Product Startup Podcast Episode 205: Better Electronic Product Engineering

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today, we learn the process and best practices of electronic product design from an EE design platform CEO.

00:00:07 Kevin Mako: This is the Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in hardware product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between.

00:00:17 Kevin Mako: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for hardware startups.

00:00:22 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. I'm very excited to introduce Tomide Adesanmi to the show.

00:00:26 Kevin Mako: Tomide is the founder of Circuit Mind, an electronics engineering platform

00:00:30 Kevin Mako: that supports heavily improved EE design and development.

00:00:33 Kevin Mako: Today, Tomide will share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers

00:00:37 Kevin Mako: on how electronics product startups are leading the charge, what best practices are in electronics

00:00:42 Kevin Mako: engineering and consumer product development, and tools to improve the electronics design process.

00:00:47 Kevin Mako: Now, on to the episode.

00:00:50 Kevin Mako: This show is produced by Mako Design, the original firm providing end-to-end consumer product

00:00:55 Kevin Mako: development services tailored specifically to hardware startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:01:01 Kevin Mako: Take your product from idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com.

00:01:06 Kevin Mako: Now on to the episode.

00:01:09 Kevin Mako: Hi, Tomide. Welcome to the show.

00:01:10 Tomide Adesanmi: Hey, good to see you, Kevin.

00:01:12 Kevin Mako: It's great to have you on the show. It's nice to see you again.

00:01:14 Kevin Mako: I know we've been in discussions and many of our team members have been working with you guys

00:01:18 Kevin Mako: and looking at all the amazing things that you're doing at Circuit Mind, which is incredible

00:01:22 Kevin Mako: for the electronic engineering field.

00:01:24 Kevin Mako: Today, I'm really excited to talk about not only electronic engineering, but how hardware

00:01:29 Kevin Mako: startups can look at electronic engineering, why it's so important.

00:01:31 Kevin Mako: important in these days. What's happening in the world of innovations that have

00:01:35 Kevin Mako: electronics baked into them? And what are some of the best practices of how to get your electronics

00:01:41 Kevin Mako: invention to market quicker, more effectively, higher quality, at a lower cost and all these other

00:01:47 Kevin Mako: sort of great things that are really advancing very quickly in the electronics engineering and

00:01:52 Kevin Mako: electronics product design field. But before we get into all that great stuff, to me,

00:01:56 Kevin Mako: to just give us a bit of a background of how you got to be the big success story that you are today

00:01:59 Kevin Mako: with Circuitmind.

00:02:00 Tomide Adesanmi: Still working on big success story, but let's start with a small success story. So I'm

00:02:05 Tomide Adesanmi: Tomide. I'm the co-founder and CEO of CircuitMind. Before Circuit Mind, I was an electronic systems

00:02:11 Tomide Adesanmi: engineer, so I used to be in the field. I used to build helmet mounted display systems and heads-up

00:02:15 Tomide Adesanmi: display systems for jet fighter pilots at a company called BAE Systems. It's an aerospace space and

00:02:21 Tomide Adesanmi: defense company in the UK. One day, I was just kind of looking back at my career and I thought,

00:02:26 Tomide Adesanmi: look, I spent four years on a couple of different projects, took a couple of different projects, took a

00:02:30 Tomide Adesanmi: $10 million. It takes four years to launch a product. And I just kind of look back and

00:02:34 Tomide Adesanmi: thought, look, I spent a lot of time on doing tedious tasks that I didn't necessarily have to do.

00:02:39 Tomide Adesanmi: I didn't do the best, most creative things that I wanted to kind of accomplish. And so I started

00:02:45 Tomide Adesanmi: looking for solutions. And that's what brought me onto the path of developing automation solutions

00:02:50 Tomide Adesanmi: for electronics engineers. So, you know, I left BAE Systems, met my co-founder who was an

00:02:55 Tomide Adesanmi: algorithm engineer. I always formed circuit mind to build algorithms for electronics.

