Product Startup Podcast Episode 147: Move From Startup to Hardware Scale-Up

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from the head of hardware for a company that went from startup to billions on how to scale a physical product brand.

00:00:10 Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, the show that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors,

00:00:20 Narrator: product developers, manufacturers, and hardware industry professionals. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial

00:00:28 Narrator: idea to getting your product on store shelves. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business.

00:00:37 Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, one of North America's leading experts on hardware development for small product businesses. Now, on to the show.

00:00:46 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce Morgan Teachworth to the show. Morgan was the head of hardware at Meraki, a company which was acquired by Cisco for $1

00:00:55 Kevin Mako: .2 billion, and he's now the VP of Engineering and Supply Chain there. He has been involved in the development of hundreds of physical mass manufactured products leading

00:01:03 Kevin Mako: to approximately 16 million units of his product being sold around the world and his 15 -year tenure with the organization.

00:01:10 Kevin Mako: Today, Morgan is going to share some valuable knowledge and how inventors startups and small manufacturers can understand

00:01:14 Kevin Mako: the difference between developing a product to sell as a startup to then developing products to sell as a growing scale-up brand and what you can do in terms of best strategies

00:01:23 Kevin Mako: and practices for this kind of explosive hardware company growth in the product space. Now, on to the episode.

00:01:29 Kevin Mako: Hey, Morgan, welcome to the show.

00:01:31 Kevin Mako: It's good to be here this morning. Thank you. We're excited to have you on today to talk about scaling up your hardware

00:01:36 Kevin Mako: business. You have seen an amazing thing happen with Meraki as you were one of the first five employees there.

00:01:42 Kevin Mako: Scale it up to a $100 million runway within a few years, then got acquired for $1.2 billion by Cisco.

00:01:48 Kevin Mako: And you continue to be in charge of hardware as this thing scales up to a multi-billion dollar

00:01:53 Kevin Mako: enterprise. So when we're talking scaling and talking about how to build a business from just a first initial small business to

00:01:59 Kevin Mako: figuring out how to actually scale and how to migrate the methodology and all of the things that go in behind growing a business.

00:02:05 Morgan Teachworth: What a perfect person to talk to than having you on the show today. You know, actually, I'm really excited to go back to those roots of early Morocco and going to

00:02:14 Morgan Teachworth: think out loud about what it was like to put out the first product or the first couple of

00:02:20 Morgan Teachworth: products and really take them from that built in my garage aesthetic to primetime manufactured.

00:02:28 Morgan Teachworth: and then all the way to like manufactured at scale. It's a really interesting topic and it was a really fantastic journey for me.

00:02:37 Morgan Teachworth: Meraki was my first job as a product designer prior to being in product and then going from product to scaling manufacturing.

00:02:47 Morgan Teachworth: I was a RTL designer. I worked in basically computer programming for designing chips.

00:02:53 Morgan Teachworth: Product design is so much more interesting, so much more in my dynamic working with machinery, factories, and then being able to hold

00:03:02 Morgan Teachworth: a physical product that isn't just like a chip and a package, just an incredible feeling. And watching that business grow, I've been with

00:03:09 Morgan Teachworth: Meraki and with Cisco as part of that for about 15 years now, like watching that scale has really been amazing.

00:03:17 Morgan Teachworth: And the biggest thing that has changed over the course of going from small to large is how I think about, you can say the customer or you could

00:03:27 Morgan Teachworth: say the user, but really thinking about how we are getting that product to reach the customer,

00:03:34 Morgan Teachworth: how we're getting paid for the product, how we're getting it in the market, getting it accepted, and how much that's changed over the years from

00:03:42 Kevin Mako: small to large. Let's talk about that change because, of course, when you're getting a new product to market, you talk about that first version.

00:03:49 Kevin Mako: The whole goal is to get that thing produced and then try and get a bunch of people

00:03:52 Kevin Mako: the buy it. Generally online through Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or maybe direct to a retailer or through

00:03:57 Kevin Mako: a wholesale agreement, or maybe through one corporation, depending on the buying avenues that you have.

