Product Startup Podcast Episode 197: From Hardware Startup to Scale-Up

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from a 30-year veteran of scaling hardware and tech companies on how to go from exploratory hardware startup to high-growth scale up.

00:00:08 Narrator: 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.

00:00:18 Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for hardware startups.

00:00:23 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today, I'm very excited to introduce Roland Siebelink to the show. Roland has been part of three companies that went from 10 employees,

00:00:30 Kevin Mako: to over 1,000 employees, starting with internet hardware back in the 90s. For over 30 years,

00:00:34 Kevin Mako: he has worked with dozens of hardware startups and hundreds of tech companies ongoing from startup to scale up.

00:00:39 Kevin Mako: For almost eight years now, he is the CEO of Midstage Institute, an organization that helps with scaling up startups. Today, Roland is going to share some valuable knowledge

00:00:47 Kevin Mako: for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on when to shift from startup to scale up,

00:00:51 Kevin Mako: how to properly transition into a high growth company, and how to ensure that you make the right move to ensure your scale up hardware company's success. Now, on to the episode.

00:01:00 Narrator: This show is produced by MakoDesign, the original firm providing end-to-end consumer product development services tailored specifically to hardware startups,

00:01:09 Narrator: small manufacturers, and inventors. Take your product from idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com. Now on to the episode.

00:01:18 Kevin Mako: Hey, Roland, welcome to the show.

00:01:20 Roland Siebelink: Well, thank you, Kevin. It's a pleasure to be here.

00:01:22 Kevin Mako: Well, we're really excited today to talk to you about that key transition point for a hardware startup between that startup mentality and that scale up mentality.

00:01:31 Kevin Mako: And whether you're a new inventor that's just starting out on your product development or your invention journey or whether you're an established startup, this is important to know

00:01:39 Kevin Mako: and to plan for. It's something that so many startups get excited for. Of course, everybody wants to scale and build a big business.

00:01:45 Kevin Mako: But how do you actually do it and how do you make sure that it's done right? And how do you wrap your head around the important elements of that transition

00:01:52 Kevin Mako: point between startup mode and scale mode to build the empire that you've dreamed up? Now,

00:01:57 Roland Siebelink: Before we get into all of this, Roland, just give us a bit of a background of your 30-plus year history in the space.

00:02:27 Roland Siebelink: companies that all just went from that very early startup mentality to a fast-scating company and ultimately to some established company in their specific niche.

00:02:37 Roland Siebelink: And so what I've really learned from that is like the patterns that come back again and again of what makes startups fail or what also makes them succeed.

00:02:46 Roland Siebelink: And these days, I typically help founders, hardware companies, other companies always in tech to avoid the traps, to focus on what matters most. Because it's

00:02:55 Roland Siebelink: really like showing company history in like a fast forward video that you would be looking at like seven times speed or something, right?

00:03:03 Roland Siebelink: I mean, in those three years, you would typically see 20 new executives come in, five changes of strategy, maybe even towards three CEO changes in some

00:03:11 Roland Siebelink: cases. Of course, we'd like to avoid those. But, you know, it's really like a very fast journey and nobody's really prepared for that.

00:03:18 Kevin Mako: That's great information. I appreciate your background. I mean, what better person to talk about transitioning from scale than somebody who's not only done it,

00:03:25 Kevin Mako: themselves, starting with under 10 employees and growing to these unicorn companies, 1,000 plus and under three years is crazy.

00:03:32 Kevin Mako: But you've also worked with dozens of hardware startups on that transition point. So let's get into the nuts and bolts of the starting big picture.

00:03:39 Kevin Mako: When is it time to stop acting like a startup?

00:03:43 Roland Siebelink: Well, I really tie this to this concept of product market fit, right? And I know every founder knows product market fit. They cannot always define it that clearly.

00:03:52 Roland Siebelink: But really, it is once you start seeing traction for your product, you start seeing a steady stream of orders come in, interest, people referring you to their friends.

00:04:02 Roland Siebelink: That's when really you should start focusing on exploiting that product market fit and no longer exploring the market, right?

00:04:10 Roland Siebelink: So that's what I'd like to say to founders. You know, in the beginning of startup is all about exploring, a little bit like a

00:04:17 Roland Siebelink: little mouse trying to find food wherever it can, right? But once you find a reliable source of food that gets replenished all the time, then why would you keep exploring?