00:03:00 Tomide Adesanmi: electronics engineers. We've raised money from Google, Silicon Valley, et cetera, et

00:03:05 Tomide Adesanmi: et cetera, launched to many different customers across North American, Europe, and Asia. It's been

00:03:10 Kevin Mako: a really great journey so far. Yeah, it's amazing. I appreciate you mentioning it. You're very

00:03:15 Kevin Mako: humble, but you know, you've raised close to $10 million, including some major Silicon Valley

00:03:19 Kevin Mako: backers, including Google, of course. So kudos to you. I know you've worked with hundreds of hardware

00:03:25 Kevin Mako: companies over your history, your career, as well as with circuit mine. So you

00:03:30 Kevin Mako: really see what's happening at the forefront of hardware product development, especially

00:03:34 Kevin Mako: for electronics products, which is a huge vertical. I think a macro design more than half of our

00:03:40 Kevin Mako: products. I mean, we deal with all mass manufactured consumer products, but I would say the majority of them

00:03:45 Kevin Mako: have some element of electronics in it. So that's why we have a full stack electronics engineering team,

00:03:50 Kevin Mako: because it is very much a requirement today in developing new hardware products to be on the

00:03:56 Kevin Mako: the leading edge of not only new technologies, but new innovations.

00:04:00 Kevin Mako: or reinvention of existing innovations now with electronics components. So, of course,

00:04:05 Kevin Mako: in order to design, engineer, and build those hardware products, you need to have rate technology

00:04:10 Kevin Mako: and electronics design in order to be able to put all this stuff together. So before we jump into

00:04:16 Kevin Mako: some of the nitty gritty, just give me a high level of what you're seeing in the electronics product

00:04:21 Kevin Mako: world as of late 2023, early 2024 here, Tomide. Yeah, let me give you, you know, my thought on

00:04:29 Tomide Adesanmi: the electronics product development ecosystem. So I think the first thing that everyone would

00:04:35 Tomide Adesanmi: agree with is that electronics products are becoming more ubiquitous. They're in everything now.

00:04:41 Tomide Adesanmi: When Elon Musk is talking about self-driving cars, building rockets that can go to Mars,

00:04:47 Tomide Adesanmi: when you're talking about renewable energy systems, carbon capture systems,

00:04:51 Tomide Adesanmi: IOT systems, et cetera, et cetera, the kind of conclusion you come to is that the world needs

00:04:58 Tomide Adesanmi: more electronics hardware. So it's a very interesting phenomenon. I think this is where

00:05:03 Tomide Adesanmi: there's loads and loads of opportunity for people who are gritty, who are resilient and who are

00:05:09 Tomide Adesanmi: ready to kind of dig in to building something, you know, atoms rather than bits. Yeah, that's great insight.

00:05:16 Kevin Mako: And I mean, talk about what you're seeing, especially from hardware startups, because from what we see,

00:05:20 Kevin Mako: there's been a massive revolution where corporations essentially are spending potentially less

00:05:25 Kevin Mako: in R&D, but more in acquisition because they're letting the next hot hardware

00:05:32 Kevin Mako: startup come up with the idea, develop the proof of concept, get some early units to

00:05:36 Kevin Mako: sale, and then they buy them out and scale them. So we're seeing a very large shift,

00:05:41 Kevin Mako: let's call it, innovation coming from the bottom up as opposed to the top down. And I'm curious

00:05:46 Kevin Mako: what you're seeing being behind the tools of the trade as well.

00:05:49 Tomide Adesanmi: Large corporations have become quite slow and sluggish innovation. Coming up with something new,

00:05:55 Tomide Adesanmi: that's risky, that's unproven, is because of the, again, the iterative life cycle of

00:06:02 Tomide Adesanmi: hardware, it's quite difficult for them to almost do a like sort of lean iterative approach

00:06:08 Tomide Adesanmi: to building something very new, very risky that has never existed before.

00:06:13 Tomide Adesanmi: So what we're seeing is the people that take this leap, the people that take this jump are more

00:06:18 Tomide Adesanmi: of these kind of hardware startups, a smart maker in his garage, who has ideas, who wants to be an

00:06:25 Tomide Adesanmi: inventor, who wants to be Ironman, or Tony Stark. They're almost dreaming. They're

00:06:30 Tomide Adesanmi: almost pragmatic, but also world beaters. Those are the people that are coming up with these new

00:06:35 Tomide Adesanmi: inventions. And then you have, like you said, these corporations waiting in the wings to kind of

00:06:40 Tomide Adesanmi: swipe them up and add to a new business line or a new product of the portfolio.

