1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,580 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from a dual-degree Harvard alumni on best practices around iterative physical product development. 2 00:00:06,840 --> 00:00:14,840 Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between. 3 00:00:15,060 --> 00:00:23,520 Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for physical product startups, sponsored by PTC's two best-in-class 3D CAD product development software solutions, 4 00:00:23,700 --> 00:00:29,860 Narrator: Onshape, and Creo, and produced by Mako Design + Invent, the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services, 5 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:33,360 Narrator: tailored specifically to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. 6 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:42,400 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today, I'm very excited to introduce Kyle Dumont to the show. Kyle spent many years as a hardware developer for iRobot, then got a master's of science 7 00:00:42,400 --> 00:00:51,300 Kevin Mako: and an MBA dual degree at Harvard, then spent out AllSpice, which is a software platform for managing electronic engineering feedback and revision tracking amongst other things. 8 00:00:51,580 --> 00:00:58,580 Kevin Mako: Today, Kyle is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what iterative hardware product development is between manufacturing runs, 9 00:00:58,580 --> 00:01:03,680 Kevin Mako: who the product feedback loop stakeholders are and how to collect, organize, prioritize, and execute 10 00:01:03,680 --> 00:01:10,280 Kevin Mako: on that iterative feedback information to ensure the best improvements to your physical consumer product design. Now, on to the episode. 11 00:01:11,380 --> 00:01:12,680 Kyle Dumont: Hi, Kyle. Welcome to the show. 12 00:01:13,080 --> 00:01:21,360 Kevin Mako: Thanks. Thanks for having me. Well, excited to talk today about the iterative design tools and processes around improving your product between each manufacturer. 13 00:01:21,540 --> 00:01:27,620 Kevin Mako: And this is something that's really important to hardware startups, even if it's from the early prototyping phases, early customer feedback, 14 00:01:27,620 --> 00:01:36,680 Kevin Mako: crowdfunding launch, short production run, or even scaling into larger production runs, no longer is hardware making a product that doesn't change for the next 10 years. 15 00:01:36,920 --> 00:01:42,480 Kevin Mako: Nowadays, people are looking to improve their product generally in between almost every manufacturing cycle. 16 00:01:42,620 --> 00:01:50,600 Kevin Mako: So every time you produce, you collect feedback from a variety of sources and you make your product better. Now, there are processes and tools to do that the right way. 17 00:01:50,680 --> 00:01:57,600 Kevin Mako: And that's why I brought Kyle on the show today to talk about how to properly get these different individuals, these different stakeholders to provide for. 18 00:01:57,620 --> 00:02:06,560 Kevin Mako: feedback and how you organize and prepare that feedback to do the best iteration possible, not just any iteration that comes out of your own mind or maybe certain designer's minds. 19 00:02:06,640 --> 00:02:10,780 Kevin Mako: This is really a community approach here, which is absolutely best practice in hardware right now. 20 00:02:10,960 --> 00:02:18,920 Kevin Mako: Before we go too far down that, first of all, congrats, you've raised a multi-million dollar seed round for Allspice, featured in TechCrunch, a bunch of other places. 21 00:02:19,040 --> 00:02:27,020 Kyle Dumont: So congrats on the early success on your scale up yourself. Thanks. It's been quite a journey. It's been a really exciting process. It's awesome to see the team growing. 22 00:02:27,620 --> 00:02:33,920 Kevin Mako: product get out there and start to influence a lot of engineers. Amazing. We'll talk a bit about your background. You've been in the hardware space for over 10 years. 23 00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:40,880 Kyle Dumont: Give us a bit of a high level of where you got to where you are today. Out of my undergrad, Jewett, I did product development, mostly electrical engineering for 24 00:02:40,880 --> 00:02:47,020 Kyle Dumont: seven or eight years. I worked at some bigger companies. I was at I Robot for a while doing product design there. 25 00:02:47,580 --> 00:02:52,100 Kyle Dumont: And I ended up joining a small startup company in the 3D printing industry. 