00:04:01 Kevin Mako: But the whole idea, especially as an early stage startup, is just get a few units sold, get a real customer that's willing to pay for that.

00:04:08 Kevin Mako: But it evolves substantially beyond that and fairly quickly as well. Tell us how that takes place. You talk a lot about customer in your talks around this subject.

00:04:18 Kevin Mako: Explain how the customer changes from just thinking of the customer as an end user to something much bigger than that and why that's important for scaling up your hardware brand.

00:04:27 Morgan Teachworth: All right. So walking through the stages, you're just getting started. You want to build a product. You're going to sell it to somebody.

00:04:34 Morgan Teachworth: In fact, you're basically going to sell it to your friend because you know somebody and they have a need. Because they have a need and you have a business,

00:04:40 Morgan Teachworth: they're your best friend, even if you didn't know them before. And so you want to build a perfect product for them. You're looking at every detail.

00:04:47 Morgan Teachworth: Like you're a product designer. You want every button to be right, every click to feel good, the packaging to be perfect, you build it. And you get it on

00:04:55 Morgan Teachworth: kick or you get it on the web and like people can see it and it's amazing and it's perfect. And it honestly, it's really expensive to put that thing together.

00:05:03 Morgan Teachworth: They are the best devices. They're amazing. And you get them out to those first customers. The solution, the software, the hardware,

00:05:12 Morgan Teachworth: it's been custom designed just for them. And you're selling it to them. You show them exactly how to use

00:05:18 Morgan Teachworth: You did some user study, but like you were eating your own dog food, like you know how this product works, and it's the most awesome thing to you because it's your baby.

00:05:26 Morgan Teachworth: You get some people to buy it, find out whether or not you were right about that. And then you realize that like, no matter

00:05:32 Morgan Teachworth: how good you are as a salesman, how good your sales team is, your customers are now your sales force. They're out there. They're pushing the product.

00:05:41 Morgan Teachworth: They're demoing it. And so that next phase is where your customer isn't the person you're shaking hands with and making the deal or the person on your website.

00:05:51 Morgan Teachworth: It's the next ring. And those are people who are experiencing the product in a vacuum or through the lens of somebody else.

00:05:59 Morgan Teachworth: And the way that that product is experienced is different. It feels different. And you start to have to adapt and react and

00:06:07 Morgan Teachworth: make the next version or make the next batch in a way that speaks to that broader audience. And from there. Hopefully you get some traction.

00:06:16 Morgan Teachworth: You've got success. You've found a way to manufacture this device in the batches of hundreds, maybe batches of thousands. You don't know who all your customers

00:06:23 Morgan Teachworth: are. And what really transitions is your customer becomes your Salesforce, whether that's your

00:06:30 Morgan Teachworth: direct sales force or whether that's a channel that you're trying to spell to. And now you have

00:06:37 Morgan Teachworth: people who are evaluating the product as a profit center for themselves. Are they going to make a living selling this thing?

00:06:45 Morgan Teachworth: Are they going to make a good profit stocking this? And they think about it very differently.

00:06:52 Morgan Teachworth: They start to think about, well, what is it like to receive lots of this product? Is it well packaged in its cartoning? Like, does it get damaged when we're holding it and

00:07:01 Morgan Teachworth: handling it? What's the loss? What's the return rate based on how it's being done? And now,

00:07:06 Morgan Teachworth: you know, everything that you cared about when you were thinking about one customer still vitally important because that end user is always the end user.

00:07:14 Morgan Teachworth: But now your stakeholder, your actual customer is the people who are selling it for you. You go through that phase. And depending on the

00:07:23 Morgan Teachworth: type of product, it could not just be the person who's selling it for you, but it could be the installer or the value added reseller or whoever's

00:07:32 Morgan Teachworth: doing the support and the config. My particular journey was through networking equipment, and that's a very specific type of enterprise

00:07:40 Morgan Teachworth: channel. But every product goes through this transition to having an ecosystem that supports it.