00:06:45 Kevin Mako: What are you finding that these hardware startups are looking for in order to get their

00:06:51 Kevin Mako: product to market? Like, how do you get to market well? And what is the demand now? And what is the demand

00:06:55 Kevin Mako: now from the earlier stage innovators, inventors, the early stage Tony Starks, as you

00:07:00 Kevin Mako: say, that are trying to build their next hot hardware product and get it to market.

00:07:05 Tomide Adesanmi: Yeah, I think that's a great question. So, you know, one of the things that I see from a lot of

00:07:12 Tomide Adesanmi: entrepreneurs, innovators, people who want to invent is that if they weren't in the electronics or

00:07:17 Tomide Adesanmi: hardware industry before and they want to build something new, when they get into the industry,

00:07:22 Tomide Adesanmi: they're incredibly shocked at how archaic all the tools and all the processes are to try to get

00:07:29 Tomide Adesanmi: something into market. In the software world, we're used to this idea of lean product development,

00:07:34 Tomide Adesanmi: where you can come up with an idea, write some code and have a janky UI in a garage, you know,

00:07:42 Tomide Adesanmi: you have all the stories of steep jobs and Bill Gates of building stuff, putting an out to market,

00:07:46 Tomide Adesanmi: iterating on it, etc. The problem, though, is in the hardware world, you can have that, right?

00:07:52 Tomide Adesanmi: On the first design cycle, you've made a mistake and then go back to the drawing board.

00:07:57 Tomide Adesanmi: At the same time, you're trying to organize your supply chain.

00:08:00 Tomide Adesanmi: You're trying to reduce your bill of material costs as much as possible.

00:08:03 Tomide Adesanmi: You're trying to get the best performance, power performance.

00:08:07 Tomide Adesanmi: You're trying to fit in a small form factor for your IoT product.

00:08:11 Tomide Adesanmi: And you're trying to do all of these things all at once.

00:08:14 Tomide Adesanmi: It's very hard to find tools that can help you to make this a more agile process.

00:08:19 Tomide Adesanmi: So people are looking for agility and to get the best possible product at the end of their design process.

00:08:26 Kevin Mako: That's great.

00:08:27 Kevin Mako: I mean, it all comes down to you want to be efficient with your spend, you want to iterate quickly,

00:08:32 Kevin Mako: and you want to have high quality product that fits whatever it is at the use cases that you're looking for.

00:08:37 Kevin Mako: And especially as a hardware startup, you should really be looking at starting lean,

00:08:41 Kevin Mako: not only in the design, development, engineering and all that,

00:08:44 Kevin Mako: making sure you're working with folks and designers that understand that startup mentality,

00:08:47 Kevin Mako: but as well, you want to be thinking.

00:08:49 Kevin Mako: about your own feature set, keeping it relatively stripped down.

00:08:53 Kevin Mako: We throw the word around a lot, minimum viable product.

00:08:56 Kevin Mako: MVP, you really want to be thinking about what features you're going to roll out on your first

00:09:00 Kevin Mako: version of the product.

00:09:02 Kevin Mako: And then what features you're going to potentially scale into for your subsequent pro versions,

00:09:06 Kevin Mako: whatever else that might be down the road as you use your first product to get some traction,

00:09:10 Kevin Mako: some money potentially from sales and or investment.

00:09:14 Kevin Mako: So looking at the product in two ways, trying to think about how you can be lean and efficient as a

00:09:19 Kevin Mako: startup on the development side, but also lean in terms of your feature sets,

00:09:22 Kevin Mako: offering something great to the world, typically solving the original one or two key pain

00:09:26 Kevin Mako: points that you were addressing with that innovation that you originally came up with and

00:09:31 Kevin Mako: not trying to go too much into feature creep. So that brings us back to the tools.