26 00:02:52,460 --> 00:03:00,520 Kyle Dumont: And through those experiences, really felt like I had a pretty good grasp on how. how hardware engineering was done. 27 00:03:01,120 --> 00:03:09,740 Kyle Dumont: And just as you mentioned, Kevin, just saw all the inflexibility that was kind of baked into those processes. I mean, maybe a lot of your listeners going from 28 00:03:09,740 --> 00:03:14,840 Kyle Dumont: a big company to a small company. There I was thinking, here's my opportunity to build something 29 00:03:14,840 --> 00:03:22,960 Kyle Dumont: from the ground up, build a workflow from the ground up that I could use to help my team be nimble and kind of meet demands and meet changing customer requirements or environmental 30 00:03:22,960 --> 00:03:32,420 Kyle Dumont: requirements just felt so hamstrung by what was available in terms of tooling. I entered going from the startup company, knew I wanted to start a business somewhere in the 31 00:03:32,420 --> 00:03:38,720 Kyle Dumont: engineering tools area. I ended up going to back to school. I got my MSN MBA at Harvard. They 32 00:03:38,720 --> 00:03:48,040 Kyle Dumont: have a dual degree program, aptly named the MSNBA program, I believe. It was actually the first year they did it back in 2018 was the beginning of the program. We were the class of 33 00:03:48,040 --> 00:03:54,980 Kyle Dumont: 2020. It was very focused on entrepreneurship. So it was perfect for what I wanted to do. I met my co-founder there, Valentina. 34 00:03:55,320 --> 00:04:03,800 Kyle Dumont: We launched this company, starting when we graduated in 2020, obviously right into the pandemic. So that affected a lot of the way we built the company, a lot of the way we built 35 00:04:03,800 --> 00:04:10,720 Kevin Mako: the product. So amazing. Great backstory. And I'm also an individual that I incorporated macro design while I was also in 36 00:04:10,720 --> 00:04:16,620 Kyle Dumont: school. So congratulations on that, Kyle. Thanks. Yeah, it was a good opportunity to kind of, I guess, maybe lower the risk or 37 00:04:16,620 --> 00:04:22,800 Kyle Dumont: have a bit more of a sandbox environment to kind of build and brainstorm before we went out and launched it full time. 38 00:04:22,960 --> 00:04:26,760 Kevin Mako: in work full time on this thing. That's amazing. And it's become a success. And we'll talk about that 39 00:04:26,760 --> 00:04:34,920 Kevin Mako: more as we go into the episode as well, especially the tools that are available for people in the hardware development space. Let's look big picture at this for a moment. 40 00:04:35,080 --> 00:04:39,760 Kevin Mako: Just talk a bit about what iterative design is between manufacturing runs. 41 00:04:40,120 --> 00:04:47,000 Kyle Dumont: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as I'm sure a lot of you and a lot of your listeners are familiar with, there's that kind of legacy way of doing hardware 42 00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:52,160 Kyle Dumont: design, which is waterfall methodologies. Tends to be rather rigid process where you're planning 43 00:04:52,160 --> 00:04:57,520 Kyle Dumont: out your release is well in advance, usually have long spins in between designs, and the goal 44 00:04:57,520 --> 00:05:06,040 Kyle Dumont: is always that each revision is going to work perfectly or as perfectly as possible. What we're kind of doing is starting to take a little bit of the playbook from software. 45 00:05:06,180 --> 00:05:16,020 Kyle Dumont: Software and engineering has done an amazing job of being able to iterate very quickly and being able to build steps into their workflows that enable them to quickly 46 00:05:16,020 --> 00:05:22,040 Kyle Dumont: gain confidence in new versions of the designs. That's exactly what we're trying to kind of bring into the hardware landscape. So in 47 00:05:22,160 --> 00:05:30,340 Kyle Dumont: between manufacturing runs, it is becoming easier and less expensive for us to get quick turn PCBs, get quick turn assemblies. 48 00:05:30,620 --> 00:05:39,920 Kyle Dumont: With 3D printing and mechanical, it's a lot faster for us to do some low quantity builds, get at least designs in the hands of engineers and hopefully even 49 00:05:39,920 --> 00:05:48,360 Kyle Dumont: users, whether or not we're ready to say, hey, this thing's going out the door, we're ready to ship it. We can at least do those integrations tests, do this 50 00:05:48,360 --> 00:05:52,080 Kyle Dumont: bench top test, you know, whatever we need to do to gain confidence and turn things out the door. 51 00:05:52,160 --> 00:06:00,240 Kyle Dumont: And that's why we looked at software and said, hey, you know, that's kind of the pinnacle of what you can do, at least currently, with iterative designs. 