00:07:46 Morgan Teachworth: If your product doesn't have an ecosystem that supports it, you can't expect to reach a very broad market. So you have to be very, very conscious that your customer

00:07:55 Kevin Mako: includes that ecosystem. I really love that you bring up the different types of customers, especially from the early phase.

00:08:02 Kevin Mako: The easiest way that I look at to think about it is your first customer, really, they are your end users for the most part. But then it's the next year,

00:08:09 Kevin Mako: which is people selling to the end users, which is what you're talking about. These are the wholesalers, distributors, resellers, channel partners, brand ambassadors, brand

00:08:16 Kevin Mako: partners, influencer partners, you name it. It's essentially, let's call it a middleman between yourself being the one producing the product and that end user buying it.

00:08:25 Kevin Mako: And as you've seen, and as most product scale, they scale through this middle channel of resellers. From a small startup to a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

00:08:35 Kevin Mako: That just means generally your layer of that middle level gets bigger and bigger over time. Very few hardware companies become multi-billion dollar enterprises by

00:08:43 Kevin Mako: selling direct consumer from the day they start to the end of their days. Usually there's a huge growth period where they've got multiple different sales

00:08:52 Kevin Mako: channels operating under multiple different avenues. And that's what you're talking about here.

00:08:57 Kevin Mako: So what I want to do, Morgan, is talk about that transition phase and some tips and tricks that you have for it. So if you're somebody who's planning to,

00:09:03 Kevin Mako: of course, first sell the product or maybe you're a company that's already selling your first product and you're saying, yes, I want to amplify.

00:09:08 Kevin Mako: I have a great product and my users like it. I think that's a huge first step and a major milestone. The second thing is, okay, how do I amplify

00:09:15 Kevin Mako: this? How do I get into those resellers, those wholesalers? How do I look at customers in this wide

00:09:21 Kevin Mako: basket that you're talking about and expand my reach, possibly hundreds of times

00:09:25 Morgan Teachworth: more than you can do just selling direct to customers or direct to end users? So the way that I think about this is I work from really a product designer framework.

00:09:33 Morgan Teachworth: All of us who work in product design, we're versed in design thinking. What we do is we do a lot of need finding and then we try and design the product to

00:09:42 Morgan Teachworth: like fit those needs. And we've all been through the classes where we find product market fit. When you think about that, you're very, very focused. What is the customer?

00:09:52 Morgan Teachworth: Who is the user? and just taking that mindset and expanding the definition of user to include that channel sales,

00:10:01 Morgan Teachworth: to include the people who are doing the active sale or the people who are doing the value-added work. If you include them in that basic need finding, if you do your

00:10:11 Morgan Teachworth: usability studies for the entire flow and experience of the product, keeping that in mind, it will affect the development of the product. And it gets even bigger than that.

00:10:21 Morgan Teachworth: As you expand, like you start to think about your stakeholder group. And if you want every stakeholder group to be considered a customer or an end

00:10:29 Morgan Teachworth: user, you have to start thinking about the factory. You have to start thinking about the distribution center, the reverse logistics, all the way down to like literally

00:10:39 Morgan Teachworth: the person who is sitting on the line doing the physical assembly of the product. They're an end user. Like they are responsible

00:10:47 Morgan Teachworth: at the end of the day for you being able to provide value to the market, for you being able to claim that value, like they're taking a little piece of it along the way, but

00:10:56 Morgan Teachworth: that is not solely what you're giving them. If all you ever think about is like what the cost center of someone in your

00:11:03 Morgan Teachworth: value chain is, you're going to lose because they're not going to care about the value and they're not going to do their best or they're not going to be producing their best work.

00:11:11 Morgan Teachworth: So you really have to think about all along that chain. And it goes micro and it goes macro. And I'll explain what I mean.

