YouSaid · the spoken record

Ben Einstein

lines on the record
29
first
2016-08-17
most recent
2016-08-17
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “No, no, no, no. Grow G-R-O-W. So Grove is really oriented around sort of an appliance you put in your home. And there's a bunch of companies doing that. They're very expensive. They're sort of sort of a new category. Think of these guys as a really smart planting system outside. So you have these above ground beds that are sort of apple-like. You have sensors and it automatically waters itself. They tell you what to plant based on where you are in the country. And it really just makes the experience of gardening a hell of a lot more enjoyable for folks like me.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Good question. I think the most recent investment that's publicly announced is a company called Grow based in New York City. And the founders of Boxy. You may remember Boxy from a couple years ago. And they're building a smart gardening system for your outdoors. So I'm a perfect target customer. I live in an apartment in actually two cities now. I don't own it. I'm not going to dig a big bed to plant tomatoes. I would love to have fresh tomatoes and cucumbers and stuff.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I have. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. And Brad has been an amazing help in my struggles to understand this business. You know, it's very weird, right? And I know this is not really the short answer that you wanted, but it's a very unusual world compared to a normal business. We don't use the term revenue. There isn't really any predictability in how a company is going to do. And so I have this real struggle with feedback. And I'm new to this. I'm trying to learn how I'm doing objectively. And we basically get no objective feedback as a young BC for, you know, seven to ten years. And I find that unbelievably frustrating.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Oh man, we'll see. I'm not really a VC, so I am learning the very interesting, complicated world of the venture investing community. I would say the hardest venture.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “It depends. In the beginning, no, too much money can actually be more dangerous than too little money, which is counterintuitive. I think as you grow, especially through consumer, raising more money is hugely important. And learning actually about debt financing, which a lot of entrepreneurs are scared of, can be really helpful, especially when it comes to manufacturing and having good lines of credit and credit terms with your manufacturing partners can be the difference between success and failure for many consumer hardware companies.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yeah, that's not good. Always build more than you ever think. Definitely caring less about quality and more about speed, especially in the beginning, and using those prototypes to actually talk to humans about how they would use them, which is a very important part of prototyping.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Benedict Evans definitely without question one of the more interesting thinkers in this sort of analytical world, especially for hardware startups.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Definitely, this hardware is hard phrase, it's that people sort of almost whine that it's challenging. It is challenging, but so is everything else. And so I really wish people would just learn to ask the right questions. And there's lots of people out there now that can help young companies get started. Hopefully, we're one of them.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, I would love to have more investors that are genuinely curious about what drives hardware and not just, hey, I invested in this company once and I know what I'm doing, but like, you know, we do the strip every year. We take investors to China and show them manufacturing and really what goes into it. I would love to have more people be excited about that and really understanding the business.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Oh man, I read a lot. I read about a book a week. I think most recent book I've read that I've totally fallen in love with is called The Box, which not too many people know, but it's about the invention of the shipping container, which totally fundamentally changed the world, something that people don't think about very often, but having a standardized sort of system that trucks, boats, and trains can use to move cargo around the world allows us to have all these great things that we have in the world. So the box.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Totally. Yeah, I mean, it's really amazing what they've done. And it is understanding the mind of the user and what people care about. I mean, watching GoPro go from this commodity, I don't know if you've ever seen early advertising. It's pretty hilarious. It was this thing you strapped to your wrist. It was all cheesy and feature-based. And at some point, somewhere along the way, they realized that's not what drives growth in a consumer hardware business. It's people watching a video of somebody jumping off of a mountain and saying, I want to be like that guy and buy this GoPro. And it's really interesting sort of psychology of how users think. And that's really the fundamental underpinnings of brand, understanding how your users are thinking. And it's a very emotional thing that is hard for most engineers like me to really fully understand and develop, but really good founders of consumer hardware companies understand brand more than anything else.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “GoPro, as you identified, is probably one of the most famous examples, probably behind Red Bull, which has taken the most commodity and gets sugar and water and turned it into one of the strongest powerhouse brands ever, rivaling things like Coca-Cola and Pepsi and Apple and these guys.