00:09:36 Kevin Mako: And let's talk about, since there's a show today about electronic engineering.

00:09:40 Kevin Mako: Let's talk about the electronic engineering process. Just give a bit of a high level

00:09:45 Kevin Mako: of what it looks like going from redboard to circuit design to PCB design and firmware

00:09:51 Kevin Mako: and then on to various stages of prototypes and whatnot.

00:09:55 Kevin Mako: Let's get a quick overview of the types.

00:09:57 Kevin Mako: And then I want to dip into the actual tools and software, including circuit mine and how

00:10:01 Kevin Mako: that actually plays into creating those efficiencies, the quality supply chain and all those

00:10:06 Kevin Mako: other benefits that a good electronic engineering team should be looking for when

00:10:11 Kevin Mako: developing out any version of a product, but especially the first version.

00:10:14 Tomide Adesanmi: Perfect. I love to kind of walk you through it. So the design process is just bear in mind at a very top level. On average, you will be doing three to 10 iterations to get to a final electronics design. And in between those iterations, you'll be doing prototyping and testing. So you'll be ordering these things. You'll be assembling them. You'll be prototyping them testing and then going into those iterations. This is why it's going to take you six to 24 months.

00:10:44 Tomide Adesanmi: So how are those broken down?

00:10:46 Tomide Adesanmi: So you have the initial point where you are coming up with your requirements and creating your

00:10:52 Tomide Adesanmi: electronic circuit architecture.

00:10:56 Tomide Adesanmi: So you draw a block diagram that says, I want a microcontroller, I want a Bluetooth, I want the

00:11:01 Tomide Adesanmi: Bluetooth to have this range, and so on and so forth. So you create this kind of top level requirements.

00:11:07 Tomide Adesanmi: In your requirements, you also want to capture non-functional things like, I want the bomb cost to be at

00:11:14 Tomide Adesanmi: most this. I want it to fit in this form factor and other things like that. The next thing

00:11:20 Tomide Adesanmi: you do is you then go out and then start finding your major components, the key pieces of your

00:11:26 Tomide Adesanmi: component. And the problem with this is you're going to digi key, many different distributable

00:11:31 Tomide Adesanmi: websites. You are reading data sheets to try to find out whether these components meet your

00:11:38 Tomide Adesanmi: requirements and also are compatible with each other. So this is key. So you're choosing

00:11:44 Tomide Adesanmi: major components, then you go and then you choose all other components and do what we call

00:11:48 Tomide Adesanmi: schematic capture. So this is where you're selecting components, connecting them together,

00:11:53 Tomide Adesanmi: adding all the things around them that make a circuit function. During this process,

00:11:58 Tomide Adesanmi: you're also doing analysis, analysis on things like power consumption, cost, et cetera,

00:12:03 Tomide Adesanmi: et cetera. And then after this, you do placement. So this is where you position on a software

00:12:08 Tomide Adesanmi: tool, you position the components on a board. And this board is three.

00:12:14 Tomide Adesanmi: dimensional because it also has layers. So it's two dimensional and then it has

00:12:18 Tomide Adesanmi: layers. And then you do your routing, which is connecting the pins of these components together in

00:12:25 Tomide Adesanmi: such a way that they don't cross each other. And also, there are the things that you are taking

00:12:30 Tomide Adesanmi: into account like signal integrity, electromagnetic interference, and other things like this.

00:12:36 Tomide Adesanmi: So this is kind of the whole end-to-end process. You're usually doing different versions,

00:12:42 Tomide Adesanmi: different fidelities. If you think about like a prototype, a UI prototype, you have different

00:12:48 Tomide Adesanmi: levels of fidelity. The first one, you have EVT, DVT, PVT. Evt, PVT is I wanted to just

00:12:55 Tomide Adesanmi: function with the most minimal things. I might development boards, eval boards and just put it together.

00:13:02 Tomide Adesanmi: DVT is I want it to get as close to the final thing as possible form factor, you know, functionality and

00:13:08 Tomide Adesanmi: so on. And PVT is, I want this to be the manufacturable thing.

