Interview with CleanRobotics – the makers of TrashBot
Once upon a time a two friends stood in front of an overly complex trash can at a WholeFoods. A short time later CleanRobotics and their first product, TrashBot, were born. I sat down with Tanner Cook and Grant Halleran from CleanRobotics to discuss the world of trash processing and the design of TrashBot. Throughout the interview we discuss how it is especially challenging for a robotics company to balance the demands of engineering and product iteration with sales and market penetration. We also discuss how dealing with trash is a complex, yet fascinating, societal and environmental problem.
Interview with BlastPoint
Meet Alison Alvarez and Tomer Borenstein, the founders of BlastPoint. Before starting BlastPoint, Alison had a career in building big data tools for large Fortune 1000 companies. Through her work, she came to realize two things: When it comes to big data systems, everyone asks for the same subset of features. Only really large companies […]
Criteria for success (Startup Challenge – Part 2)
Over the past several days, I’ve generated 60+ startup ideas by following my idea generating process I blogged about last week. When I look over my list of ideas I have a lot of “gut feelings” about them. Some of the ideas seem too simple, some seem too complex, some seem dumb, and some seem beyond […]
3 ways to validate your startup idea without building a damn thing
Embrace the “validate first, build later” philosophy and try out these three ways to validate your startup idea without building a damn thing.
The MVE: Minimum Viable Experiment
Entrepreneurs would find a lot more freedom to explore and grow their ideas if they focussed less on MVP, and more on MVE: the minimum viable experiment.
The Startup Pitch
In graduate school, whenever we were getting ready to attend a conference, we would all get together to practice our elevator pitches. In theory, the reason we practiced our pitch was that if by some miracle we found ourselves on an elevator with a philanthropically inclined Bill Gates we’d be ready to win him over with a […]
Review of “Emotional Design” by Don Norman
Good designs are usable, great designs connect on a deeper level. In Don Norman’s “Emotional Design” he explains how designs that can connect with users at the visceral, behavioral, and reflective level are often able to stand the test of time.
In an MVP, do looks matter?
The keyword in MVP is “minimum”. But how minimum should the UI be? In an MVP, do looks matter? The TL;DR answer is : It depends. Probably not too much. But you should definitely come back to worrying about aesthetics as soon as possible.