52 00:06:00,460 --> 00:06:05,420 Kyle Dumont: So I'm sure we'll talk a bit more about like what are the things we're pulling in, but that's kind of the high level approach that we take. 53 00:06:05,500 --> 00:06:12,520 Kyle Dumont: One more thing I'll mention is that, you know, this was a drive that I know I saw when I was at the big company and also a startup trying to move quickly. 54 00:06:12,780 --> 00:06:16,980 Kyle Dumont: But cut to the last couple of years during the pandemic, our hands were kind of forced 55 00:06:16,980 --> 00:06:21,840 Kyle Dumont: to do iterative design, especially if you're in electrical engineering and you can't get these parts. 56 00:06:22,160 --> 00:06:30,480 Kyle Dumont: getting a note from a manufacturer saying, hey, we're going to have to shut down supply, you know, shut down assembly unless we can design in this new part in the next two, 57 00:06:30,800 --> 00:06:35,540 Kyle Dumont: three days, maybe you have a week or two weeks. So those kind of legacy processes of like, yeah, 58 00:06:35,660 --> 00:06:42,700 Kyle Dumont: it takes us three weeks to schedule an in-person design review and run all of our export bills and kind of qualify everything to do a new turn. 59 00:06:42,760 --> 00:06:45,280 Kyle Dumont: Like, that clearly cannot apply here. So our hands were 60 00:06:45,280 --> 00:06:52,240 Kevin Mako: kind of forced into this iterative process some ways in the last couple of years. There's so much value in it and there's so many tools that are available right now. 61 00:06:52,400 --> 00:06:59,080 Kevin Mako: I love how you mentioned the fact that it's becoming easier to iterate between designs. There's a ton of technology in both design and 62 00:06:59,080 --> 00:07:06,540 Kevin Mako: manufacturing and the combination of those two that allows you to change the design, effectively improving it between each of those cycles. 63 00:07:06,600 --> 00:07:14,460 Kevin Mako: I'm a huge fan of short run production as well, especially for hardware startups. I talk a lot about it on the show, trying to produce 100 to 500 64 00:07:14,460 --> 00:07:23,720 Kevin Mako: units of a product to get them in the hands of real users so that you can get that feedback. with the intent, purposeful, intentional intent of improving your 65 00:07:23,720 --> 00:07:31,440 Kevin Mako: design before you go to a larger, potentially more expensive, full-scale production run. And you can continue iterating those designs 66 00:07:31,440 --> 00:07:40,220 Kevin Mako: as you go into further and further production runs, especially if you plan out that as part of your development process, as opposed to using that legacy model that you mentioned. 67 00:07:40,280 --> 00:07:47,860 Kevin Mako: I love how you look at it as the waterfall model, because that really is the legacy way of doing it. Trying to really plan out what's going to happen well in advance. 68 00:07:47,860 --> 00:07:55,120 Kevin Mako: That's great if you can spend millions of on consultants and all the sort of market data that might be available to Fortune 500 companies, 69 00:07:55,360 --> 00:07:59,160 Kevin Mako: but that's very impractical as a startup to begin with. And secondary, I think the information is 70 00:07:59,160 --> 00:08:06,220 Kevin Mako: weaker. The information that you get from real users in real time is going to be substantially better than the information you can plan ahead. 71 00:08:06,400 --> 00:08:14,560 Kevin Mako: So why not build the concept of agile development as they do in software into the hardware model now that the tools are available? So to dig into 72 00:08:14,560 --> 00:08:21,040 Kevin Mako: this a bit, Kyle, talk to us a bit about the different stakeholders, because the first thing that everyone thinks of is customer feedback. 73 00:08:21,200 --> 00:08:26,600 Kevin Mako: And of course, it's very important. But there's more stakeholders than just your customer on each iteration of the design. 74 00:08:26,980 --> 00:08:32,980 Kyle Dumont: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, huge part is customer feedback. Engineering qualifications really, really important as well. 75 00:08:33,300 --> 00:08:38,640 Kyle Dumont: It's going to allow having those multiple iterations in between can allow you to do things like significant cost reduction. 