00:13:13 Tomide Adesanmi: The process is cut across in different kind of dimensions.

00:13:16 Kevin Mako: That's super helpful. I appreciate the big overview there. A lot of steps. It does sound daunting

00:13:21 Kevin Mako: if you're new to electronic engineering, but the reality is the process that has been outlaid here

00:13:28 Kevin Mako: really makes design robust. You start in layers. You look at it almost as a pyramid.

00:13:33 Kevin Mako: You've got your foundation, which is your specifications, and then using that information

00:13:38 Kevin Mako: to really figure out what your components are, drafting them together into a rough breadboard or

00:13:43 Kevin Mako: roughing them together. We literally have them on a bench test, sometimes just solder

00:13:47 Kevin Mako: together various bits and pieces. Then you're actually building out some of the elements as well

00:13:51 Kevin Mako: that might play into it that wasn't noted as the firmware element, depending on the type of electronic

00:13:56 Kevin Mako: firmware is a big piece of it. That's essentially the software behind how all these electronic pieces

00:14:01 Kevin Mako: go together. You'll be starting to write firmware code as early as your original circuit design

00:14:05 Kevin Mako: on your breadboard, but it gets much more advanced as you go into PCB as you're laying it out,

00:14:10 Kevin Mako: as you mentioned and then further on into getting it manufactured ready. We call it Dfm

00:14:14 Kevin Mako: design for manufacture grade. So you're actually ready to produce. The reality is if you follow this

00:14:18 Kevin Mako: process with people who know what they're doing and are seasoned, especially working in a startup

00:14:23 Kevin Mako: mentality, it isn't nearly as complicated as it sounds because it's very isolated to your core

00:14:29 Kevin Mako: components, the core variables that you put together, everything reverting back to the vision,

00:14:33 Kevin Mako: which is the specification document that you have. And at the end of the day, if you follow this

00:14:37 Kevin Mako: process, if you don't skip step,

00:14:40 Kevin Mako: If you don't try and shortcut really key and really important developmental learning elements

00:14:46 Kevin Mako: and experimentation and testing of these things, as you mentioned, that's a piece that happens

00:14:51 Kevin Mako: between iterations of prototypes. If you follow that process, at the end of the day, you end up

00:14:56 Kevin Mako: with a world-class product. And that is really phenomenal, not only because you've now achieved

00:15:01 Kevin Mako: the functionality that you want, the features that you want, it's the real thing, the real product,

00:15:06 Kevin Mako: but you've created a tremendous amount of intellectual property along that path as well.

00:15:10 Kevin Mako: You've got really a fantastic system now, both hardware, underlying firmware and software

00:15:16 Kevin Mako: and use case and whatever else, that is your proprietary value to the product, or at least

00:15:20 Kevin Mako: much of it is likely at that point, especially if it's a custom design product from scratch,

00:15:25 Kevin Mako: much of it is likely proprietary and gives you a tremendous amount of IP value to your product,

00:15:31 Kevin Mako: let alone, of course, user value because we want it to be a great product at the end of the day.

00:15:35 Kevin Mako: So let's drill down. I want to finish out the episode here talking about specific

00:15:40 Kevin Mako: tools and how circuit mine is improving the process, how it's making it more efficient,

00:15:44 Kevin Mako: how it's using AI to help these processes, better quality, better integration with everything

00:15:50 Kevin Mako: from ideation to supply chain. Talk a bit about circuit mine, how it works and how it's improving

00:15:55 Kevin Mako: the lives of designers and engineers. I know we very much appreciate the work that you guys

00:15:59 Kevin Mako: are doing at Mako Design. So give everybody a bit of a technical understanding, whether

00:16:04 Kevin Mako: you're a technical founder or non-technical. This is important that you're working in the right way with

00:16:08 Kevin Mako: your teams. And Tomide can give you a description of really how that's done best practices

00:16:13 Tomide Adesanmi: today. So you perfectly articulated on that process. And one of the things I would say is there's a reason

00:16:20 Tomide Adesanmi: why the process has evolved to that. It's basically been extremely experienced engineers working for

00:16:27 Tomide Adesanmi: decades to come up with the process that's bulletproof to get you to a product that actually

00:16:33 Tomide Adesanmi: really works. And so what we do at Circuit Mind is we try to help you

00:16:38 Tomide Adesanmi: There's four main things that we're trying to really help in that process. The first

00:16:42 Tomide Adesanmi: one is, can we rapidly speed up that process? So the process that I mentioned from going from

00:16:49 Tomide Adesanmi: that idea, the concept, those major components, getting a schematic captured and analysis on

00:16:54 Tomide Adesanmi: that schematic, we want to make you a thousand times faster in doing that. That's the first thing.