00:11:18 Morgan Teachworth: At the micro level, it's like, who's assembling that product and who's putting it in the box, who are making the parts that go into that product. At a macro level, as you scale and

00:11:27 Morgan Teachworth: grow, you start to get feedback from the market about big decisions that you're making. In my time

00:11:34 Morgan Teachworth: at Meraki, like, many times I have gotten a tweet of a picture where somebody is like, I just bought a bunch of access points. Look at all the garbage they were packaged in.

00:11:43 Morgan Teachworth: Here's my big pile of garbage. How terrible is Meraki for the environment? And you look at it and you're like, dude,

00:11:49 Morgan Teachworth: you bought 150 access points and that's a big pile of cardboard. I don't know what you expected, but there are expectations.

00:11:57 Morgan Teachworth: You know, I filled a dumpster and now they had extra trash sitting around. They had to tweet about it. You're thinking about a very broad set of stakeholders and

00:12:06 Morgan Teachworth: customers. And if you can include them all in that design thinking exercise that you go through,

00:12:12 Morgan Teachworth: you can tune the product, the product experience, the package, the package experience, the

00:12:18 Kevin Mako: manufacturing in a way that balances the needs and at the end of the day, optimizes for your

00:12:25 Kevin Mako: business outcome. That's incredible. Great advice too, because a big part of that whole picture is in the product development cycle.

00:12:33 Kevin Mako: I know a macro design, we primarily work with early stage startups or scaling up small businesses. So most of the design work revolves around how to make

00:12:41 Kevin Mako: the product great for that end user and that customer. And that's where the vast majority of

00:12:46 Kevin Mako: the industrial design, mechanical engineering, electronic engineering goes, goes into figuring out how to make a great product.

00:12:52 Kevin Mako: But as you scale, first of all, you get a little bit more budget as you scale to look at these things in development, to consider more options, to look at more value ads as well

00:13:00 Kevin Mako: as cost centers or ways to save yourself from having problems, as well as opportunities to take

00:13:05 Kevin Mako: advantage of big things that might happen at any level of those stakeholder change along the way.

00:13:09 Kevin Mako: So what we see, especially as products evolve, is more thought about more elements of the product

00:13:14 Morgan Teachworth: than just the end user experience. And that comes into what you're talking about of considering many more stakeholders than just your own customer. Yeah, absolutely.

00:13:22 Morgan Teachworth: At Meraki, we have this idea of simplicity. Like, one of the things that we build into the products is we want the products to be simple.

00:13:31 Morgan Teachworth: You know, we want them to be simple to use. We want them to land in the market. It'd be simple to service, that kind of thing.

00:13:37 Morgan Teachworth: You know, that runs through the product marketing and how they want to put out the overall solution. But the fact of the matter is, is that as you think about,

00:13:44 Morgan Teachworth: actually designing the product, as you think about bringing the product to market, if you don't design your values into the process that

00:13:54 Morgan Teachworth: you use to bring the product to market or into the product itself. So like when I'm looking at a factory operation, I'm sitting there trying to simplify

00:14:03 Morgan Teachworth: the factory operation. Why am I trying to simplify it? It's not always just because I want an efficiency gain or I want more units per hour.

00:14:13 Morgan Teachworth: It's because I really believe that a product that is supposed to be simple should be simpler or simplified in

00:14:21 Morgan Teachworth: the manufacturing process, in the development process. You are what you measure. And so if you measure your simplicity through the process, you develop a simple product.

00:14:31 Morgan Teachworth: If you specifically lean into complexity, this can be a pitfall, especially for engineers. It's a hideously complex subject. I already

00:14:40 Morgan Teachworth: you with my team all the time. They say, you want a simple solution to a very, very, very complex problem. I say, yes, in fact, the problem is complex.