00:04:27 Roland Siebelink: Now it's time to start exploiting that and making that source of food or that market your own. That is really where I think is this inflection point.

00:04:35 Roland Siebelink: Now, it's not as binary as it sounds, right? There's always, like, doubt, like, is this actually reliable? But the point I'm trying to make is, like, at least try to build on

00:04:45 Roland Siebelink: it, see how far you can stretch it. And do not get into the automatic mode of, like, well, this seems to be working. Now let's develop a new product on the side. I love how you

00:04:54 Kevin Mako: mentioned that, especially looking at the fact of traction in the early phases. It's something

00:05:00 Kevin Mako: that's so powerful, but so many hardware startups, I find they also underappreciate. The reality is, you as a new brand, as a very small entity that's

00:05:10 Kevin Mako: created this new thing, if you're able to get even just a few hundred sales or a thousand sales or so on, that's actually phenomenal

00:05:16 Kevin Mako: because you've done that without the firepower of a Fortune 500 product company behind you.

00:05:20 Kevin Mako: So imagine if you can do that, whether it's through crowdfunding or maybe just small early orders or Shopify through your website, Amazon, could just be through one purchase order

00:05:30 Kevin Mako: from a wholesaler distributor. Whatever the method is, it's really not important. The fact of the matter is you've created something.

00:05:36 Kevin Mako: You've gone through the journey of building this thing and getting it to production.

00:05:39 Kevin Mako: Now you've proven in just the limited resources that you have that some people are willing to whip out their credit card and purchase the same.

00:05:45 Kevin Mako: Well, now it's time, and I love the word that used, it's time to exploit that arbitrage. You have found, a niche, you've found something very powerful.

00:05:53 Kevin Mako: You've got a global marketplace now with the way the world is. So just having that transition point in your mind, understanding the true value of that

00:06:00 Kevin Mako: really should be inspiring to hardware startups to leverage what they've achieved just in a small way. Now, let's talk about getting into that a little bit deeper.

00:06:09 Kevin Mako: I want to dive deep into what acting like a startup really means in depth. And you've kind of highlighted that in terms of the exploration mode.

00:06:16 Kevin Mako: And then what's the mentality of somebody who's scaling?

00:06:19 Roland Siebelink: Absolutely. So there's a few aspects that I want to highlight. We already mentioned exploring versus exploiting, right?

00:06:26 Roland Siebelink: But there's also like how that startup typically operates. So in exploring mode before you have product market fit, very typically it's one or two very central

00:06:36 Roland Siebelink: founders that kind of direct a bunch of assistants. Typically, I say assistance around the breakfast table, at least before we went into remote mode with some companies, right?

00:06:46 Roland Siebelink: And so you get this founder being very central, almost being micromanaging in many ways, like I need this done, I need that done. And the reason

00:06:53 Roland Siebelink: why it's so centralized is because there's still an exploration mode, so they often want to pivot like every week, every month, you know, let's try this, let's try that, right?

00:07:02 Roland Siebelink: So that is totally appropriate for that phase, but it's no longer appropriate once you say let's start exploiting this source of revenue.

00:07:11 Roland Siebelink: What you need then is to start getting much better at not just assigning tasks but assigning whole areas to people.

00:07:18 Roland Siebelink: So for example, if you have hired somebody for marketing, it's no longer good to say, okay, for this week, I need you to set up like a crowdfunding page.

00:07:26 Roland Siebelink: And for that week, I need you to work on social media. No, their job is like our brand should be out there. Our lead should be coming in.

00:07:33 Roland Siebelink: You figure out how to do it and how to prioritize that, right? So that's on the people side. You mentioned the word inventor before. I think that's a very

00:07:42 Roland Siebelink: common pattern, especially in hardware-related startups, right? And I think the part that is important there is many people identify with their technical background, with

00:07:51 Roland Siebelink: their invention capabilities, and actually think that as soon as you start getting traction, the job is done, right? But actually, that's when the job just begins.

00:08:01 Roland Siebelink: Because if you want to become like one of those big successful startups, like a Fitbit or something else in the hardware's face, then it's only starting when you get your

00:08:10 Roland Siebelink: first traction and now your mentality needs to shift from am I building a product to am I building a business and some people really are not up for that their whole mode of

00:08:20 Roland Siebelink: being is like I want to be a tech guy I want to be an inventor well in that case you probably want to you know at least not be the leading

00:08:27 Roland Siebelink: person in the company and you want to have more of a business person being in charge you can still be

00:08:32 Roland Siebelink: there and have a big role to play but the focus should not be on keeping inventing new products

00:08:37 Roland Siebelink: the focus should be on how do we exploit that one product that has made us into a success.