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “As they grow. And if you look at, you know, I love to compare and contrast jawbone and Fitbit because you take basically the same product that I think worked fairly similarly. Jawbone really built a horizontal Bluetooth business, right? So all their products at Bluetooth, they built speakers, they have headsets, they have the uptracker, the sort of Fitbit clone. Fitbit is laser focused on a brand built around fitness and health. And when users think of Fitbit, they immediately jump totally. Yeah, totally. I'm going to be healthy by buying those products. And when you think of Jobbo and you think, oh, this is a Bluetooth company that makes up speakers. They make this up thing. I think they've now realized that they're actually selling off their other businesses. But still, I think it's a little bit too late because they didn't fully understand what drives growth in consumer hardware.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Yeah, 100% agree with you when it comes to consumer products that brand, it's actually the most important thing. And it's a little bit of a red herring because brand encompasses so much of what a company is. I think people think of brand as like the font that you use on a logo or something. And that's really branding. It's a little bit confusing. But the brand is really the promise that a company makes to a consumer. Living up to that promise includes things like making the product work well. It includes how you advertise that product, actually setting the expectations for the promise in the first place. It includes customer service and support. It includes returns and all that kind of stuff. So there's this very significant amount of work that goes into building a brand, but it is hugely important. And really, in my opinion, the most challenging thing that a young consumer hardware company has to deal with.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “For each one of those boxes to function in their software license. And so this is really you're highly optimized for making money on the software. Even if you lose money on the initial hardware sale. And so I think that that's one.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yeah, there are, I mean, there really are many, but we tend to group them. And so I think the first is what we call hardware as a service. And these really are businesses where the hardware sale is really not that important. And so if you look at a company like Meraki, which I think is a company that not too many people know, but Cisco acquired for, I think it was about $800 million, I think two or three years ago, they sell really beautiful cloud managed sort of small business, but enterprise grade network infrastructure. So things like routers and switches that are designed for mostly startups and sort of companies sort of growing, all managed on the cloud. They're really fantastic products. You do pay up front for the hardware, but that's not the reason that business is doing so well. It's because you're paying a couple thousand dollars a year.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Exceeds a traditional consumer software play because advertising tends to be a little bit harder to monetize per user than someone paying you $10 a month for Spotify or for Dropcam or for whatever the service that they're paying for might be.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, so I think most of the big companies are really struggling with this. And having to hire armies and armies of software people to sort of help augment their existing product line is usually a sort of death sentence for many of these big companies, at least in sort of new products that they're trying to build. I think when it comes to existing companies, new companies doing it well, there are many, many, many companies that I think to me point to success. The consumer ones are probably easiest to talk about because people know them the best, but companies like DropCam or Ring, I think two examples of sort of Kent and Home Products that are really pretty mind-bogglingly successful businesses sell initial device, they make a little bit of money, but it's not really the purpose. And then I think DropCam had about a 35% attach rate on a $10 a month service. It's pretty astounding as a business. And the lifetime value of many of these customers far”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “A couple years ago, which is, you know, he really likes, it's not hardware, it's software wrapped in plastic. And I think that's a really elegant way to think about many of these businesses. Now, to be fair, there are lots of other businesses that are not necessarily software wrapped in plastic that are also interesting venture businesses. It still tends to be recurring in nature. So if you look at companies that sort of follow this Curig model where you sell a device, it's not necessarily, you don't necessarily lose money, but the purpose of the business is not to sell the device, it's to sell something else that the device consumes. And you sell that in a way that's recurring in nature and usually fairly high margin. And there's a whole slew of businesses that fall into models that either emulate that or really are exactly the same. And I think that that also kind of qualifies in this sort of venture business sort of models.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, it's a huge part of it. I think a lot of people, when they filed their S1, were stunned in 2014 that this maker of these relatively cheap little accessories that you wear in your wrist had 10 million people paying whatever it was, I think $60 a year for premium subscription service. It's mind-blowing to most folks. So really hardware is this really great Trojan horse to get software into places that it can't currently exist. And there are so many more places where software can go that just can't right now because it's tied to these sort of legacy traditional devices. And that's really the really interesting part to me and my partners, the tentacles of software crawling into the greater world via hardware. And Bradfeld, my friend and mentor in one of our first investors, was this great phrase that he coined.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Yeah, it's really interesting to watch that happen. There are very few what we call consumer product good companies that are interesting businesses, very, very, very few. And there might be more in the future, but it's very hard for most investors to see high margin sort of growth rate and revenue when it comes to the sort of traditional consumer product goods categories. And so if you look at most of the successful hardware companies in the last four or five years, you will find software as a major piece of what they do. And as my...”