00:14:49 Morgan Teachworth: The solution may even be complex, but the implementation of that solution and the way that we sell the solution to

00:14:57 Morgan Teachworth: our customers, that has to be simplified. If you don't stop the flow of complexity, the inmates are running the asylum. And I think

00:15:07 Morgan Teachworth: we've all picked up a product where you look at it and you're like, how do I turn this thing on? How do I turn this on? I had a coffee maker in a hotel once.

00:15:16 Morgan Teachworth: I ended up taking it apart with a screwdriver to figure out where the on button was. And it was like really obvious. It was just like behind a thing that didn't have a deton.

00:15:24 Morgan Teachworth: You had to like touch it and pet it and make it happy and then it turned on. I had no idea. But once I took it apart, it was obvious. We've all held a product where you turn this

00:15:34 Morgan Teachworth: and you push that, like a function happens, and it's magic. And once you know how to do it, it's like you're a wizard and you've found the right

00:15:40 Morgan Teachworth: combination and like you summon the technology demon, but it's not simple. And it doesn't make a product that's easy to use and easy to sell.

00:15:47 Morgan Teachworth: But when you take it to the engineer who designed it, the team that designed it, like they all pick it up. And within three seconds, they've made it do amazing things.

00:15:55 Morgan Teachworth: And as, you know, an end user, as an executive end user, you were like, huh, no, no, like I can't even write an instructional design manual that explains that one.

00:16:03 Morgan Teachworth: If I can't explain it with the little IKEA dude, it's too complicated. That ethos, like the idea that the value you want your customers to be experiencing,

00:16:12 Kevin Mako: and every company, every startup has different values, but your values have to be pushed back up through the development chain or the product won't reflect them down the line.

00:16:22 Kevin Mako: That's incredible because simplicity is extremely important. I think from an early stage inventor putting a sketch on a napkin all the way up to yourself,

00:16:32 Kevin Mako: talking about it as a multi-billion dollar corporation. We've got a slogan at macro design, brilliantly simple design.

00:16:38 Kevin Mako: And that's a key slogan that we try and work with especially early stage startups or first time product developers because one of the easiest things that we see people fail

00:16:48 Kevin Mako: on is feature creep. And that's a very simple model to condense. It's simply decision making.

00:16:55 Kevin Mako: You can take the 10 things that your thing's going to offer and crunch it down to the one or two main value ads.

00:17:00 Kevin Mako: like what is the key invention and the key innovation that you came up with and focus on that and really nothing else and do that job well, especially in hardware.

00:17:09 Kevin Mako: Hardware can't fail. Hardware has to be good quality, especially this day and age, especially with online reviews.

00:17:14 Kevin Mako: So as a startup or even as a scale up or even as a multi-billion dollar corporation, it's important to really focus on just the must have benefit. Now, I'm talking about just the

00:17:23 Kevin Mako: features. What you're talking about is a whole level above that, which is not just in the features, but it's in your supply chain in the way that you actually package the product.

00:17:30 Kevin Mako: in the way that you distribute the product and ship the product, the way that you actually develop it, all these different elements and a whole bunch more on top of that as well,

00:17:38 Kevin Mako: all come down to the concept of simplicity in your organization. And that has been very beneficial to you, one of your top tips.

00:17:44 Kevin Mako: So something that as an early stage hardware startup, if Morgan's doing it at a multi-billion

00:17:48 Morgan Teachworth: dollar enterprise, you as a budget tight, time-tight, innovation -type, team-tight startup

00:17:55 Morgan Teachworth: should also be thinking very heavily about using simplicity in your model from start to finish. Yeah, definitely. Brilliantly simple, less but better.

00:18:04 Morgan Teachworth: And to be honest, it's easier to lean into that when you're small, like before you've gone through the massive amount of feature creep. And

00:18:12 Morgan Teachworth: in hardware, it's hard to hold on to that. It really is hard to hold on to that. If you look at

00:18:17 Morgan Teachworth: some of my more recent product releases, they make me grit my teeth a little bit from the level of complexity or like the level of feature that we've had to expose.

