Episode Notes
- Chocolates and innovations - [0:48]
- Is software really eating the world? - [1:35]
- How I define hardware - [2:14]
- Problem statement and my mission with the podcast - [3:14]
- What are the major differences between hardware and software? Hardware as a trend - [4:17]
- Local and global hardware landscape - [5:14]
- How I see podcasts and identifying the gap - [7:14]
- How I got to this point: my journey - [8:29]
- Startups vs Entrepreneurship - [10:55]
- What are the most entrepreneurial countries in the world? - [11:37]
- Why I gave this name to this podcast - [13:07]
- The future of education and its connection with entrepreneurship - [14:30]
- Podcast formalities: format - [16:20]
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Episode Transcript
Introduction to the podcast, with your host, Balint Horvath
Chocolates and innovations
Hello ladies and gentlemen, üdvözöllek, the Hungarian and probably the more present non-Hungarian speaking global listeners. This is the very first episode of The Hardware Entrepreneur podcast and I'm glad to introduce...myself in this episode. I'm Balint Horvath, founder and host of this podcast, an entrepreneur originally from Hungary, and currently based in the heart of Europe, Switzerland. You might know this place, Switzerland as a well-known location for amazing, high-quality chocolate, but besides it’s also a place where green is green regarding its pastures, mountains and it’s also a place where fresh innovations abound and it makes the country as one of the top places for innovations.
In the very first episode I’d like to talk about the why, why I’m doing this to you, this podcast. And moreover I would also like to talk about my background, then the bigger picture on what I think about entrepreneurship, and finally I’ll be closing it off with formalities, so what structure you can expect from this podcast.
Is software really eating the world?
To start off, you might have heard the quote, famous quote “Software eats the world”, by famous Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen. Really? Is that so? However according to my observation and also probably with your experience Earth, our Earth runs on resources so it’s based more on atoms rather than on bits. I claim that our true progress therefore depends mainly on our producing, selling innovative physical products, that is hardware.
How I define hardware
Hardware is IoT, Internet of Things, devices connected to the internet, or 3D printers, drones, robots that are all in today’s headlines, and some of which actually have some software running on them. But they can also be any physical product, such as a pencil, a sustainable pencil, purely a physical product, hardware with no software element. Hardware is...different, different than pure software. Challenges are everywhere in designing, manufacturing, getting funding, hiring, innovating, and finally delivering to the customers.
Problem statement and my mission with the podcast
In my eyes resources are scattered around on the internet in discussion forums, blogs, or in a handful of recently published books on hardware, so in total I consider the amount of information available little. The question arises: where do you get real, practical knowledge? Well, either by going through building your own hardware company or by hearing it first-hand from hardware entrepreneurs what they have gone through themselves.
This podcast is for you to learn directly from hardware entrepreneurs. So I started this podcast to bring you stories on entrepreneurs, so what entrepreneurs of atoms, so hardware company founders and leaders went through and how they founded and run their companies. How means what their motivation was, what hurdles they ran into, then overcame those in terms of funding, strategies, business models they iterated on, and tackling some of the topics that I mentioned related to manufacturing, innovation, hiring, and so on.
What are the major differences between hardware and software? Hardware as a trend
I look at myself as like you, listener, who wants to get answers in these topics, to see real examples. The world of hardware, as I mentioned it, is different from the world of software in terms of these topics that I alluded to and also in contrast to software where there were a lot of activities, a lot of companies making headlines especially in the 90s and onwards, hardware as a phenomenon with companies popping up literally everywhere in the world is a relatively new trend. This is being popularized by runaway successes of ike Fitbit, GoPro, SpaceX, Tesla, Nest, and so on. Since it’s a trend that is new and I believe it’s just going upwards, it means that there is a lack of stories, obviously told first-hand by entrepreneurs, themselves. If we had more of these case studies, I believe, there could be a healthier ecosystem, where we could support each other to go forward.
