Hardware is less hard with accelerator

Habrahabr, hello! Almost a year ago I wrote about my Petcube project - a pet gadget. Much time has passed since then, we have advanced in development, received a patent , announced a product in the Western market and received hundreds of publications, in particular, in Wired, NBCNews, CNet and other large media. In total, the project spent about $ 40k from the founders' own savings. This summer, we took third-party investments and decided to participate in the HAXLR8R hardware accelerator program , which is located in the Chinese city of Shenzhen - the world capital of electronics.



Disclaimer: All of the following is based on my personal experience. All the conclusions I made are subjective and may differ from the judgments of other people.



In this publication, I want to share with you the experience of participation in the accelerator hardware startups. I hope it will be useful for those who are just going or are already creating smart, good gadgets that will make our life more interesting and better. As Jobs used to say in one of the ancient interviews: “Once you discover what you are around, you were not smarter than you. You can create your own products.

Once you learned it you can't make things and life better. ”

')

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

A startup accelerator is an intensive program for a start-up business whose task is to support and provide the start-up team with the necessary resources: money, office, mentors, connections and recommendations, investors - with the goal of speedy product launch into the market.



In nature, there are software and hardware accelerators. The latter is based on the creation of a physical product, a certain device, a gadget. We will talk about this in more detail. In my opinion, the most interesting accelerators of "iron" in the world are:



Bolt.io ( http://bolt.io ) from Boston, USA. The amount of investment and the proportion of the company with which to part, are discussed individually. Usually, about $ 50k for 15% of the company. The program lasts almost 6 months and offers:



+ 24/7 access to the office and workplaces for prototyping;

+ Cooperation with Dragon Innovation, which can later become your product designers, as well as help to negotiate with CM (Contract Manufacturer);

+ Mentors.



Lemnos lab ( http://lemnoslabs.com/ ) - San Francisco, California. The program period is 6-9 months.



+ 24/7 office;

+ Legal services, company registration, bank account, (very convenient for those planning a Kickstarter campaign and is not a US citizen);

+ Access to suppliers and manufacturers;

+ Mentors.



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



Haxlr8r ( http://www.haxlr8r.com ) - China, Shenzhen, 111 days program. After completing 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 factories and electronics suppliers;

+ Mentors;



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



Submission of applications for the next set will last until 11/15/2013.

2. What is happening here, teams, mentors

The process is divided into three stages. The first month is an acquaintance with China, factories, mentors, other teams and a lot of development development opportunities. The second month is a full focus on work, prototyping and getting a workable product. The third month is cooperation with factories, organization of mass production.



Behind the first month of work and while we are satisfied. Mentors and program directors are very helpful with tips and contacts. Proximity to factories and electronics markets makes the whole process much easier and faster. All 10 teams help each other with their unique skills, the atmosphere in the office disposes to intensive work, the working day usually lasts 12-14 hours and passes almost unnoticed.



This is haxlr8r office:





Workplaces are equipped with everything needed for prototyping.





Also here is a 3D printer, Pick & Place machine for PCB circuit assembly, BGA rework station





The view from the office window on Hua Qiang Bei is the largest electronics market in the world, everything is here. Starting from small electronic components to finished products from suppliers. Dozens of floors, square kilometers of space are occupied by everything that you can imagine. It is impossible to describe, you just need to go here.





The first floor, open-space, here are a few teams from the previous set and mentors





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

3. Clickr: From idea to prototype in three days is a reason for dating.

In one of the first days as a team building and acquaintance with the participating companies, we were divided into 5 groups of 5 people. Each group pulled out of the hat 2 notes with pre-prepared words, after which the Clickr was opened. It was necessary to come up with the idea of ​​a gadget, implement and present it in just 3 days.



My team got the words: “bouncing” “while comuting”. Inspired by the recently viewed TED video about marshmallows and pasta, we began to act in small iterations. Came out, bought a bubble. Started walking around the city, trying to find something that would push us to the idea. Ideas came from different moods to a jumping suitcase. Already returning to the office, throwing an empty glass of bubble in the urn, I came up with something worthwhile.



People do not pay attention to the garbage on the streets. We have created a device that solves this problem. This is a simple device that can be easily mounted inside a street bin. Inside there is a motion sensor and speaker. Every time the garbage goes to the urn, the random track “Great Throw!” Or “Thank You” in Darth Vader's Chinese voice is played.



Returning to the office, we started to paint the MVP (Minimal vailable product):



- play random tracks;

- Motion detection using motion sensors;

- replaceable battery inside;



Requirements:



- easily mounted device;

- compact;

- cheap in production;



So we have GrabGarb







Andrew Maple drew a cool logo, and Stas Leshchenko sent a beautiful visualization and a 3D model ready for printing on a printer.



Thanks to the huge electronics market right in 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 speakers, all this cost us 300 RNB, about $ 50.



We measured the urn and collected a copy in the office from the material at hand. This saved us a lot of time and allowed us to simply make a prototype for real tests and put it in a real ballot box.







And he earned :)







Later the monetization model was invented. Of course, this sales device. Our BOM (Bill of materials) was> $ 5, with a market price of $ 15- $ 20 - a good price for an office gadget. But that's not all, since all the bins are placed in crowded places, we can broadcast advertising messages “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 speaking urn. But this is an idea for the next project :)



Best of all, the Unhooker team, in which Andrey participated, presented the project. The guys invented a special sconce, which is undone remotely at the most appropriate moment. The most interesting thing was the presentation:

4. A couple of months left

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



Our plans are quite ambitious. We see a market opportunity to unite pet owners with the help of an application where they can play with their own and other animals, share videos of funny cats with their friends and discuss feline affairs. Petcube task, inc. make owners closer to their pets and provide them with smart devices that will make life easier. Petcube is the first of these devices.