00:18:25 Morgan Teachworth: And this is one of the real challenges with physical product. These days, it's very common. You'll see like, you know,

00:18:32 Morgan Teachworth: the UX has clean and simple and then you can like click down into esoteric menus or into

00:18:39 Morgan Teachworth: complicated functions all the way down to like a line item interface that looks like a console from the 80s.

00:18:45 Morgan Teachworth: With any software, you have APIs and you can build beautiful things on top of them. And then you have basic dashboards that are there for you if you want the basics. And you

00:18:53 Morgan Teachworth: go as deep as you want. Like, you know, with hardware, it's challenging to conceal complexity.

00:19:00 Morgan Teachworth: We've all had the experience of when you've got a thermostat and like, it's real simple. There's

00:19:05 Morgan Teachworth: like a knob that you turn, but then you flip it down and there's 800 buttons and you're like,

00:19:10 Morgan Teachworth: I'm sure this is a very good thermostat, but I don't know what I'm going to do with it. Or like, one of those really fancy toilets, like the Japanese toilets with all the

00:19:18 Morgan Teachworth: buttons and you're like, all I need is a flush, man. All I need is a flush. If you were a version, virtuoso that this would be the best bathroom experience of your life.

00:19:27 Morgan Teachworth: You close the little panel with all the buttons and you just say, there's still a manual flush here. That's a fantastically designed product.

00:19:33 Morgan Teachworth: It does amazing, wonderful things that I will never know because it was inaccessible to me. But over the

00:19:40 Morgan Teachworth: decades that that product has been in development, the creep of features and the creep of additional things has made it inaccessible for a new customer.

00:19:49 Morgan Teachworth: And this is part of the challenge you get as you scale is you're designing a product for your existing customer base in many cases.

00:19:56 Morgan Teachworth: You're like, I can sell more to the customers that I already have. And like, they're asking for this and they're asking for more.

00:20:03 Morgan Teachworth: I know there's this bigger customer just out of reach that's asking for me to add significantly more to the physical product as well as the software

00:20:11 Morgan Teachworth: product. I'm going to go capture that whale. It's easy to forget that you still have new customers

00:20:17 Morgan Teachworth: or you're still trying to acquire people that are new to you or even focus. that are new to the industry.

00:20:23 Morgan Teachworth: If you innovated an industry into existence, as you scale,

00:20:28 Morgan Teachworth: you will become what you have hated. You will become disruptable. You will not be the innovator.

00:20:33 Morgan Teachworth: You will be the incumbent and tiny innovators will be chewing on your tail the entire time. Like, this sense is inevitable because you're popular. Other people want to be popular.

00:20:43 Morgan Teachworth: They want a piece of your business. All of us at scale fight against this fact that while we're getting disrupted. People will say, well, you have to disrupt yourself.

00:20:51 Morgan Teachworth: You have to disrupt yourself. You don't want to disrupt yourself. Disruption is disruptive. I don't know how to describe it. Like, disruption is disruptive.

00:20:59 Morgan Teachworth: It's bad. It's bad for your business. You can't destroy your business to win your new business. You, of course, need to innovate. But the path to innovation is not

00:21:07 Morgan Teachworth: like striking a meteor. It's not disruptive. Like, you don't bring innovation to your organization as you scale by punching it every once in a while.

00:21:16 Morgan Teachworth: You have a culture that never lets go of those values and never forgets that like talking to the whale, the biggest

00:21:25 Morgan Teachworth: new customer is as valuable a conversation as talking to someone who's experiencing your newest product for the first time.

00:21:33 Morgan Teachworth: We're all limited in the number of conversations that we can have. And when you're small,

00:21:39 Morgan Teachworth: when you're medium size, everybody in your organization is having a lot of conversations with a lot

00:21:44 Morgan Teachworth: of different customers, stakeholders, I'll call customers, users of all types. And as you you get even bigger and bigger.