76 00:08:38,860 --> 00:08:45,600 Kyle Dumont: There's probably performance improvements that your engineering, your development team is just not going to understand until, you know, they get the parts in 77 00:08:45,600 --> 00:08:52,760 Kyle Dumont: hand, start to play with them. Especially one thing that I've always, really like to do. And, you know, I like to do at my current company is make sure that engineers are 78 00:08:52,760 --> 00:08:57,080 Kyle Dumont: getting in front of customers, at least in videos or recordings and kind of seeing firsthand how 79 00:08:57,080 --> 00:09:01,560 Kyle Dumont: these things are being interacted because it's hard sometimes to understand how to design something when you're in a silo. 80 00:09:01,780 --> 00:09:09,880 Kyle Dumont: But that's all a part of kind of bringing together the different stakeholders in a design. You can have, as part of that process, there's, you know, all the engineering 81 00:09:09,880 --> 00:09:13,740 Kyle Dumont: disciplines really important to make sure everyone's communicating effectively and coming to the 82 00:09:13,740 --> 00:09:18,400 Kyle Dumont: table. Systems engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical, if you have electrical software and 83 00:09:18,400 --> 00:09:25,580 Kyle Dumont: firm where there may be different divisions that all have kind of different roles and responsibility, but making sure that there's kind of a common forum, a common sounding 84 00:09:25,580 --> 00:09:29,420 Kyle Dumont: board that all those teams can come together and talk. It's really important. And then all the way 85 00:09:29,420 --> 00:09:35,500 Kyle Dumont: up to now, then talk procurement, product and project managers, CMs, starting to get contract manufacturers involved. 86 00:09:35,920 --> 00:09:38,360 Kyle Dumont: If they're especially going to be, you know, you're doing anything higher 87 00:09:38,360 --> 00:09:46,260 Kevin Mako: volume or with, you know, significant requirements around assembly and manufacturing. That's amazing. So many different stakeholders. I think that's a big picture here. 88 00:09:46,320 --> 00:09:54,320 Kevin Mako: Like even you as the innovator, the hardware founder, you also are a stakeholder. Investors are also stakeholders. So you've got all these 89 00:09:54,320 --> 00:10:01,120 Kevin Mako: different people, as Kyle mentioned, in addition to those two, you've got the customers, which is, I would argue, the most important. Always focus on that as the number one. 90 00:10:01,300 --> 00:10:07,940 Kevin Mako: A, who are your existing customers and B, who are your potential customers? And looking at that data really clearly to define 91 00:10:07,940 --> 00:10:12,860 Kevin Mako: what some of those improvements that they see are, you know, either improvements of the product of things 92 00:10:12,860 --> 00:10:18,860 Kevin Mako: that aren't working. It also could be opportunities on thing you could add to improve the product overall in terms of marketability or whatever else. 93 00:10:19,060 --> 00:10:25,540 Kevin Mako: So both features and problem reduction. Now, the customer is number one, but you've got all these different people that a lot of the time are 94 00:10:25,540 --> 00:10:33,480 Kevin Mako: overlooked. What are your manufacturers saying? What are the different types of designers and engineers? Visual designers, industrial design, mechanical design. 95 00:10:33,800 --> 00:10:40,140 Kevin Mako: Of course, if you got the electronic side, you've got firmware, software, PCB design, component procurement design. These are multiple 96 00:10:40,140 --> 00:10:46,120 Kevin Mako: different individuals, all that will have ideas about ways to improve the product or ways to prevent problems on the product. 97 00:10:46,400 --> 00:10:54,240 Kevin Mako: All of this sort of stuff has to go into some organized plan. And that, I think, is a huge thing that is missed because most of the time, especially as a 98 00:10:54,240 --> 00:10:59,620 Kevin Mako: hardware startup, even if you're collecting this information, which I would say is step one, at least get the information in the door. 99 00:10:59,820 --> 00:11:05,980 Kevin Mako: If you are collecting the information and you're doing a good job of pulling that together, then the more difficult challenge becomes, well, 100 00:11:06,000 --> 00:11:12,240 Kevin Mako: how do you organize and prioritize and then of course eventually execute on that information? So, Kyle, 101 00:11:12,240 --> 00:11:19,200 Kyle Dumont: talk a bit about that process. Yeah, I'm really glad you mentioned organizing. I know it's maybe not the most exciting thing. 