00:08:41 Kevin Mako: That's powerful information about understanding your own desires and your own strengths and weaknesses because just that they're isolating the fact that if you really do want to be

00:08:50 Kevin Mako: technical, you can. The goal here isn't to take you out of the vision that you see as your role for your own company or your own product.

00:08:57 Kevin Mako: The vision is to understand where your weaknesses lie and where your strengths lie and appropriately divide those skill sets among the right people

00:09:04 Kevin Mako: who can execute the right way to, again, exploit the advantage that you have with this invention that you're starting to take market share with.

00:09:10 Roland Siebelink: I love how you propose to put that, Kevin, because really that is almost a psychological dimension of how to stop acting like a startup, right?

00:09:19 Roland Siebelink: As I said, the founder, the inventor in a startup in the early stage, is really like the

00:09:24 Roland Siebelink: know-it-all, like the spider in the middle of the web, who therefore feels they should do and know everything.

00:09:30 Roland Siebelink: As you start scaling, your whole job becomes from being the start. smartest person in the room to how do I become the dumbest person in the room? Because if I'm not,

00:09:40 Roland Siebelink: then I haven't hired the right people. It's like Steve Jobs said, and we know Steve Jobs was a micro-manager,

00:09:45 Roland Siebelink: right? But even he said, you know, at other companies, they hire smart people and then they tell them what to do. But at Apple, we try to do the opposite.

00:09:53 Roland Siebelink: We hire smart people so that they can tell us what to do.

00:09:56 Kevin Mako: That's very powerful. Love it. I love that expression. And I know, you know, we've worked for folks from Apple and we've been in around that space quite a bit. And it's a really

00:10:03 Kevin Mako: interesting mentality that they have about the processes of leadership, building in ideation and information from all levels, not just a top-down approach, right?

00:10:13 Kevin Mako: They actually look at it at both directions. So top-down, bottom-up.

00:10:16 Kevin Mako: And essentially, the goal there is the best idea prevails. And that is really what's powerful as a startup, especially because, of course, at the beginning,

00:10:24 Kevin Mako: I mean, you are the only person, you're the ultimate supreme leader. And you're the only report to you.

00:10:29 Kevin Mako: But as you grow, you really, especially if you're bringing in those folks who are smarter than you at those other areas, you want to be leaning on them and now you want to be

00:10:37 Kevin Mako: putting those things together. And I think that leads in a good segue about another question. So many

00:10:41 Kevin Mako: hardware startups especially, they're not necessarily interested in growing like some big, boring, stuffy corporations, right?

00:10:47 Kevin Mako: So from your experience, you've seen this work quite a bit in tech. How do you keep the excitement alive as a inventor founder as the company scales? Or in fact,

00:10:57 Kevin Mako: how can you make it even more exciting potentially as the business grows as opposed to becoming something or getting into roles that you're really not that interest.

00:11:04 Roland Siebelink: Yeah, absolutely. So I think the key to understand here is that it's not a binary shift from an early stage startup suddenly into a boring corporation.

00:11:14 Roland Siebelink: And I say that explicitly because I see way too many founders and founding teams thinking,

00:11:19 Roland Siebelink: okay, now it's time to hire somebody from like Google or from some other company with a huge hardware background. And they basically want the corporate recipes and prescriptions.

00:11:29 Roland Siebelink: But really those don't scale yet at that. stage, right? So the reason why I named my company Mid Stage Institute is because I think there's

00:11:37 Roland Siebelink: a specific mid-stage where the prescriptions for the early-stage startup do not apply anymore, but the prescriptions for a big corporation also do not apply yet.

00:11:47 Roland Siebelink: And so the analogy I would make is it's a little bit like adolescents, right? It's like a company, just like a person trying to find

00:11:54 Roland Siebelink: their own fee, trying to increase their autonomy, but at the same time still being quite dependent on investors.

00:12:01 Roland Siebelink: It's not a child anymore in a sense like, oh, look, it can talk, it can walk, how exciting. No, it actually has to show some results, but it's also not yet the stuffy guy

00:12:10 Roland Siebelink: in a suit, middle age who's never going to change anything anymore, right? It's still a time

00:12:15 Roland Siebelink: when you can keep inventing things, start embracing where your true strengths are, maybe drop some other ideas that in the end were not that good for you.