00:21:52 Morgan Teachworth: You know, you get functions inside that are niche, that you get meta functions, you get layers of management, you get layers of bureaucracy, and you realize how many people

00:22:02 Morgan Teachworth: that we hired this year will have an opportunity to meet a customer this year. Depending on your type of product, how many of our new employees this year will actually

00:22:12 Morgan Teachworth: use our product? At Meraki, every new employee is supposed to receive a full stack, like an access point

00:22:20 Morgan Teachworth: in a switch and a router and take it home and set it up. And it's like a home training and there's some videos. It's really fantastic.

00:22:27 Morgan Teachworth: And it kind of substitutes for the fact that we used to make everybody go on a deployment. Everybody used to go in the field. And now we're too big for that.

00:22:33 Morgan Teachworth: So now everybody gets a thing at home. Then the supply chain crisis came in and we're like, well, we can't really give everybody

00:22:39 Morgan Teachworth: a thing. So I know that there are employees from the last two years who don't have any Meraki gear at home.

00:22:47 Morgan Teachworth: People who are selling it, the support. team, I'm sure, has it. Like, they have to have it. But like the other functions, marketing,

00:22:54 Morgan Teachworth: operations, like, they don't have the products that I've made. They're not even my own customers. That, it drives me crazy. It's like one of the first things I have to fix as the

00:23:03 Morgan Teachworth: supply chain turns around. But it's the real challenge with scale is that first you lose touch with a customer.

00:23:09 Morgan Teachworth: Then you forget how many different kinds of customers you really have, different stakeholders you have because you lose touch with your stakeholders as well. And then

00:23:16 Morgan Teachworth: eventually your product itself starts to lose touch. the people who are designing it lose touch with the user ecosystem, you get migration in that product

00:23:25 Morgan Teachworth: and eventually you disconnect from your values. And once you've disconnected from your values, you've disconnected a product from your company

00:23:32 Kevin Mako: culture and it's untenable. Good solutions do not survive a disconnect between the values of the people in an organization,

00:23:42 Kevin Mako: the values of the organization and the values that are communicated by the product.

00:23:46 Morgan Teachworth: So you've obviously been tremendously successful going from a very small, enterprise, a very large one. If you found that the principles that you're talking about that

00:23:55 Morgan Teachworth: continue to make it a success today, were many of the same principles that you had in the early days, which helped you become such a big success?

00:24:02 Morgan Teachworth: They are, but it's harder to hold on to them. In the beginning, we have an everybody in culture. Now we have an everybody in culture, but everybody

00:24:11 Morgan Teachworth: in is more about the broad spectrum of inclusion, the broad spectrum of diverse opinions. And that's the

00:24:17 Morgan Teachworth: right thing. Once upon a time, everybody in also meant everybody's hands are in every problem, or like every boot is on the ground to solve it.

00:24:27 Morgan Teachworth: I used to have a regular cadence of sending every single member of my hardware and supply chain team to boots on the ground with our

00:24:36 Morgan Teachworth: design teams and manufacturers in Asia. Even interns would get the chance to go out there and sit with those teams and learn the ecosystem.

00:24:44 Morgan Teachworth: People who never needed to go, people who are in a home office doing pure finance and had no plausible excuse to get out there, we would find

00:24:54 Morgan Teachworth: a reasonable excuse to get them out there just because everybody jumps. Everybody jumps. Everybody carries the gun, basically.

00:25:03 Morgan Teachworth: And as you get bigger, well, it turns out that's really expensive. So you find reasons not to send people. You don't really need to go. You know, you have

00:25:11 Morgan Teachworth: specialists who are handling the real problems out there. Maybe you even have a local team now. And the local team is there to cut down in your travel expenses.

00:25:19 Morgan Teachworth: You start to lose touch with everybody in also meaning everybody jumps. So it's important to look for opportunities for people to get

00:25:29 Morgan Teachworth: involved in either cross-functional initiatives or functions that don't directly pertain to their work

00:25:36 Morgan Teachworth: or darn it just get involved with a customer and a customer account. Even if they're just fly on the wall with a sales demo once in a while.