00:17:01 Tomide Adesanmi: One thousand thousand times faster. And it's actually much more than that, but I think

00:17:04 Tomide Adesanmi: one thousand times just captures the imagination. The second one one,

00:17:08 Tomide Adesanmi: is to help you optimize your design. Because right now, because you have so many

00:17:14 Tomide Adesanmi: hundreds of thousands of, you know, major ICs out there, integrated circuits, the major

00:17:19 Tomide Adesanmi: components. So you're not really optimizing for performance cost, power size. We want you to get the

00:17:25 Tomide Adesanmi: most optimized design for your need. So if you are an IoT startup and you want a long battery life,

00:17:32 Tomide Adesanmi: right now you're able to do a design that's giving you three weeks of battery life. Can you double that?

00:17:37 Tomide Adesanmi: The third one is the iterative.

00:17:38 Tomide Adesanmi: iterations you should do in your design process should come because you're doing exactly

00:17:42 Tomide Adesanmi: what you said, Kevin, which is you're starting from a stripped down version and just adding

00:17:47 Tomide Adesanmi: more. Not because you have making mistakes, but that happens all the time. Every single

00:17:53 Tomide Adesanmi: time you'll make a mistake and you have to do an iteration and then reducing respins from

00:17:57 Tomide Adesanmi: chip availability issues. So that's what we're trying to do. Speed you up, optimize,

00:18:02 Tomide Adesanmi: prevent respins from errors and availability issues. So that's what circuit mind does.

00:18:07 Tomide Adesanmi: And what we use is deterministic algorithms that can help you go from architecture.

00:18:13 Tomide Adesanmi: So that block diagram, high level requirements, to a completed schematic capture,

00:18:19 Tomide Adesanmi: that's what the platform does. So here's how it works. This platform would sit alongside all

00:18:25 Tomide Adesanmi: your electronic computer-aided design tools that exist today. It's not replacing anything.

00:18:30 Tomide Adesanmi: It sits on top of them to help you generate a design you can build on top of it.

00:18:34 Tomide Adesanmi: It focuses on the front end of your design process. So that's that.

00:18:37 Tomide Adesanmi: architecture, that component selection, schematic capture, and analysis, like supply chain

00:18:42 Tomide Adesanmi: and bomb analysis, and verification. So you specify your requirements as a block diagram at a high

00:18:49 Tomide Adesanmi: level. Most people will have a block diagram, either in PowerPoint, on a piece of paper, etc.

00:18:54 Tomide Adesanmi: You can specify lower level requirements on each block. Oh, I want my microcontroller to be from

00:18:59 Tomide Adesanmi: ST. I want to make my memory size greater than or equal to 30 megabits, whatever you want.

00:19:05 Tomide Adesanmi: You can specify with sliders, tradeoffs.

00:19:07 Tomide Adesanmi: like cost, size, power, availability of components.

00:19:11 Tomide Adesanmi: Click a button.

00:19:12 Tomide Adesanmi: The platform will look at quintillions of potential design options.

00:19:17 Tomide Adesanmi: Check for compatibility.

00:19:19 Tomide Adesanmi: Check for all the addresses.

00:19:21 Tomide Adesanmi: Check for registers.

00:19:22 Tomide Adesanmi: All of that stuff.

00:19:23 Tomide Adesanmi: Connect the components together.

00:19:25 Tomide Adesanmi: Add all the supplementary components.

00:19:27 Tomide Adesanmi: Pull-ups, pull-ups, pull-downs the coupling capacitors, and get you an answer.