00:12:23 Roland Siebelink: And yeah, it's awkward, it's messy. It may not always be pretty, but it's a stage where you can really find who you truly are. And I think that the

00:12:32 Roland Siebelink: other thing to keep in mind there is, yes, you do want to be more robust. So, for example, many founders and inventors will resist anything to do with process, right?

00:12:41 Roland Siebelink: But a process is ultimately a way in how you can scale a team, how you can scale a company. What I usually say is, how can you do

00:12:49 Roland Siebelink: with just 20% that gives you the 80% of the results. So when I ask them to do a process, it's nothing

00:12:55 Roland Siebelink: more than a one-page steps list of like seven, eight, nine steps, these persons do this, these persons, to that. That's the output that gets to the next stage.

00:13:04 Roland Siebelink: No flowcharts, no 50-page documents, nothing that is as boring as a big corporation would need. Because guess what? You don't hire idiots yet at this stage, right?

00:13:13 Roland Siebelink: At this stage, you're very good at recruiting the smartest people, you know, hungry people, humble people that can really help you grow your company. All you need is to

00:13:21 Roland Siebelink: guide them a little bit along the right path and the rest they'll figure out.

00:13:24 Kevin Mako: It's important there. You've alluded to the fact that when you're a small company, you have so much essentially control and communication with your team.

00:13:32 Kevin Mako: If you have a three or a four person team, you get to work with those people quite often. So you're absolutely right. You're not going to hire bad people.

00:13:39 Kevin Mako: And if you do, you're going to replace them at some point in time probably sooner than later so that you can get the right person in the door because you have so much control.

00:13:46 Kevin Mako: There's not all these layers. Something we look at as startups, everybody, especially in the early phases, they're always afraid of the big corporation and all this.

00:13:53 Kevin Mako: But there's so many advanced. to being a startup. You're a lean, mean machine in the beginning phases. That's one side of it. But the other

00:14:00 Kevin Mako: side that you're alluding to here is you have a lot of control in the direction of your vision. And that's important. You are the inventor of this product.

00:14:07 Kevin Mako: So at the end of the day, even if you are hiring a marketing person or a salesperson, you still are the boss and you still want to ensure that your vision for

00:14:15 Kevin Mako: the product is matched. Now, you want it to be done the best way, of course. But that means that you've got a

00:14:19 Kevin Mako: tremendous amount of power behind the type of business that you operate. And there's all kinds of different cool companies out there doing really interesting things.

00:14:27 Kevin Mako: And typically, from what we see, especially as the successful hardware inventors, typically you're inventing something that you're

00:14:32 Kevin Mako: interested in because it's usually directly correlated to something to do with your own life.

00:14:37 Kevin Mako: So something that we've always advocated on the show to our clients when we're doing product

00:14:40 Kevin Mako: development and helping them get into the launch phase of the product is be yourself and be part of the brand. You are typically the best advocate and spokesperson, no matter

00:14:49 Kevin Mako: what background you come from, you are the best spokesperson for your brand. And of course, that correlates to the brand vision

00:14:55 Kevin Mako: and all these other exciting things that you get to direct as you scale with a small team and now a heck of a lot more resources in order to deploy those ideas, that vision, et

00:15:04 Kevin Mako: cetera. This whole midstage concept, I love how you look at that kind of adolescence concept. It's where you're starting to get

00:15:10 Kevin Mako: a bit of money and you've got a little bit of liberty, but you're also learning lots along the way and you're making some mistakes and that's okay.

00:15:16 Kevin Mako: What an amazing time for a hardware startup in that kind of mid-scale journey. So that is kind of the time to make some of those mistakes,

00:15:22 Kevin Mako: to learn who you really are, as you mentioned, to really be the best that you can be determining that so that you can really do well in that mid-stage area. Yeah, absolutely.

00:15:31 Roland Siebelink: And you know, you alluded to like, how do you keep that spirit alive, right? And I actually think that in the mid-stage is actually when you can keep the spirit

00:15:39 Roland Siebelink: alive almost the most because it is at that stage that really your job, becomes how do we keep that spirit alive through other people?

00:15:47 Roland Siebelink: Like how do I almost evangelize? How do I spread the faith? It's really about, you know, no longer being the sole evangelists, right?