00:25:46 Morgan Teachworth: That's important. Sometimes you take some of your product team leaders and you send them to your company's global sales kickoff. Do they need to be at the global sales kickoff?

00:25:55 Morgan Teachworth: Absolutely not. Are they providing value? They're very interesting at the dinner. Salespeople, like they love to talk. They don't get to talk to that team anymore.

00:26:03 Morgan Teachworth: They're rock stars there. They have a great experience. What are they getting out of it? Well, they're seeing the product through a different

00:26:09 Morgan Teachworth: point of view and through a different lens. That's user need finding right there. My team forgets that the sales team is a user as much as the end user is.

00:26:18 Kevin Mako: So giving them a chance to actually sit with that team and understand the needs, just so important. You can never lose touch with who

00:26:26 Kevin Mako: your users really are, even if it's not the person who's physically holding your product on a daily basis.

00:26:32 Kevin Mako: I really like the theme that seems to be spread from the beginning of our conversation towards the end of it now, where even in the product development and as you scale,

00:26:40 Kevin Mako: you look at a customer as more than just your end user. You have to look at all these different

00:26:44 Kevin Mako: stakeholders. Well, as you scale, you also have to look at your team the same way, which is what you're talking about now.

00:26:49 Kevin Mako: So look at your team and keep them cross functional as much as you can. And obviously how that happens, changes as you grow. But I think the important thing that I can hear

00:26:57 Kevin Mako: from what you're saying is you've always had that idea to try and get back to those roots as best as you can, even as you scale, to try and get that interdisciplinary intelligence,

00:27:06 Morgan Teachworth: to be able to see from more lenses to open your eyes from just the tunnel vision that you might have in your specific role.

00:27:13 Morgan Teachworth: And that's both in the early days with the customer and now as you're scaling, obviously, with employees all over the world. Any last tips and tricks for

00:27:20 Morgan Teachworth: emerging hardware startups as they scale? Yeah. I mean, if you are sitting across the desk from someone or you're sitting across the WebEx or the Zoom from someone, and like,

00:27:29 Morgan Teachworth: you don't know what they care about. You probably have a user on the other side of some kind, some kind of stakeholder. And the fact that

00:27:36 Morgan Teachworth: you don't know what they care about, that's your biggest problem. Before you get to whatever the

00:27:41 Kevin Mako: point of that meeting is or before you put up your slide deck, you should really think about how am I going to end the next five minutes, understanding what the

00:27:51 Kevin Mako: folks on the other end of this actually care about. And how am I going to integrate that into my plan for my product and my offering as we move forward. That is a great tip.

00:28:00 Kevin Mako: I appreciate ending the note on that one. This comes back to the concept of really, truly listening to the stakeholders that are at play

00:28:07 Kevin Mako: and understanding what their true needs are before you start pitching what your solution is,

00:28:11 Kevin Mako: which seems straightforward, but so many people misunderstand that, and it comes down to every single call that you're on. Figure out what the other side wants, what you want,

00:28:20 Kevin Mako: and try and be the middle of that Zen diagram for that problem and solution. Somewhere in the middle is the perfect intersection where both parties get what they need.

00:28:27 Kevin Mako: Morgan, really appreciate you taking your time today for words of wisdom to new hardware startups as well as scale ups. Much appreciated. And we'll talk again soon.

00:28:37 Kevin Mako: Thank you. It's been a pleasure to be here. Thanks. And take care.

00:28:40 Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and

00:28:49 Narrator: turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent, the original and leading firm in North

00:28:57 Narrator: America to provide global caliber in-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product business clients.

00:29:06 Narrator: If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to MakoDesign.com.

00:29:12 Narrator: That's M-A-K-O Design dot com for a free consultation from one of Mako Design's Ford Design Studios from coast to

00:29:21 Narrator: coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.