Embedded - 65: Resonant Frequency of My Butt

Episode Date: August 27, 2014

Darma (@Darma_inc) is a nascent start-up focusing on optical sensors in a seat cushion to aid in posture, stress reduction, and meditation. Chris and Elecia speak with CEO Dr. Junhao Hu and Sharif Kassatly about building a company, going through the Haxlr8r's accelerator program, and choosing a crowd funding platform. Keep up with Darma on their webpage and on their Facebook page. One of their advisors is NASA's Dr. Joan Vernikos, author of Sitting Kills, Moving Heals. 

Welcome to Embedded, the show for people who love gadgets. I'm Elysia White. My co-host is Christopher White. And we have two guests today, Jung-Ha Hu and Sharif Katsatli. And we're going to talk about posture. Okay, did you just sit up straighter right then? Didn't you? It happens to everybody.

I know. Dharma, which is their company, makes a posture checking cushion for your chair that I'm going to ask them a lot about. And they're kicking off their crowdfunding soon. So they're in a really early position to talk to. And I, you know, I personally care about posture because I'm a software engineer and and my posture's crap, and so my back hurts. And I looked at making a posture shirt myself with five accelerometers and a T across the back and little tiny motors to tell you when you were out of alignment. And then the Luma back came and crushed my dreams.

And yeah, we have Luma lifts on order order so I still think posture is important but now let's get back to my guests and introduce them properly. Yung Hao, how are you? And what is your background? Oh actually I was born in China and then in 2007 when I finished my bachelor degrees, I go to Singapore to get my PhD. So I studied optical communication, optical sensor technology, and then I graduated from 2011. Then I joined a research institute to continue doing optical fiber sensor technology. And then in 2013, September, I quit my job, and then I decided to do my startups.

So yeah, and then I joined a hardware accelerator called Huxcelerator. So then finally I'm here. I'm attending the demo day and came into Silicon Valley. Yeah, so I'm very excited. That's pretty cool from fiber optics to Huxcelerator. Yeah, so I'm very excited. That's pretty cool from fiber optics to accelerator. Yeah. And Sharif, what about you? Hi, Alicia. Hi, Chris. Thank you for having us. So my story is a little bit different. So I was born in Lebanon. I studied mechanical engineering, both as undergrad, and then I came to MIT and did a master's there. Then I worked in management consulting for a couple of years.

And this is where I realized I really wanted to be more involved in tech and the value. So I came to Palo Alto, to Stanford to do my MBA. And this is where I met Jun Hao and we started working together. And I'm really excited about what we're working on. And so what is it you're working on? I talked a bit about posture, but maybe I didn't get it all right. Tell me more about Dharma. Yeah, actually, Dharma is the first cushion

that can track your sitting habits, including your posture, your sitting time, and even your stress level. And then could coach you to sit better in the office. Oh, is it going to coach me to have less stress?

Yeah, that's an interesting point. Yeah, it is our tricky point. Anyone cannot do it. Only Dama can do it. And so is this based on your fiber optic background? Yeah, I think so. Does it use fiber optic sensors? Yeah.

And so you measure, what do you measure? So we measure your poster and we measure your vitals so i can see how you can get vitals through fiber optics yeah i don't okay yeah no you're right i my mental image, probably is a four-year-old. So how do you get vitals from fiber optics? Actually, so you can... Because normally when you're trying to capture vitals, so it has many ways.

You can measure from your fingers, measure from your heart, measure from your ear. Well, a lot of people are doing the wrist mounted to LEDs and then Yeah, now one is similar to the one on the fingers. So it's an LED that shines to the skin and then gets some reflections. But for us, we're using

any different kind of method. We're using your body's shaking. It's very small shaking. When we have a habit, this very small gentle movement we capture it so we can get a habit so that's kind of more like when the emt puts their fingers on your wrist and actually feels your heartbeat yes that's right almost same thing like that but we are it is much more about your body's kind of big it's kind of shaking a little bit of shaking the resonance

frequency of my butt yeah that's right actually people are joking about it actually they're saying so so we have um input on tech france the title is today i measure my heart rate for my butt can you also detect respiration and breathing yes that's a very low oh actually the breathing is much more higher than compared to the heartbeat lower frequency obviously yeah but that's that's a very low oh actually the breathing is much more higher than compared to the heartbeat lower frequency obviously yeah but that's that's pretty cool actually because that's that's a measure of stress right yeah actually for the stress level so i think normally right now when you're mentioning about the watch can monitoring your heartbeat so most of them i can only give

you a heart rate it is a number It is average for about one minute. But for the stress level, you can only get a stress level when you get a heartbeat waveform. Oh, so instead of just counting beat, beat, beat, you need to actually see it goes up and then down and then up and then down in the actual way it looks like.