00:15:55 Roland Siebelink: Starting to see other people buy into your story and sometimes even being better at spreading it than you yourself. And I do think it's so important to keep that zeal alive.

00:16:05 Roland Siebelink: You cannot yet get to a point where everything becomes boring, process and just bureaucracy, right? We want to avoid that.

00:16:11 Roland Siebelink: You alluded to that as well, Kevin, and I love the insight there that your key competitive advantage at this stage is indeed being that lean, mean machine.

00:16:20 Roland Siebelink: In other words, your agility, the way that you can make decisions really fast and respond to customer demands or to how the market is shifting

00:16:28 Roland Siebelink: really fast, that's the one thing you want to keep as strong for as long as possible. And that's also the reason behind why I typically discourage companies from launching like

00:16:38 Roland Siebelink: a second product or a second business line too early. Why? Because it increases complexity and therefore it reduces the agility

00:16:45 Roland Siebelink: of the company to be able to respond with their core products to how the market is shifting.

00:16:50 Kevin Mako: I'd love that you mentioned that about not going too quickly into more product lines or more extensions or more features. Feature creep is a huge thing.

00:16:58 Kevin Mako: One of our jobs as a hardware design firm specifically for hardware startups is to minimize feature creeps so that you can focus on quality

00:17:06 Kevin Mako: of the lesser features that you have that make sure you do a really good job. job nailing product market fit and, of course, the execution of it, meaning how good is the product

00:17:13 Kevin Mako: actually in manufacturing? After that, considering really carefully user feedback, but one of the big

00:17:18 Kevin Mako: things that we notice with pretty much all hardware startups that even go to market just with a very

00:17:23 Kevin Mako: niche, very specific version of their total addressable market, you know, they have this grand vision

00:17:27 Kevin Mako: for world domination, let's say, on the particular product, but they start, again, lean and mean with little feature creep, but doing a really good job executing to one specific

00:17:36 Kevin Mako: small fraction of that market. What ends up happening is it? It takes years to saturate that because they don't realize how large

00:17:44 Kevin Mako: that niche is on a global scale. So the only reason I would see somebody very quickly jumping into a second

00:17:51 Kevin Mako: product is if obviously if there's buyer demand from like bigger buyers and essentially have

00:17:54 Kevin Mako: purchase orders online, of course, do what you have to do to fulfill the orders. But realistically

00:17:58 Kevin Mako: speaking, if you just focus on doing a really good job of your first product wedge into the market and

00:18:03 Kevin Mako: then try and do your best to saturate it, you could have a multimillion dollar business just within a micro niche within a niche.

00:18:09 Kevin Mako: You'll have more feedback to really truly understand what the next variant is or version or like you say, other product line, whatever it might be to then diversify

00:18:17 Kevin Mako: and try and achieve scale now with more team members to help you actually execute on that scale as

00:18:21 Kevin Mako: well. So really, we love wedge into the market, small, do a really good job of that area, wedge in and then grow, which is different from corporate product development.

00:18:29 Kevin Mako: And I teach both than at the master's engineering level. So I look at corporate development for hardware products. I also look at startup product development.

00:18:36 Kevin Mako: And corporate gets all the sunshine, right? Everybody sees that the media talks about corporate design, what Apple's doing and how they're able to,

00:18:42 Kevin Mako: you know, capture whatever X percent of the market, like essentially overnight with a new release and

00:18:46 Kevin Mako: whatever else. And that's great if you're a big corporation because you've spent billions of dollars in

00:18:50 Kevin Mako: executing on all of those different bells and whistles and features and target demographic, etc. But you as a startup can't possibly afford to compete that way.

00:18:59 Kevin Mako: But what you can do is to rate your invention, obviously, which is something special, capture a piece of a market and then wedge into it from there.

00:19:06 Kevin Mako: And that is really what every hardware start up in the early stage to be looking to do is how do I get in and conquer this untapped

00:19:12 Kevin Mako: piece of the market because of my invention idea. Obviously, you've created that novel feature. Get in there, wedge, and then think about how you're growing into global domination

00:19:19 Kevin Mako: via the feedback you're getting on focusing on your first version of a product.

00:19:24 Roland Siebelink: Yeah, you're so right. And I think one, many founders do not realize how even a small niche in a big market is still a gigantic opportunity when you're early, right?