102 00:11:19,740 --> 00:11:28,320 Kyle Dumont: Maybe other people following like Maricondo or something and very, very organizing focus. But it's not always the most exciting or interesting thing for founder, but it is as 103 00:11:28,320 --> 00:11:36,560 Kyle Dumont: a fundamental piece, one of the most important building blocks to get started on. So at the core, what we provide as a service and what is really, really important for 104 00:11:36,560 --> 00:11:42,080 Kyle Dumont: all engineering teams is having some level of revision control. Earlier on, then people really even think, 105 00:11:42,240 --> 00:11:48,900 Kyle Dumont: is necessary. But that's one of the things that the software industry has done so well with GitHub, with GitLab, with BitBucket. 106 00:11:49,060 --> 00:11:56,980 Kyle Dumont: If you've heard of these technologies, it's a mentality that software engineers are using that revision control is really a tool that they can use to tell a story. 107 00:11:57,200 --> 00:12:02,040 Kyle Dumont: And so it's very hard to be able to, you know, collect all the information from all the stakeholders. 108 00:12:02,080 --> 00:12:06,700 Kyle Dumont: If you don't have a process in place for kind of being able to trace that information back to a 109 00:12:06,700 --> 00:12:10,960 Kyle Dumont: particular version or being able to quickly change the design, see what's change in the design, 110 00:12:10,960 --> 00:12:17,120 Kyle Dumont: and then run a review and release this new version of the design quickly and efficiently, but in a controlled manner. 111 00:12:17,280 --> 00:12:23,640 Kyle Dumont: You can have quick and efficient in email, but then, you know, email or a shared network drive or Google Docs. 112 00:12:23,720 --> 00:12:33,220 Kyle Dumont: But I think anybody who's carried that along without significant time spent managing them just understands how it can turn into chaos very, very, very quickly, especially is kind 113 00:12:33,220 --> 00:12:40,940 Kyle Dumont: of the anti-force against iterative design. It's like, okay, if I have to kind of keep these folders up to date and 114 00:12:40,960 --> 00:12:45,540 Kyle Dumont: all this stuff manually, bring these exports manually, that's going to butt right up against like, 115 00:12:45,620 --> 00:12:52,360 Kyle Dumont: hey, I want to cut a new version of this design, release it as quickly as possible manufacturing get my data back. Providing that foundation is key from the beginning. 116 00:12:52,820 --> 00:13:01,020 Kyle Dumont: We have embraced Git, you know, in terms of our product on backend, it's the same technology that GitHub and in GitLab are using the software space. 117 00:13:01,080 --> 00:13:09,760 Kyle Dumont: I kind of give you that baseline, a lot of power, a lot of flexibility in a revision control package. And you're going to get things like a diff, which actually will 118 00:13:09,760 --> 00:13:18,760 Kyle Dumont: allow engineers to take two versions of the design and compare them. Any two versions could be release one, release five, or any of those like kind of micro iterations between 119 00:13:18,760 --> 00:13:25,480 Kyle Dumont: and say, how is the design change from this version and this version? It can be really, really important as a starting place when you're tracing something back. 120 00:13:25,680 --> 00:13:35,480 Kyle Dumont: Like, the LEDs are dimmer now, you know, on our new widget. Like, what happened here? We can go trace it back. Conversely, it's easier to spot maybe dead parts of the design. 121 00:13:35,680 --> 00:13:40,200 Kyle Dumont: Now, like, hey, we had included a Bluetooth module in here initially because is we want a Bluetooth connectivity. 122 00:13:40,320 --> 00:13:48,760 Kyle Dumont: That went away three iterations ago, and so we should probably get rid of this. So kind of exposing all that information so that people can kind of make quick engineering 123 00:13:48,760 --> 00:13:55,060 Kevin Mako: design decisions that can affect customers. That's really powerful. You're basically highlighting the foundation of your information. 124 00:13:55,300 --> 00:13:58,240 Kevin Mako: And that's your version, which makes a ton of sense because all the things that we talked 125 00:13:58,240 --> 00:14:03,080 Kevin Mako: about, you have to tie that feedback loop or that stakeholder feedback back to a particular 126 00:14:03,080 --> 00:14:09,560 Kevin Mako: version, especially if you're iterating quickly or over time, because if you've got multiple versions, let's say even out in the market. 127 00:14:09,780 --> 00:14:17,220 Kevin Mako: So it's years down the road and you've got five different versions. You have to be extremely careful that the information you're getting back is pegged to a specific revision. 128 00:14:17,560 --> 00:14:24,980 Kevin Mako: Otherwise, that's going to confuse the design going forward. So foundationally, I love what you've done, Kyle, on focusing really on revision history. 