00:19:31 Tomide Adesanmi: And kind of this is the key to the platform, this solution, exploration,

00:19:34 Tomide Adesanmi: and initial design that you can build on top of.

00:19:37 Kevin Mako: Well, to be, we really appreciate the work that you're doing because you make the job of

00:19:41 Kevin Mako: designers and engineers and testers and all of that easier and everything's constantly improving.

00:19:48 Kevin Mako: And that's one of the big themes with electronic engineering is every year there's more tools

00:19:52 Kevin Mako: and more systems and more algorithms, more improvements to the existing software and so on

00:19:57 Kevin Mako: that makes it more accessible for hardware startup specifically that don't have potentially

00:20:03 Kevin Mako: big budgets or long timelines to be able to get their ideas from what's in their

00:20:08 Kevin Mako: head to a manufactured product.

00:20:10 Kevin Mako: And that's what's key.

00:20:11 Kevin Mako: The key is to be on the leading edge of those innovations.

00:20:14 Kevin Mako: So as you're designing and developing these products, you can get to market faster at a higher

00:20:19 Kevin Mako: quality or more iterations or whatever else it is that is adding value to the hardware startup

00:20:24 Kevin Mako: so that hardware startups can get to market with more product.

00:20:27 Kevin Mako: And that at the end of the day is a really important trend in the industry, as we talked about

00:20:32 Kevin Mako: at the beginning of the show.

00:20:33 Kevin Mako: But something that makes it so powerful for hardware startups, for anyone who's listening

00:20:37 Kevin Mako: today, understand that you're in that bracket as you're innovating your product or as

00:20:41 Kevin Mako: your company, if you're just in the idea phase, know that there's more available now than ever

00:20:46 Kevin Mako: before to get that product to market.

00:20:48 Kevin Mako: And that's something that you can increasingly rely on over time.

00:20:52 Kevin Mako: But now is of tremendous time, especially as we're rolling into 2024, as there's

00:20:57 Kevin Mako: so much happening in the market, as there's so much redesign of so many different products,

00:21:00 Kevin Mako: there's so much opportunity out there, as you mentioned it.

00:21:03 Kevin Mako: that it's important as the hardware start to try and understand when the technology

00:21:09 Kevin Mako: is ready for you and when you can start executing quickly on making your vision come to life.

00:21:15 Kevin Mako: Before I let you go, what is the website that folks can learn more about the software?

00:21:20 Tomide Adesanmi: Yeah. To learn more about circuit mind, you can visit www.comitmind.comind.io.

00:21:26 Tomide Adesanmi: So C-I-R-C-U-I-T-M-I-N-D.io.

00:21:31 Kevin Mako: And as always, I will.

00:21:33 Kevin Mako: put the links in the show notes below so anybody who wants to just click through can go through there.

00:21:37 Kevin Mako: Tomide, thanks again for all your words of wisdom today, is sharing how hardware development,

00:21:42 Kevin Mako: especially for electronics product is getting easier, faster, and better in almost every way.

00:21:46 Kevin Mako: And thanks for the tools of the trade that are helping make those visions become a reality

00:21:51 Kevin Mako: for so many hardware startups around the world.

00:21:53 Tomide Adesanmi: Thank you very much for having me, Kevin. I appreciate the work you do as well for all the

00:21:58 Kevin Mako: hardware companies out there. Thank you. Appreciate it. And take care. Cheers, Kevin.

00:22:03 Kevin Mako: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast.

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00:22:12 Kevin Mako: If you have any questions, guest suggestions, or anything else, feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email,

00:22:18 Kevin Mako: podcast at macko0.com. This show is hosted by Kevin Mako, North America's leading expert on product

00:22:26 Kevin Mako: development for hardware startups. And the podcast is produced by Mako Design, the original firm providing end-to-end

00:22:32 Kevin Mako: consumer product development services tailored specifically to hardware startups, small manufacturers,

00:22:37 Kevin Mako: and inventors. Take your product from idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com. That's

00:22:43 Kevin Mako: M-A-K-O-Design.com. Thanks for joining and see you again soon.