00:19:33 Roland Siebelink: And one that the big markets would often, big companies would not tap into because for them it's not big enough but it is for you second uh i would

00:19:41 Roland Siebelink: say those large corporations i mean you mentioned apple but there's many others essentially focus on the mass

00:19:46 Roland Siebelink: market right from the outset that's why they do all the research whereas as a startup you typically focus on visionaries on early adopters right especially at the beginning and

00:19:56 Roland Siebelink: that's a very different way of going about it those people are far more tolerant for certain bugs still being in there for

00:20:02 Roland Siebelink: documentation of being ready or not being that elaborate yet. So you can actually work in a far more agile way.

00:20:09 Roland Siebelink: And the other thing I wanted to say is I think it's also often just a blind spot, a little bit of the Dunning Krueber effect, right? Like when people are so unexposed to a certain

00:20:18 Roland Siebelink: area that they don't realize they're still, let me use the word incompetent in it. And what I would see particularly is technically oriented founders and inventors that

00:20:28 Roland Siebelink: think just because the product works, now it should just sell itself. That is actually a gigantic effort and that doesn't come automatic or for free.

00:20:37 Roland Siebelink: And so I think that often it's that misunderstanding that underestimating of what it takes to drive a fast-growing business on the go-to-market

00:20:44 Roland Siebelink: side that leads them to thinking, well, this is not working that well yet. So let me just invent a new product and maybe that will be better.

00:20:51 Roland Siebelink: But of course, you get stuck in that loop of like every time coming with something to market that you then don't fund enough to actually become a success.

00:20:59 Kevin Mako: Great information. Now, before I let you go, I know we're close to running out of

00:21:02 Kevin Mako: time here. I want you to talk a bit about what you're doing at midstage. You've been doing this for almost eight years now, helping in that exact portion of

00:21:10 Kevin Mako: converting from startup to scale. Talk about what you're doing there at midstage and where people can link to learn more.

00:21:16 Roland Siebelink: Yeah. So we do a combination of coaching and facilitation, typically for the leadership team at a growing startup.

00:21:23 Roland Siebelink: So the hardware startups we work with are typically between 50 and 100 employees

00:21:28 Roland Siebelink: when we get started and then typically we stay with them until they're close to IPO or maybe

00:21:34 Roland Siebelink: in the hundreds of employees when they've really found their feet and got into a solid stream

00:21:38 Roland Siebelink: of revenue. The combination of facilitation and coaching is because we typically work directly with the founders one-on-one, often founder-CEo, sometimes a CTO as well, helping

00:21:48 Roland Siebelink: them understand how their role is changing and how to live up to the next challenge. But then also working with

00:21:54 Roland Siebelink: the team typically on a quarterly basis, just setting the plan for the next quarter, agreeing,

00:21:58 Roland Siebelink: on everything, fishing up certain disagreements or misunderstandings that we can just solve right there and then.

00:22:04 Roland Siebelink: And so it's the planning they need to do anyway, but we just make sure that this is done right, that we get to good result, and that everyone's ready to hit the ground

00:22:13 Roland Siebelink: running right after the workshop. And that is just of tremendous value to our customers, that they just have that whole planning phase done. Everyone is on board.

00:22:21 Roland Siebelink: Even if at some point in time there is some executive that we say, you know, maybe they're not longer a good fit. Then we use, of course,

00:22:27 Roland Siebelink: those coaching conversations with CEO, founder, whoever the case may be, to say, well, can we find a way to get this person their next job maybe elsewhere?

00:22:36 Kevin Mako: That's super helpful stuff and a great thing that you're doing with your organization as well, building that scale. That top down level of coaching with

00:22:43 Kevin Mako: execution is so powerful, especially in that middle phase that we're talking about. As always, I'll put the show notes below for anybody who wants to click through as well.

00:22:51 Kevin Mako: Roland, thanks so much for being on the show. Look forward to talking to you again soon.

00:22:55 Roland Siebelink: Thank you so much, Kevin. It's been an honor

00:22:57 Narrator: and a pleasure and nice to meet all your audience. Thanks. Take care. Bye. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the product startup podcast.

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00:23:12 Narrator: feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email, podcast at MakoDesign.com. This show is hosted by

00:23:19 Narrator: Kevin Mako, North America's leading expert on product development, for hardware startups. And the podcast is produced by MakoDesign, the original firm providing

00:23:28 Narrator: end-to-end consumer product development services tailored specifically to hardware startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:23:35 Narrator: Take your product from idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com. That's M-A-K-O Design dot com. Thanks for joining and see you again soon.