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “That's absolutely true. But the cost-benefit analysis of not having to deal with hiring and firing workers and people stealing stuff and all the CapEx you need in order to build it and yada yada yada is totally worth it versus the supply chain management issues that you have to go through. And really what actually happens with most hardware companies now, their core focus as they grow is actually less about hardcore manufacturing and molding and quality control. And it's more about gaining expertise in your own supply chain.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “And building a building and buying equipment and hiring a minimum wage employees to build things. It's pretty amazing, actually, to see now that you don't do that. No one does that. Even huge companies don't do that. They go to Shenzhen. They go to some various places around the world and say, hey, listen, I'm going to pay you a fee, a service fee, to build this thing for me. It's sort of like SaaS for hardware. It's this very interesting enabler of very small companies that are really cash-strapped can build products at not the highest quality, but pretty close. And it's something that enables this entire ecosystem to survive. Do you think that's brought about inherent problems then in terms of supply chain? Obviously, when you own the full stack supply chain, the quality assurance is all you, when you don't, and it's in Shangzhen or wherever it is, it's more difficult, is it not?”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “So I'd love to hear where you think this explosion of activities is coming from and why it's happening now. What are the kind of market drivers forcing this? Yeah, it's a great question and something that people don't talk about enough. The prep was to call attention to, I think these sort of sexy, cool trends, things like crowdfunding and 3D printing and that kind of stuff, which I actually think is actually a very small part of the story, but it's a very cool thing. And so people love to talk about it and write about it. The real reasons, in my opinion, that hardware has become a much more interesting field. And really, it's always been there just for paying attention to it in a slightly different way. I think people forget that hardware really is everything. It's really everything other than software. The trends are really driven, in my opinion, by things like contract manufacturing, which as a field, you know, is fairly new. It used to be if you were whatever, Apple, 20 years ago and you were building a new iDAP or something, you were buying”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Because you said there about when entrepreneurs come into VC's offices with their hardware, they get the classic hardware's hardened.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Yeah, it's really, I'm actually about to publish a blog post on why hardware is actually that phrase is silly. Hardware is hard. Everything is harsh. If you talk to building, I don't know, Facebook or something, they'll say that's really hard too. It's really about knowledge transfer and knowing how to ask the right questions. And so the big problem with hardware being quote unquote hard is not the inherent nature of hardware. It's the fact that most people that are in the startup community have never done it before. And so they don't know what to look for when they're trying to support either themselves or their companies. And I'm really interested.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Can't find space to work and equipment to build prototypes on. It's really hard for us to raise money. Most investors tell us to get the hell out of their office as soon as the word hardware is mentioned. People really struggle with manufacturing and they build a crappy prototype and then send it to China and expect thousands of units to come back perfect. They struggle with retail. They had all these other issues that I had never really thought of as hardware companies having because I was always dealing with these larger clients for our consultancy. And so, you know, being the sort of young, naive person that I was and still am in many ways, I said, oh yeah, we can do all that. And so set out to build Bolt, which is this sort of combination of all these things that really young hardware startups really are soaring lacking. And it's not rocket science. You know, this phrase hardware is hard to throw around all the time.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Afford an expensive service firm to kind of help them go through that process. And along that journey of really doing customer development and asking both founders, but also actually some VCs, people like Bradfeld and others that were sort of early on in the sort of hardware investing space. Hey, I've built and shipped a bunch of products. How could I build a model that would sort of help some of the companies that either you've started or you've invested in maybe a year or two ago and they were getting started? And it was very interesting because I expected them to say, oh my God, if only we had a design consultancy, like you're already running, but it was for equity instead of cash, we would be so happy and it would be perfect. And of course, that's not at all what they said. They said, yeah, that would be nice. But really we have all these other problems. And we, you know, not only can we not build the product, we also have really have trouble hiring engineers.”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Yeah, it's a good question and a totally rambling story as I think many founders of both companies and funds have in terms of how they got to where they are. And I'm a product guy, I've been a product guide since I was a small child fixing dishwashers and lawnmowers and stuff. And I used to run a product design consultancy. So a service business very similar to a company like IDO or any number of these sort of product design consultancies that are all over the world. And we kept seeing over and over and over again small companies would approach us and it was really hard to work with them because they don't have enough cash to pay the fairly high fees to help these clients that we had to build and design products for them. And so I started to go to the drawing board and think of sort of a better way to work with hardware companies that were very small and could”

    2016-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source