Maker Pro News: Maker Faire Bay Area 2017

Internet of Things Technology
Maker Pro News: Maker Faire Bay Area 2017

You’re reading our weekly Maker Pro Newsletter, which focuses on the impact of makers in business and technology. Our coverage includes hardware startups, new products, incubators, and innovators, along with technology and market trends. Subscribe today and never miss a post.


“Three years ago, I was at Bay Area Maker Faire, sitting here like you guys.” –Siren Care Founder Ran Ma

Launching a Startup at Maker Faire

Maker Faire Bay Area was a blowout destination for maker pros of all stripes, from hardware entrepreneurs to bespoke artisans. Take Franklin Robotics (@FranklinRobotic), a Massachusetts startup working on a compact solar-powered bot named Tertill, designed to roam a garden plot and kill weeds with a tiny weed-wacker as it avoids crops and flowers.

Franklin plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign for Tertill this summer, said CEO Rory MacKean (@RoryMacKean), but he’s been bringing the company to Maker Faires for years so that his team can gather feedback from fellow makers as they iterate the product. One example: before deciding with the weed-wacker design, his team experimented with a design that deployed herbicides. But a fully organic design resonated with Faire-goers, and they embraced that model in the builds that led to the current prototype.

“Maker Faire is great,” MacKean told us. “It’s really helpful to get in front of people and get their feedback. I think it’s more valuable before you launch: you want to make sure you’re building something people want.”

Live From the Make: Pro Stage

In the Maker to Market Pavilion, we were lucky enough to host a nonstop roster of entrepreneurs and experts, from intellectual property sage Bob Zeidman to HAX founder Cyril Ebersweiler to a panel of USMC Innovation Challenge participants, who are tasked with improvising solutions on the battlefield and beyond.

Driving the narrative were the stories by maker pros themselves — accounts of success, but also of failure, frustration and astounding perseverance. Ran Ma, for one, drew a mammoth crowd with a warts-and-all chronicle of Siren Care, the medtech startup she founded to create a smart sock that helps patients manage diabetes care.

Photo by Hep Svadja

Siren Care nabbed the TechCrunch Hardware Battlefield award early this year, but the journey to that recognition that Ma recounted onstage was a grueling stream of rejections by partners, investors and accelerators. And Ma’s talk came full circle: it was rubbing shoulders with other entrepreneurs at a previous Maker Faire that drove her to drop out of business school and pursue her Siren Care dream.

“Three years ago, I was at Bay Area Maker Faire, sitting here like you guys,” Ma said. “I never thought I would work in hardware.”

That was an ongoing theme, by the way: going pro can be richly rewarding, but it probably won’t be easy. Our very first presenter, Chris Lawrie, said as much of his work developing business strategies for maker pros at Vectric.

“I’m going to talk about entrepreneurs,” he said, “making the very difficult transition from a prototype to selling a product.”

Among the Maker Pros

We reported last week that Kickstarter is teaming up with Avnet (@Avnet) and Dragon Innovation (@dragoninnovate) to launch Hardware Studio, an initiative that will provide information and support to maker pros planning to crowdfund a physical product.

Photo is courtesy of Kickstarter

At Maker Faire, representatives from all three partners confirmed key details — and their enthusiasm for the initiative was abundantly clear. Hardware Studio will be comprised of two parts: a publicly-accessible “toolkit” of resources on planning, sourcing and manufacturing hardware, and an application-only “connection” component that will provide personalized support. Paid consulting services will be available from Dragon and Avnet.

According to Avnet spokesperson Bob Merriman: “Those makers who are inspired to take that next step and Kickstart a product are an inspiration to us.”

Also at Maker Faire, Tinkercad (@tinkercad) announced a dizzying new feature selection including embedded circuits and Lego exports. And Glowforge (@glowforge) shared an exciting update as well: its eponymous, crowdfunded laser cutters are now in production and will ship to backers soon.

Perspective from a First Timer

The Maker to Market Pavilion was loaded with agritech maker pros. We talked with Eric De Feo, the founder of an elegant, pod-based hydroponic vegetable growing system called Root (@growwithroot), about takeaways from his first ever Maker Faire Bay Area.

“It’s always good to put your product out there, so you can prioritize what people actually want,” he said, showing off pods bursting with mint, sage, oregano, lavender and even ripening strawberries. “As an entrepreneur, this is a really great expo.”

Elsewhere on the Maker Pro Web

Tesla legitimized the electric car, and electric bicycles have slowly become an important sector, but a new report points to the growth of electric motorcycles as well. Case in point: Zero Motorcycles (@ZeroMC), is selling beefy, domestically manufactured battery-powered bikes that, aesthetically, would make Hunter S. Thompson proud.

On the Make: blog, Predictable Designs Founder John Teel has a new breakdown of unexpected manufacturing costs associated with mass manufacturing.

It’s a little gross and a little cool: researchers at MIT have created a workout shirt that uses living bacteria to vent itself automatically in response to sweat.

Photo is courtesy of MIT

Make: senior editor Caleb Kraft profiled Evezor (@evezor), an open source robot arm that can work as a CNC tool, a laser cutter and even a bartender.

Robocop is an ‘80s classic, but are officials in Dubai taking it too far with plans for a police station staffed entirely by robots? The astonishing thing, if it’s not just posturing, is the near-future goal date of 2030.

Discuss this article with the rest of the community on our Discord server!
Tagged

DC Denison is the co-editor of The Maker Pro Newsletter, which covers the intersection of makers and business. That means hardware startups, new products, and market trends.

DC manages customer stories at Acquia, the digital experience company.

View more articles by DC Denison

Jon Christian is the co-editor of the Maker Pro Newsletter, which covers the intersection between makers and business. He's also written for the Boston Globe, WIRED and The Atlantic.

View more articles by Jon Christian

ADVERTISEMENT

Maker Faire Bay Area 2023 - Mare Island, CA

Escape to an island of imagination + innovation as Maker Faire Bay Area returns for its 15th iteration!

Buy Tickets today! SAVE 15% and lock-in your preferred date(s).

FEEDBACK