Local and global hardware landscape
Locally in the world, and you might be also aware of these, listeners or you might be even involved in these activities, there are maker faires, maker spaces, meetups, conferences, to mention a few, which are hugely helpful for creating a healthy local ecosystem. I am also part of a few of these to some extent, like the mini maker faire in Zurich, where I volunteered as co-organizer, as well as attending other events mostly in Europe such as the Hardware Pioneers event in London, or hardware meetups, faire locally here in Zurich. With my podcast I strive to contribute to creating more awareness about the hardware entrepreneurship trend, which is happening on a global scale at urban hubs typically, such as in London, Shenzhen, San Fransisco, New York, to name a few, and hopefully with time we’ll also see this happening, also more geographically dispersed. I’d like to create a platform for voice. Hardware Entrepreneurship is global, and there are lessons to share how things work locally and also globally, which can all add to your toolbox.
There’s one more thing to note, to add to the topic of hardware and software and their connection specifically. Naturally It’s kind of hard to create a clear split between these two fields, because we see a kind of blending between these two. So for example in IoT, Internet of Things, or in AI, in Artificial Intelligence, we see that software is controlling hardware products, car or drone in case of AI. This means of course that software topics will also come up in this podcast. However the focus will remain hardware and hardware aspects.
How I see podcasts and identifying the gap
Now a little bit about me, the host of this podcast. So you may ask, man, why did you start this podcast, besides the nice-sounding reasons already mentioned? Well, I’d say I’m a long time fan of podcasting, it’s a great alternative for getting my information intake, via audio. I listen podcasts when I’m folding my clothes or I clean the flat, prepare food, meals in the kitchen, and so on. I have listened podcasts by HBR, Nature, Stuff You Should Know, Smart Passive Income, The Tim Ferriss Show, to name a few. Then there was a point this summer, a sudden realization, my AHA moment, when I realised when looking for a hardware-related podcast that to me there is actually no podcast that focuses on entrepreneurs who create and sell physical products, helping those who want to set up their companies. At the same time it crossed me mind, why not creating it myself if I need such information and if others, who I talked to, would need such know-how? Here I am for you, listener, with this first episode.
How I got to this point: my journey
As for my roots, originally, as mentioned, I come from Hungary, from its northern corner, from a dusty little town that was into mining in its heyday and then it got into semi-oblivion when the mining industry collapsed. Currently, I live in Zurich, which is everything but not dusty. You might ask, how did I get from point A to point B? To cut the story short, I followed quite a circuitous path. When I was small, a kid, about 12, I wanted to be a physicist, because I was interested in the world of atoms, so how things work. I did get a PhD in Physics later on via a non-obvious path, first by starting out with computer science at the university, which I did not like so much, so I switched to Electrical Engineering in Budapest, Hungary. I loved Electrical Engineering, so playing around with the oscilloscope, doing research in microwave photonics, publishing internationally and traveling internationally, and even playing around with the idea of founding a company based on one of the innovations. After my Master’s however, I wanted to focus more on continuing my studies, so I enrolled into the physics program in Munich, staying still with photonics, a topic that I got to like, at a Max-Planck institute and voila, I ended up getting my PhD in Physics, which I set as goal when I was a child. One lesson learned, for me, was that if you set a significant goal and you live with that mindset for an extended period of time, this gets ingrained deeply into your brain deeply, and via steps you don’t know beforehand, you can finally get to your goal that you set. Following my PhD, I’ve had a career in the industry as a senior member of research staff, then as R&D program manager at two multinational companies in Switzerland. After quitting my job to realize my dream of traveling the world, solo backpacking, and also with my girlfriend for another 2 months, today I’m an entrepreneur with a mission to help hardware entrepreneurs.
Startups vs Entrepreneurship
This brings us to the topic of Entrepreneurship, the big picture which I mentioned at the beginning of this episode so what I think about entrepreneurship. We often hear in the media the word “startup”, no doubt, because these companies want to disrupt industries worldwide. Now I used actually two buzzwords, the word startup and disrupt, disrupt meaning to upset an industry. Entrepreneurship on the other hand is more widespread and significant than “just” disrupting industries via startups. Entrepreneurship means managing and organizing an enterprise with initiative and risk-taking.