129 00:14:25,200 --> 00:14:29,900 Kevin Mako: So that's kind of like the bottom of the pyramid here. Then from there, we move on to stakeholder feedback. 130 00:14:30,060 --> 00:14:37,940 Kevin Mako: Now, how does that tie into or what are some of the best practices around tying in the various stakeholders that we talked about into each of those versions so that 131 00:14:37,960 --> 00:14:45,900 Kyle Dumont: you know how to properly iterate to your next version going forward. Definitely. So if the first kind of pillar is revision control organization, the 132 00:14:45,900 --> 00:14:51,620 Kyle Dumont: second one I would say is collaboration. It's do we have the forums, do we have the channels for people to be able, all the stakeholders 133 00:14:51,620 --> 00:15:01,000 Kyle Dumont: to be able to communicate, have the traceability to connect that feedback to designs. And again, not have a Slack channel where that's great for just very quick 134 00:15:01,000 --> 00:15:07,940 Kyle Dumont: feedback in information. You can even create channels to scope things a little bit. But you don't have the traceability. It's not as controlled as a system. 135 00:15:07,960 --> 00:15:16,700 Kyle Dumont: like GitHub or GitLab or now AllSpice Hub, which is our product, is going to give you where we can simultaneously render versions of the design 136 00:15:16,700 --> 00:15:21,740 Kyle Dumont: at any of those iterations, any of those versions, you can click on the design and AllSpice Hub, kind of see what's going on. 137 00:15:21,920 --> 00:15:25,340 Kyle Dumont: If someone's more technically focused, they can look at the schematic, they can look at the PCB 138 00:15:25,340 --> 00:15:33,300 Kyle Dumont: and do fit check in very quickly see, hey, this is the board that I'm, you know, staring at in my hand or vice versa, and then make a comment in we kind of pulled from 139 00:15:33,300 --> 00:15:37,940 Kyle Dumont: when GitHub is called an issue, essentially like a ticket, it may be a bug, it may not be a bug. 140 00:15:37,960 --> 00:15:42,860 Kyle Dumont: or maybe a feature or a new idea or even anything like that, you can kind of grab a part of 141 00:15:42,860 --> 00:15:51,320 Kyle Dumont: the design, link to that design, say, like, hey, this version regressed on this feature we were trying to add or this new customer deliverable that we were supposed to hit. 142 00:15:51,560 --> 00:15:57,080 Kyle Dumont: You can have that traceability. Now, engineering can kind of start to kick off a discussion, oh, that's because this happened. 143 00:15:57,300 --> 00:16:02,300 Kyle Dumont: You know, you can get a whole conversation started there about what was the root cause that, why that happened. 144 00:16:02,380 --> 00:16:08,880 Kyle Dumont: This is all now instantly communicated and instantly documented for you. Think about you have this controlled system now. 145 00:16:09,200 --> 00:16:15,020 Kyle Dumont: Some industries need to provide legally that documentation, but even if not, it's an important 146 00:16:15,020 --> 00:16:18,260 Kyle Dumont: part of the design process when you're going back and understanding why decisions are made. 147 00:16:18,360 --> 00:16:22,940 Kyle Dumont: If that all happens in the same tool and the same revision control tool, you can kind of tie it 148 00:16:22,940 --> 00:16:30,060 Kyle Dumont: all together, you just get that documentation for free, you get the traceability for free and you're opening up these lanes of communication. 149 00:16:30,120 --> 00:16:39,020 Kyle Dumont: So we have this issue ticket tracking tool built in our product, all sorts of cool things you can do it to link to the designs, link to the specific versions of the designs. 150 00:16:39,380 --> 00:16:48,520 Kyle Dumont: But we also pay a lot of attention into integrating that into other tools. I mean, Jira, Confluent, these are important project management tools that companies are using. 151 00:16:48,680 --> 00:16:55,120 Kyle Dumont: So tying all those tools together to make sure that all the stakeholders are now able to kind of communicate and not have specific 152 00:16:55,120 --> 00:16:59,680 Kevin Mako: silos. That's brilliant, because you can pull all this different information from all these different folks and 153 00:16:59,680 --> 00:17:04,680 Kevin Mako: essentially consolidated into one space so that either the project manager or you as the founder, 154 00:17:04,680 --> 00:17:09,060 Kevin Mako: the CEO or the president of your emerging hardware startup company or scaling hardware company 155 00:17:09,060 --> 00:17:16,180 Kevin Mako: can look at this information collectively, which I guess leads to another very important layer, which is, well, how do you prioritize that information? 156 00:17:16,420 --> 00:17:23,420 Kevin Mako: So with what you're talking about, you've essentially created channels through a system that allow all these different pieces of information to come into place. 157 00:17:23,420 --> 00:17:30,800 Kevin Mako: Now, you have customers saying that they want this or that, sometimes conflicting with each other. You've got different stakeholders, whether it's your 158 00:17:30,800 --> 00:17:34,260 Kevin Mako: manufacturer saying they want a certain thing. You've got an investor that's saying they want another 159 00:17:34,260 --> 00:17:38,820 Kevin Mako: thing, at least if you've collected the information and now you've got a centralized place for it, that's good. 160 00:17:39,040 --> 00:17:48,200 Kevin Mako: But the final, arguably most important element of all of this to actually be able to execute is how do you organize it? So what tips and tricks do you offer to figuring out 161 00:17:48,200 --> 00:17:53,220 Kevin Mako: how to kind of organize those pieces of information or prioritize them to figure out how to actually 162 00:17:53,220 --> 00:18:03,080 Kyle Dumont: execute on whatever you think should be the key elements of the next revision? Yeah. So one feature that we have to help with that is we have priority labels, essentially. 163 00:18:03,220 --> 00:18:09,480 Kyle Dumont: You can or anybody can assign labels to a particular issue, you know, tracking the importance of it. 164 00:18:09,680 --> 00:18:16,160 Kyle Dumont: And then the other piece of it comes down to the process. So because you have a tool that's 165 00:18:16,160 --> 00:18:25,040 Kyle Dumont: tracking revisions, that's tracking collaboration, you can essentially have a hosted design review that says, hey, this closes this issue, this issue, this issue, this issue. 166 00:18:25,180 --> 00:18:32,240 Kyle Dumont: Again, issues could be feature requests. It could be customer feedback. It could be, hey, this improvement, etc. What we see 167 00:18:32,240 --> 00:18:36,760 Kyle Dumont: a lot of the times is that, you know, engineers and technical teams are going to start to tag. 168 00:18:37,040 --> 00:18:44,660 Kyle Dumont: Tagging is the concept of basically like taking someone, you can at their name, just like you wouldn't Slack or a lot of other kind of interactive collaboration tools who can just 169 00:18:44,660 --> 00:18:53,140 Kyle Dumont: add their name and say, hey, at this person, I need your approval on this PR. We can get managers involved in that too and say like, yes, I agree, these are the important 170 00:18:53,140 --> 00:19:02,120 Kyle Dumont: issues that were closed here. Hey, this one is missing. What's the deal with that? And, you know, whether or not that does end up kind of making its way in, at least 171 00:19:02,240 --> 00:19:05,880 Kyle Dumont: having that conversation, that point in time right there where you can actually make the decision 172 00:19:05,880 --> 00:19:10,400 Kyle Dumont: of like, this is going into this change, but this is not going into this new origin and kind of 173 00:19:10,400 --> 00:19:16,060 Kyle Dumont: get everybody on the same page so that you don't end up with products and head scratching saying like, well, what happened? 174 00:19:16,180 --> 00:19:24,680 Kyle Dumont: I thought we were fixing the mounting points here. And now all of a sudden it doesn't fit cleanly like we thought it was going to, things like that. So 175 00:19:24,680 --> 00:19:30,320 Kyle Dumont: kind of building that all together gives you that ability to kind of make past, fail criteria 176 00:19:30,320 --> 00:19:39,000 Kevin Mako: on what's going into a revision, what's not going into a revision. Very powerful stuff. And if you're just a hardware startup, but they're getting your first product out to market, 177 00:19:39,200 --> 00:19:48,120 Kevin Mako: right now you're listening to Kyle, give best practices and the top tips for how some very advanced hardware teams that are scaling do feedback and iteration. 178 00:19:48,400 --> 00:19:57,160 Kevin Mako: So even if you aren't building complex processes or multiple types of designs, you can actually take this knowledge and apply it to even your first version of your design. 179 00:19:57,480 --> 00:20:03,580 Kevin Mako: Understand who the stakeholders are. understand what version of the product you're on and then figure out how to prioritize that 180 00:20:03,580 --> 00:20:07,720 Kevin Mako: information. If you're just a home inventor starting out, you could do this on a spreadsheet. 181 00:20:07,960 --> 00:20:11,300 Kevin Mako: Now, of course, as you get more advanced and as you get more serious about your product, 182 00:20:11,580 --> 00:20:16,280 Kevin Mako: especially after it goes to market and you're starting to very carefully plan your next iteration 183 00:20:16,280 --> 00:20:20,680 Kevin Mako: and you want to collect as much information as possible, as well as having it consolidated in 184 00:20:20,680 --> 00:20:26,780 Kevin Mako: one place and organized, it makes a lot of sense to move up the value chain and actually get tools out there to support this. 185 00:20:26,900 --> 00:20:34,000 Kevin Mako: So, Kyle, you've highlighted a bit about what AllSpice does. give a bit of a deeper description of it and how people can actually find out more about AllSpice to 186 00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:42,500 Kyle Dumont: potentially integrate into their future planning of their product brand improvement over time. Absolutely. So AllSpice is the company. Allspice Hub is our primary product. 187 00:20:42,720 --> 00:20:49,560 Kyle Dumont: It is essentially a collaboration platform for primarily electrical engineers to be able to share either internally or externally 188 00:20:49,560 --> 00:20:55,520 Kyle Dumont: their designs, run their revision control and organization, run collaboration. And then the whole other 189 00:20:55,520 --> 00:21:05,360 Kyle Dumont: pillar that we haven't even gotten into, maybe we'll do a follow up segment on this. one to plug this is automation. I mean, the last piece, we really built this whole platform and 190 00:21:05,360 --> 00:21:12,100 Kyle Dumont: process around giving us the foundation to start to build in some pretty neat automation around 191 00:21:12,100 --> 00:21:17,280 Kyle Dumont: can be anything from stock and supply checking for every new revision to running simulations, 192 00:21:17,800 --> 00:21:27,280 Kyle Dumont: to running renderings, to running generating outputs and sending them to manufacturers. All this stuff that in legacy tools are very time consuming, really prohibitive to iterating 193 00:21:27,280 --> 00:21:33,140 Kyle Dumont: on designs, start to build that in. So that's some. exciting stuff that we have coming down the road and we'd be happy to share more in the future. 194 00:21:33,460 --> 00:21:35,720 Kyle Dumont: Very cool. What's the website of AllSpice? 195 00:21:36,700 --> 00:21:45,660 Kyle Dumont: Allspice.io, that's A-L-L-S-P-I-C-E.O. We'll bring you to our primary website and there are links there for all sorts of cool stuff. 196 00:21:45,800 --> 00:21:53,700 Kyle Dumont: We have a monthly, I believe we're trying to even make that more like a biweekly webinar. The next one that's coming up is SVN to get migrations. 197 00:21:53,860 --> 00:22:03,200 Kyle Dumont: A lot of legacy hardware companies are using SVN subversion for revision control. we're talking a bit more technically about how teams can basically move from 198 00:22:03,200 --> 00:22:09,080 Kyle Dumont: SVN to Git, but also just doing more of a deep dive on what Git can mean for hardware design. 199 00:22:09,260 --> 00:22:16,140 Kevin Mako: So definitely check out our webinar series on that. And as always, I'll put the links in the show notes below so anyone can just click through as well. 200 00:22:16,200 --> 00:22:21,880 Kevin Mako: Kyle, thanks so much for all your words of wisdom today on how to iterate in the hardware development process. Thanks, Kevin. 201 00:22:22,200 --> 00:22:25,460 Kevin Mako: Always love talking about this. This has been great. Appreciate it. Take care, Kyle. 202 00:22:25,840 --> 00:22:33,040 Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast. If you found some value in the show, please do us a huge favor and leave us a quick five-star review. 203 00:22:33,260 --> 00:22:42,720 Narrator: If you have any questions, guest suggestions, or anything else, feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email, podcast at MakoDesign.com. That's podcast at MakoDesign.com. 204 00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:48,400 Narrator: This show is hosted by Kevin Mako, North America's leading expert on product development for physical product startups. 205 00:22:48,700 --> 00:22:56,620 Narrator: Huge thanks to our sponsors, PTC, and their two best-in-class 3D CAD product development software solutions Onshape and Creo, and Mako Design + Invent. 206 00:22:56,620 --> 00:23:03,700 Narrator: The original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored specifically to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. 207 00:23:03,940 --> 00:23:05,680 Narrator: Thanks for joining and see you next time.