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The Central Research Laboratory are looking for exciting hardware startups to join their Hardware Accelerator.
If you’re selected you’ll become part of the CRL community and receive a startup grant, help with product development, business mentorship and a trip to Shenzhen to meet potential manufacturing partners. Plus crowdfunding strategy & training sessions from Paved With Gold.
Here’s another edition of Gold Nuggets where we talk with some of our most loved makers, founders and do-ers. Digging into their stories to reveal tips, precious wisdom, and even some music to get your under the desk feet dancing.
In this edition we’d like you to meet our pal and long time client Tom from BleepBleeps. They are on a mission to make parenting easier with their Smart Family of devices.
I’m Tom Evans, founder of BleepBleeps. We make cute, connected gadgets that make parenting easier. Before BleepBleeps I was an Executive Creative Director in design/brand/advertising/digital agencies. I jumped ship a couple of years ago to start BleepBleeps and I’ve been grinding it out and learning every day since.
Strap in, this is going to take waaay longer than you think. And it’s going to be way, way harder than you think. (Actually, maybe it was good I didn’t know that!?)
When it comes to startups or products/services you need people that can: Think it, Make it and Sell it. These are very different groups of people that don’t tend to hang out with each other!
My advice is to create a brand first, and then get out there and meet people. I must have done over a thousand “coffees” with potential co-founders, team members, partners, investors etc etc. If you have a brand and a vision these meetings are far easier to get in the first place, and it’s much easier to enrol people into your “quest” if you have a cohesive brand and a purpose.
My favourite quote of the moment (in today’s tough times for startups: post-brexit, Trump, etc) is: “Staying alive is the new winning" - Paul Graham, Y-Combinator
I want to create a brand that’s loved by kids and parents all over the world.
I have three answers to this.
You cannot beat Jump by Van Halen for getting things going.
During general work/travel I tend to listen to a lot of spoken word: Tim Ferris podcast particularly and a lot of non-fiction/business/self help crap on Audible and Blinkist (which is an amazing summary app).
But spoken word doesn’t work so well if you have write/think. So... (and this is slightly weird) I’ve been experimenting with listening to one very simple track on repeat to help focus when writing, thinking or doing more brain-taxing tasks. And for that I currently use Finder by Ninetoes.
We’re very proud to be working with Makerversity to help promote their cultural programme. Makerversity’s most recent series looks at PROTEST and the role of design in activism.
The series kicks off with a civic hack event in collaboration with Citizens UK & Stop Funding Hate. There’s also Delayed Gratification’s, Rob Orchard giving a talk on the history of 21st century protest through his “Last to Break News” slow journalism perspective. Then trade union campaign and exhibition banner maker Ed Hall will be running a banner making workshop.
Here’s a an interview we lined up with Design Week where Makerversity’s Public Programme Manager, Liza Mackenzie, talks about the importance of “Design in the Trump age of political protest”. If you’re interested, take a look at the full list of events here.
Over the past 9 months we’ve been working with Curious Chip to launch their gamer and maker system called Pip on Kickstarter.
We had a lot of fun styling the set and creating the campaign video. A huge thanks to all the kids and Eben Upton (Co-Founder, Raspberry Pi) for being part of it!
It was great to see our work resonating so widely. We saw lots of enthusiasm from kids, teachers and parents, with plenty more fantastic coverage from tech, design and maker communities.