What are the most entrepreneurial countries in the world?
What do you think the most entrepreneurial countries are in the world? USA, Finland, Switzerland? Well, not really. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Nr 1 is Uganda, Nr 2 is Thailand, then Brazil, Cameroon, Vietnam, the list continuing like this until we get to the first developed country which did not make it into the top 25, but made it to the 26th, Australia. In Uganda, every fourth person, and in the US about 4% of the adults have a business. By the way, this makes the country of USA the 41st. I saw this first-hand in Thailand and in Vietnam, where you have the feeling that everyone sells everything, and this is why you have the impression for example in Bangkok that a lot of places smell like food because they’re selling food almost around every corner, sold by entrepreneurs.
I feel that entrepreneurship should become more widespread also in the developed world and it’s actually happening, we see that startups are making headlines in the news; in hardware it’s happening because of the lowering of the entry barrier to this field because of new hardware innovations, manufacturing innovations, accelerators, crowd-funding becoming more and more available.
Why I gave this name to this podcast
In the spirit of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s basis of ranking and also going back to the meaning of entrepreneur which I elaborated on, instead of being mesmerized by the word startup that want to change and dominate the world, I believe instead, we should keep our eyes open for other companies as well, small and medium-sized companies. Some of these cannot, or do not even want to get big. This is the reason why I considered the naming of my podcast more appropriate which contains the word entrepreneur. Bigger, for a company, does not necessarily mean better. Just think about the VW Beetle ad, “Think Small” where they challenged the status quo in the world of big cars, or the Apple ad, “Think different” where they challenged IBM’s “think” slogan and with this move, they challenged also IBM’s way of doing business. Why not consider hardware more than just a movement about startups, companies that want to go big and dominate the world? With this podcast hopefully you get to see some examples also for this case, this latter case, for smaller companies even operating as a family, who find success in hardware.
The future of education and its connection with entrepreneurship
Another angle worth considering when talking about entrepreneurship and its significance with regard to creating a better place, a better world, is that it is this field that points to the future of education, which will hopefully will lead us to be able to catch up with the exponential growth that we see in technology. Educational innovators today are talking about 3rd generation and entrepreneurial universities. These are going to be hubs for innovation, so not only for inventions as it is currently. Their vision is to create a place where researchers get connected with industry and entrepreneurs and work together in a collaborative manner, so thereby commercializing research results. Another initiative that is worth mentioning in my view is project-based learning. I think we’ve all seen this happening because when we are given a project we are given also a specific goal towards which we have to work and this creates effective circumstances for learning, for deeper learning. Such a project is undertaken typically in a group-setting ideally for learning, using the latest technologies. Just to mention one example for such an initiative which is based on such a teaching method is the THINK Global School, where students travel around the world and they get immersed into projects. In hardware, we have maker faires where students display their work, similarly to a project-based school, and we have hackathons which is also project-based because there’s a group-setting where they create and present products.
Podcast formalities: format
Before closing it off, this episode, here comes the formalities, so the format to expect. In each episode I’ll interview hardware founders and leaders, that is entrepreneurs, for a length of about half an hour, plus minus 10-15 mins. The beginning is going to be kind of freestyle, so I’ll ask questions very much relevant to the interviewee, followed by a set of questions, which is called ultrafast round. I might have also special guests and bonus episodes as well which also depends on you, listener, on your inputs. This is why feedback from you would be highly appreciated, so I can provide the answers to some of your pain points and questions.
To finally close off, this episode, I hope you, listener, are looking forward to the upcoming episodes. I believe in my mantra, which is “Everything is connected to everything”, so I could hopefully show you how hardware entrepreneurship doesn’t stand alone, but it connects with the bigger picture of entrepreneurship, even with field of software which these days more and more blends together with hardware. Stay tuned.
