Product Startup

Yohan Jacob is the Founder and President of RetailBound, an agency that helps emerging hardware brands get into major retail stores and sales channels. RetailBound has been around for 14 years and has worked with over 4,000 product companies. Yohan himself has spent 30 years in the industry, including being a major buyer for Sears and Office Max. The last episode we talked about scaling up when in...

Brian Thompson is the head of CREO CAD software at PTC. He spent the first 16 years of his career doing CAD design engineering for hundreds of products, many of which are still in production today, then the last 14 years building CAD software solutions to allow designers to make better hardware products. Today Brian is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manuf...

Neha is Project Manager Lead at Meta for Ads Manager Reporting. Before this, she spent 5 years with Google in a number of roles including Google Analytics manager and Head of Merchant Growth. She also invests in a number of startups. Today Neha is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what direct-to-consumer digital marketing is, best practices...

Greame Whitehead is a client of our very own Mako Design who invented the CNCT Cooler, an ultra high-end cooler that has won 3 international product awards including Indigogo, CreativePool and the NY Product Design Awards. He is a corporate Vice President that invented, designed, manufactured, and sold his product as a side-gig, still to today.  Today Graeme is going to share some valuable knowled...

Nick Allen is an industrial design at MAKO Design. Nick has been designing products for 15 years, working with over 100 products and earning multiple design awards including the coveted Red Dot award. Today Nick is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on how to start working on a project with your hardware product development partner so that you c...

Toph Day is the CEO of Elevate Ventures, a Venture Capital firm that has many hardware companies in its portfolio of over $220 million of investments under management. He has founded 8 companies with over $600 million in transactions over the past 30 years. Today Toph is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what venture capital funding is, if V...

Justin Chen is the Co-Founder of PickFu, a platform that helps businesses survey real people about their key visual decisions.  They have administered over 5 million queries over the last 12 years.  Today Justin is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on why hardware product packaging is so important, how to design great packaging, and how to use...

Mike Fata has done over $500M in physical product sales, launching over 25 products to over 16,000 retail stores, which thus lead to three different 9-figure exits. He is also the author of the book Grow:12 Unconventional Lessons for Becoming an Unstoppable Entrepreneur. Today Mike is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on the importance of showc...

Larry Richenstein has been in the hardware sales, development, and investment world for over 40 years. He is an angel investor in the New York Angels network and is currently the CEO of WePower Technologies, his latest hardware venture. Today Larry is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what angel investing is, what stages of development you n...

Jon Hirschtick is the co-founder of both Solidworks and OnShape. In his 42 years of building these platforms, his software has been used to design more physical consumer products than anything else on earth. OnShape alone has over 3 million designers on the CAD software platform. Today Jon is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on why agile produ...

Jonathan Bohun is the founder of Action Ship VR and Weedar, companies which are integrating the digital and physical world via augmented reality. Today Jonathan is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what augmented reality is, what opportunities are coming in the near future for augmented reality hardware, and different ways hardware startups...

Rob Colgan has worked for Mako Design for almost 10 years, working with well over 100 physical product startups on developing an invention idea into a real consumer product. He went to school for both mechanical design and industrial design, along with building many custom cars and motorcycles as a hobby. Today Rob is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small man...

Tony Ulwick is the CEO of Strategyn, a company that has been in business since 1991 doing strategy consulting for high-growth innovative hardware companies. He is the author of two books, and has had his articles published twice in the Harvard Business Review. He started out in the early days of his career as a design for manufacturing engineer at IBM. Today Tony is going to share some valuable kn...

Paul Sagar is the Vice President of Product Management for the CREO software line at PTC. Paul started as a design engineer, then spent the last 25 years building CAD software for PTC to best match the needs of hardware design teams. Today Paul is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on the latest trends in new product development for hardware sta...

Ryan Margolin is the CEO of Professional Hair Labs, a cosmetic company with dozens of products with tens of millions of dollars in sales all over the world. He has spent 25 years in the consumer product sales and marketing industry, and is also a TEDx speaker. Today Ryan is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what the foundation of smart consu...

Paul Rowan is the Co-Founder of Umbra, a household product company that designs, manufactures, and sells hundreds of consumer products all over the world. You likely have at least one of their products in your home right now. Paul ran Umbra for for 37 years, starting the entire company with just one product. Today Paul is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small...

Jackson Wightman is the co-author of The Tech PR Playbook, a book that synthesizes 20 years of PR knowledge into a single resource. He is also the co-founder of Proper Propaganda, a public relations firm that primarily works with hardware startups and scale-ups. He is also an instructor at McGill University with an MBA, Masters in Poli Sci, and a BA. Today Jackson is going to share some valuable k...

Steve Multer is the author of Nothing Gets Sold Until The Story Gets Told which can be found on Amazon and all major book retailers.  He has done over 20,000 presentations and worked with major hardware brands such as Cisco, Panasonic, Siemens, HP, Philips, Xerox, and over 100 more, all on crafting product and brand messaging. Today Steve is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors,...

Kyle Dumont spent many years as a hardware developer for iRobot, then got a Masters of Science and an MBA dual degree at Harvard, then spun out AllSpice which is a software platform for managing electronic engineering feedback and revision tracking amongst other things. Today Kyle is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what iterative hardware...

Tim Uys has spent 25 years as a senior design, leader, and lecturer in the industrial design and mechanical design engineering world. He has worked for Nike Golf, Dell, Qualcomm, Ironman and many others while the director of design for IDOne, which was one of the top Austin design firms back in the early days before it was acquired. For the past 8 years, Tim has been the head of design for our ver...

Brian Thompson is head of CREO CAD software for PTC.  He spent the first 16 years of his career doing CAD design engineering for hundreds of products, many of which are still in production today, then the last 14 years building CAD software solutions to allow designers to make better hardware products.  Today Brian is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufa...

Will Ford is the Co-Founder of LaunchBoom, the world’s largest crowdfunding platform. He also runs the Crowdfunded Summit, a virtual crowdfunding event which I am also a keynote at again, and that’s coming up in May 2023, and as a quick heads up, Will is offering free tickets for limited time to listeners of this podcast. Today, Will is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, star...

Noah is a Vice President at Graff Pinkert, an 80-year-old manufacturing machinery dealer that buys and sells used equipment all over the world, with a central warehouse in the USA. Noah is also the host of the Swarfcast Podcast, a show all about manufacturing machinery and tool machining. Today, Noah will share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can conside...

Daniel Bischoff to the show. Daniel Bischoff is the former Head of Growth at Purple  Mattresses. He took Purple from startup to over two hundred million dollars in sales in just its first two years on the market.  He then spun out as co-founder of his own direct-to-consumer marketing agency called StoicYeti which works with both hardware startups and Fortune500 product brands.  Today Daniel is goi...

Ashley Black is the founder of FasciaBlaster and many other related products.  Her company sells millions of dollars of products per month directly to her customers all over the world, and has built a community of over 8 million followers on social media. She is also a two-time best-selling author.  Her most recent book is titled From Passion and Purpose to Product and Prosperity.  Today Ashley is...