1. Making Hardware
Less Hard:
Lessons From 200
Hardware Investments
Benjamin Joffe
SOSV / HAX Ventures

2. SOSV
• $400M fund
• Early stage (pre-seed to A)
• Deep tech (Hardware, Life Sciences & more)
• Program-based
• 700 investments

3. HAX
• Hardware only
• Prototype-stage
• Industry, Enterprise, Health, Consumer
• 200 investments
• Shenzhen & SF
• 30 staff to help!

4. @benjaminjoffe
• Eng. :)
• 18y in Telecom, Consulting (CEO), Gaming, Hardware
• China, Japan, Korea, Silicon Valley
• Writer (Forbes, TC, VB, IEEE Spectrum)
• Speaker (>200 talks, 30+ countries)
• Angel investor

5. The classic way

6. Let’s do a startup!

7. Startup
• Team
• Tech
• Trend
• Timing

8. Team?
• Vision
• Tech
• Execution
• Communication

9. First
Prototype
Prototype

10. First
Prototype
Iterations
More prototypes

11. First
Prototype
Iterations
Production
PR
Sales
Marketing
Logistics
Distribution
Recruiting
Financing
Legal
And everything else

12. How fast can you learn?
• Get advice
• Hire
• (Outsource)

13. Resources
• R&D
• Prototyping
• Production
• Customers
• Funding

14. HAX Model
• R&D : where you can hire
• Prototyping : Shenzhen
• Production : Shenzhen
• Customers : home country first, then USA?
• Funding : home country first, then USA?

15. Shenzhen
Have you visited?

16. Why Shenzhen
• Speed! “One week in Shenzhen is a month elsewhere”
• Costs
• Skills
• (Any) Scale

18. The other (better?) way
• Customers!
• Positioning

19. i-Corps Program
• Prepares scientists and engineers
to go beyond the lab and move toward
commercialization.
• “Customer discovery”
• “Get out of the building”
• Talk to 100 customers
• 7 weeks to identify
• Knowledge gaps
• Best path forward
Steve Blank

20. Result
• $70k on Kickstarter
• New product: IoT platform
• $2M on Kickstarter
• VC funding

21. Lessons?
• Closed down!
• New Market?
• Pricing, purchasing, distribution
“Great engineers don't tend to make great business people”
“They were hipsters in an engineer's game.
You need Eggheads, and beancounters to make it solvent.”

22. Let’s talk audio

23. Portable

24. Bluetooth
(Jawbone)
Raised $984 million

25. IKEA…

26. Design & Bass

27. Noise
Canceling

29. Wireless
(Airpods)

30. Smart Speakers / Voice Assistants

31. “Xiaomization” is coming

33. Standing out

34. Kickstarter: 1,559 backers pledged $784,320
Loud
(Soundboks)

35. Raised $161 million
“Implosive sound”
(Devialet)

36. What next?
• Personalized
• Specialized

37. Your shape
(Revols)
Acquired! (too early?)

39. Raised $22 million
Your hearing
(Nura)

41. The Future
• Science
• Software

42. …adds ANC &
‘transparency’

43. Wireless+
(Bragi)
Raised $25 million

44. “Smart hearable”
• Moving to software
• Adding features (filtering, activity tracking, testing, translation)
“Proof of concept with 200,000 units”

45. Oyalabs
Child language
monitor (NLP)

46. Electro
Encephalography
(EEG)

47. Focus Headphones
(Mindset)

48. Sleep Headphones
(Kokoon)

49. Talking about sleep…

50. Tech vs. Problems

51. How can you help sleep?

52. HAX Sleep Tech
• Kokoon: Headphones for sleep
• Moona: Temperature control for pillow
• Sana: Mask to sleep in 10 min
• Circadia: Contactless sleep tracking & therapies
• Zennea: Snoring treatment

54. Moona
Pillow thermostat

55. Sana pivot
Pain relief mask

56. Circadia
Non-contact sensor
+ light therapy lamp
+ training app

57. Circadia
Design pivot

58. Raybaby
Non-contact
sleep & breathing
baby monitor

59. Ultrawideband Radar (UWB)

60. Zennea
(Snoring therapy)

61. A word on
photography

62. Lytro
Light field
photography
Raised $216 million
Acquired by Google !$40 million

65. 360 audio+video
(Aurovis)

66. A.I. Selfie Phone
(Meitu)
$3.2 billion market cap

68. Gimbal
(DJI Osmo 2)

69. In Closing

70. In Closing
• Science
• Positioning
• Resources
• Skills
• China = future of productization?
• Keep innovating

71. Questions?
@benjaminjoffe