of Shenzhen — the world capital of electronics.

Disclaimer: All of the following based on my personal experience. All my conclusions are subjective and may differ from the judgments of others.

In this post I want to share with you the experience of participation in the accelerator for hardware startups. I hope it will be useful to those who are about to or already creating clever little gadgets that make our lives more interesting and better. As you would say jobs in one of the ancient interview: "Once you discover that everything around you called life is made up by people that were not smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can create your own products.
Once you learned it you can't stop making things and life better.”

1. What is the hardware accelerator, what are the accelerators

The startup accelerator is an intensive program for start-up business whose mission is to support and ensure the startup team has all necessary resources: money, office, mentors, connections and recommendations, investors with a view to early release of product to market.

In nature there are software and hardware accelerators. In the basis of the last laid for the creation of the physical product of a certain device, gadget. Just we'll discuss this in more detail. In my opinion, the most interesting accelerators “iron” in the world are:

Bolt.io (http://bolt.io) from Boston, USA. The amount of investment and the share of the company you are going to leave, are discussed individually. Usually, about $50K for 15% of the company. The program lasts 6 months and offers:

+ 24/7 access to office and employment for prototyping;
+ Partnership with Dragon Innovation, which subsequently can be your product designers, and will also help to negotiate with the CM (Contract Manufacturer);
+ Mentors.

Lemnos lab (http://lemnoslabs.com/) — San Francisco, CA. The period of the program 6-9 months.

+ 24/7 office;
+ Legal services, company registration, Bank accounts, (very convenient for those who are planning a Kickstarter campaign and is not a U.S. citizen);
+ Access to suppliers and manufacturers;
+ Mentors.

There is, however, a small minus, the accelerator does not help the teams in getting the visas in the United States. However, a tourist visa is always a good decision in this situation.

haxlr8r has (http://www.haxlr8r.com) — Shenzhen, China, for 111 days of the program. After a two-week demo day in San Francisco. 25-50K for 5-15% of the company.

+ 24/7 access to the office, all the necessary tools for prototyping;
+ Convenient location — quick access to the factories and suppliers of electronics;
+ Mentors;

In order to apply for the program just fill the form: www.haxlr8r.com/apply and send a link to five minute video pitch of your project.

Applications for the next set will last until 15.11.2013.

2. What's going on here, team mentors

The process is divided into three stages. First acquaintance with China, factories, mentors, other teams, and many opportunities of development. Second month — the total focus on work, prototyping and getting a healthy product. Third month — cooperation with factories, the organization of mass production.
The first month of work until we are satisfied. Mentors and the Director of the program greatly help you with advice and contacts. The proximity to the factories and markets of the electronics makes the whole process much easier and faster. All 10 teams are helping each other with their unique skills, the atmosphere in the office is conducive to intensive work, the working day usually lasts 12-14 hours, and passes almost unnoticed.

It looks like the office haxlr8r has:


Work space equipped with everything needed for prototyping


Also here have a 3D printer, Pick&Place machine for Assembly of PCB circuits, BGA rework station


The view from the window of the office at Hua Qiang Bei, the biggest electronics market in the world, everything is here. Ranging from small electronic components to finished products from suppliers. Dozens of floors, square kilometers of areas busy with all that you can imagine. Impossible to describe, you only need to be here.


First floor, open space, there are several teams from the previous set and mentors


On the second floor there are 9 teams in the current set

3. Clickr: From idea to prototype in three days — a reason for Dating

One of my first days as a team building and familiarity with the participating companies we were divided into 5 groups of 5 people. Each group pulled out of a hat 2-you notes pre-prepared words, and then Clickr opened. Had to come up with the idea of the gadget, implement, and present it in just 3 days.

My crew got the word: “bouncing” “while comuting”. Inspired by the recently viewed TED video about marshmallows and pasta, we began to act in small iterations. Went out, bought bubble years. Began to walk around the city, trying to find something that will help us on the idea. Ideas came from different stimulator mood to Bouncing suitcase. Already back in the office, throwing the empty glass bubble tee in the trash, I came up with something worthwhile.

People don't pay attention to the garbage on the streets. We have created a device that solves this problem. This is a simple device, easily installed inside the outdoor boxes. Inside is a motion sensor and speaker. Every time the trash gets in the trash, play a random track “nice shot!” or “Thank you” in Chinese, the voice of Darth Vader.

Back at the office we started to paint the MVP (Minimal product vailable)

— play random tracks;
— motion detection using the motion sensors;
— replaceable battery inside;

Requirements:

— easy-to-assemble device;
— compact;
— cheap to manufacture;

So we got GrabGarb



Andrew Maple painted a cool logo, and Stas Leshchenko sent beautiful visualizations and 3D model ready to print on the printer.

Due to the huge electronics market right underneath our office on the same day we bought all the necessary parts for prototyping: Arduino UNO, MP3 shield, motion sensor x 2, battery and 2 small speaker, all that cost us $ 300 RNB, about $50.

We conducted measurements of street litter bins and collected a copy in the office of the material at hand. This saved us a lot of time and allowed to just make a prototype for real testing and put in the real box.



And he earned it :)



Later was invented monetization model. Of course, that sales of the device. Our BOM (Bill of materials) amounted to >$5, if the market price of the device $15-$20 is a good price for an office gadget. But that's not all, as all the boxes are placed in crowded places, we can broadcast the advertising message “Nice throw dude! Want to be a pro? Check out the Nike shop around the corner!”.
So for 3 days we made a fully working prototype of a talking box. But this is an idea for the next project :)

Best with the project managed team Unhooker, which was attended by Andrew. The guys invented a special bra, which unhooks remotely at the right time. The interesting thing was the presentation:

4. There are a couple of months

What now? We are preparing to launch on Kickstarter and finalize the device before mass production. Communicate with factories and suppliers. A lot of work on software part of the device is here and embedded Linux inside, and live video streaming on facetime-like stack, and the iOS frontend along with backend. By the way, now open two vacancies C/C++ embedded linux developer and Backend developer, preferably with experience in live video streaming – PHP or Python.

Our plans are rather ambitious. Mi see a market opportunity to unite pet owners with the application, where they can play with their and other people's animals, and share video funny cats with your friends and discuss dog-cat things. The task of Petcube, inc. to make owners closer to their Pets and provide them with smart devices that make life easier. Petcube is the first of such devices.

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru