The Hardware Entrepreneur Balint Horvath: Entrepreneur, Innovation Specialist, Engineer/Physicist

This episode’s guest is Kistjan Vilosius of Katana, a startup from Estonia.
Working at a small-, medium-sized company, or startup you have to wear many hats and it happens often that there are simply not enough people to wear those hats. You have limited resources. Highly efficient way of working is therefore extremely important. How many times did it happen that you spent unexpectedly high number of hours trying to fix some issues when using your software, for example plain old spreadsheets, especially when those spreadsheets are connected, which handle different aspects of your business?
This episode’s guest is Katana’s co-founder and CEO, Kristjan. He has held different leadership positions in the corporate world as the group CFO then group CEO of Magnum, a multinational pharmaceutical retailer in the Baltics and Finland. Later he was the CEO of Up Invest family office investing in retail, media, healthcare and cleantech companies. Today he’s the CEO and Product Manager of Katana, a manufacturing ERP for makers, crafters, manufacturers.
We’ll talk about how they started out, back when Katana was just an idea. We discuss what solutions exist for managing inventory, production besides Katana’s solution. We go into details how their software works, the many integrations they offer now and they expect to offer in the near future. You’ll also hear about trends that you can expect in the b2c space.
Enjoy this episode.
Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com
Show highlights can be seen below:
The story behind the first manufacturing and inventory management tool that helps small business scale faster [3:00] What makes Estonia one of the best countries to start a company [6:30] How Katana brings in the point of truth [8:54] Why focusing on a specific customer niche is a winning strategy for inventory management platforms [12:23] The ways in which Katana is trying to become an integrated app [18:08] How Katana supports manufacturers producing highly complex products [25:18] The differences between Katana and Excel that make your life and business easier [29:36] Trends for small manufacturing in 2019 and beyond [33:02] If you could go back in time in your 20s, what notes would you give yourself? [35:21] If you had to name a book, which one had the biggest impact on your entrepreneurial career? [36:46] Why make your leg day in the gym on Monday morning [38:24] How to bring out the best of people in an international team [39:40] What is the best way to reach Kristjan? [37:40]

My podcast guest is Pete Staples, co-founder and president of Blue Clover Devices with locations in San Francisco, Hong Kong and of course, Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of Hardware.
This is an episode on some important aspects of production lines and its challenges. Without a production line you have no mass manufacturing so if you want to play in that field, it’s good to know about some current issues.
Pete’s company is originally and even now an ODM company. In this episode he will talk about what they do as an ODM. You’ll also find out about typical waste in production lines and what can go wrong with Work Instructions or SOP, Standard Operating Procedures that are typically used in production lines. Pete’s team has a solution to make teams’ life easier. Their product is for automating testing, but not the usual way which can set you back by a few hundred thousand dollars.
We’ve talked about many many more topics, enjoy.
Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com
Show highlights can be seen below:
Why Blue Clover Devices are not afraid of competitors [3:25] The difference between ODM and CM and the benefits of using each of them [7:13] Why SOPs are good for consistency but becoming more and more obsolete for usage in Production Lines [9:53] A new level for remote work: “a teleporter” that automates the manufacturing and production process [15:40] How Blue Clovers Devices company applies the 10x improvement [22:00] If you could go back in time in your 20s, what notes would you give yourself? [27:45] If you had to name a book, which one had the biggest impact on your entrepreneurial career? [30:00] How staying fit during work time is good for both the employees and the company [32:07] How to keep the balance when shifting between two different cultural and business worlds [33:45] What is the best way to reach Pete? [37:40]

I have a very special guest, one of the pioneers of one of the most popular innovation frameworks these days: the lean startup framework. My guest is Ash Maurya, who along with Eric Ries, did some substantial work in this field, laying the foundations of this concept.
You’ll learn in this episode why this idea is still important today, especially in hardware field after it was born around the last financial crisis. You’ll get to hear also what companies are using it, some tactics you can use to make it work for you and also how others use it so you can get inspired. Ash will describe some of the steps, milestones you should hit during the development. In addition he’ll highlight some of the latest cutting-edge innovation topics he’s been working on which connects with my one of past episodes, episode 18 with Alan Klement when we discussed the Jobs To Be Done framework.
Enjoy this episode.
Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com
Show highlights can be seen below:
The trigger behind the creation of the Lean Startup innovation framework [1:56] Some examples of big and small companies that prove Lean Startup principles are universal when applying the right tactics [7:24] Strategies that hardware startups use to go faster than their competitors [10:27] The three stages of Lean Startup, the risks associated with them and recommendations on how to move successfully through each one [16:18] Running Lean, Scaling Lean and the Customer Forces Canvas – when and how to use them [24:25] How a fisherman in South America surprisingly benefited from Lean Startup principles [29:11] If you could go back in time in your 20s, what notes would you give yourself? [34:08] If you had to name a book, which one had the biggest impact on your entrepreneurial career? [34:48] A routine hack for accomplishment-driven makers [36:25] Why sharing stories help us thrive in cultures with different nuances [38:00] What is the best way to reach Ash? [40:28]

My guest in this episode is Moritz Waldstein-Wartenberg of Mitte from Berlin, Germany.
We all drink water, mostly, I guess. I drink it in my tea, usually Fennel Anis Cumin bio tea, I drink it many times per day. Or I consume water in its pure form. But is water really pure? If it’s not pure, for example tap water, which we drink many times in Europe, how do you make sure you have a high quality water at home without going to the supermarket, paying for it and without taking, then throwing out the plastic bottles? And if you get it in the supermarket, is that good enough water for us?
Mitte addresses these points mentioned. With Moritz we talked about different technologies to purify water, how Mitte started out, the milestones they reached and how they got to the current investment round of 10 million. We also covered some of the strategies and tactics they used. We also touched on agile transformation, a topic covered in the last episode.
Enjoy this episode.
Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com
Show highlights can be seen below:
What Mitte adds to their product that makes it unique and how they go beyond the standard for every user [2:40] Some very important actions to consider on your way to a successful crowdfunding campaign [8:55] Designing contracts when working with bigger companies as partners and other helpful skills in the initial start-up stage [14:56] A nature-like technology that’s a good offer for both people and the planet [19:28] The difference between working in silos and work streams [23:18] If you could go back in time in your 20s, what notes would you give yourself? [27:00] If you had to name a book, which one had the biggest impact on your entrepreneurial career? [28:00] Why morning routines are important for Moritz [30:33] Why diversity brings strength to companies and what it requires [31:28] What is the best way to reach Moritz? [33:51]

I’m back on this episode and you will hear about the continuation of the topic of the last published episode. What should you do once you know you have a problem worth solving and you validated what solution you should build with all the features? Should you just go ahead and develop the product based on the specs, the whole development potentially taking multiple years? What is some framework that’s being adopted by more and more organisations these days, such as by Tesla, Bosch, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Boeing, Saab Defense or also some of the smaller companies, startups? They realized you cannot keep developing and operating in a rigid plan-driven way since the whole world has turned upside down, speed of working has increased and if you don’t come out onto the market with a product faster than your competitors, you lose.
This episode is about agile transformation of organisations, especially their hardware development.
What hurdles have you seen in your transformation or in your wish to transform?
Enjoy this episode!
Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

This episode features me and I’ll talk about topics that are especially relevant for technical founders.
Your product is not the product. Many of us in high tech entrepreneurship have a technical background, with years of academic training where we’ve been educated about how to build products, with all the technical skills needed for that. We know how to calculate many things, such as mechanical properties, we know how to create CAD drawings, and how to actually translate theory into practise by actually building stuff. But is entrepreneurship really about these technicalities, specifically hardware entrepreneurship?
In this episode I address 3 questions:
(i) if it’s not your product that matters, what matters than more?
(ii) once you have the basics of your business, should you rush to build and publicly release a fully-fledged product which perfectly reflects your vision?
(iii) what are some of the frameworks for some of the well-known hardware startups that make their business tick?
In this episode you can learn about how to find good ideas, why and how not to fall into the product trap, how Audi won the Le Mans competition without having the fastest car, how Tesla rolls out its products and many more.
Enjoy this episode!
Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com
Show highlights can be seen below:
How to hang a picture on the wall [2:00] Why constraints are actually helpful [5:18] Elements of a story about how an organization creates, delivers and captures value [8:00] How smart it is to tackle the biggest risk first [10:51] Typical business models for hardware startups [13:46]