But the rate changes. I think he's talking about the rate change, not the specifics of the waveform, but your heart rate going up from 60 to 90 and then back. No, it is more difficult than that, actually. So the stress level actually from a number called heart rate variability. So what is heart rate variability?

So you can imagine right now, our heartbeat actually is not very standard. One beat after one second, another beat after another second, another beat. So normally, for example, I jump one beat, then for about 0.9 second. And then another beat, maybe it is 1.1 second. So it means our heartbeat is not average jumping, jumping. So the time difference between two labor heartbeats

is called heartbeat variability. So from this heart variability, we can know the stress levels. So you're measuring the jitter of the heart. That's right, yeah. And actually, the interesting thing is when this kind of difference is much more higher, the jitter of the heart that's right yeah and actually the interesting thing is when this kind of difference is much more higher means your stress level means your stress level is

lower so more jitter means less stress yeah so the more you're rock solid in clock yeah more stress you have yeah this is the weird this is the kind of medical kind of research result. I don't know. Well, I guess if you're stressed, you're kind of driven. Yeah. So the reason why this one, because for some right now, when you are trying to take a deep breath, so normally when you are breathing in,

your heart rate jumping higher, means frequency higher. When you're breathing out, your heartbeat slower down. So this is why some people saying, when you have very high stress level, you need to take a very deep breath. It helps you lower down your stress level. This is because when you're breathing out very much more slowly, you can lower down your heartbeat variability, and you can lower down your stress level.

And this is too medical. It's not engineering, actually. No, that's really neat. And you get both the very distinct beats so that you can measure the DT, the time between, from the fiber optic sensors, from measuring your movement, the very small movement in your body.

Yeah, that's right. Actually, for another point of view, if you want to measure your stress level, there are many ways. You can use something like your finger to get your heartbeat waveforms. You can also get the stress levels. But sometimes the stress level is not something like, yes, I want to know my stress level. I click something to my finger, and I know it.

So it's supposed to be, it's always know my stress level. I click something to my finger, then I know it. So it's supposed to be, it is always know my stress level. Then it remind me when I didn't feel about it. So this is why we decided to do a cushion. So it is always tracking. So when we know you have very high stress level, then we give you a reminder. I can just imagine having a horrendous meeting, getting really stressed,

and then having the cushion remind me. I don't know what would happen to the cushion at that point. How are you providing the reminder? Is it my phone that I'm going to be throwing across the room? Yeah, actually it can be three different kind of reminders. The first basic, very basic one is you have a vibration on the cushion using one of the little tiny motors and motors yeah very big about yeah yeah another thing is can be your phone and also can be on your desktop or your pc or mac so is this cushion bluetooth yeah bluetooth

okay that makes sense yeah and is it is it powered? I mean, do you have batteries? Yeah, of course. That's kind of cool. I think that's actually one of the advantages is because it's a cushion, it's not a tiny wearable. We can't afford to have a bigger battery in it. And so you actually charge it once a month and just forget about it.

Just the USB power cable into my cushion is going to get cushion? Yes. Yeah, if you want, we can give you the wireless charging if you feel the USB is too weird. Yeah, I think so. Because if you are saying, I'm charging my cushion. I'm sorry, I have to use the stand-up desk today. I'm charging my cushion. So how does respiration work into your stress level oh actually why we are including the

respiration rate because so when we're knowing your stress when we know your stress level is very high so at the same time when we're tracking your respiration rate i think just now i tell you lower down your stress lower down your breathing rate can help you lower down your stress level. So we can capture breathing rate or kind of your respiration rate. So we can use this rate to help you, to guide you to lower down your stress level much more accurate, much more efficient. You had an app that helped you

with slowing down your breathing. Yeah, it was a clinical study actually. Flowy? I think it was called Flowy. And basically it was a simple video game and you'd slowing down your breathing? Yeah, it was a clinical study, actually. I think it was called Flowey. Basically, it was a simple video game, and you'd hold down the button, and then the circle would expand while you breathe in,

and then you release it when you breathe out. And it would kind of train you to breathe slower. So it seems like you could do something extremely similar. That's right. Because you can directly read how you're breathing. You can know when you're breathing in, when you're breathing. Yeah, I can read. I can know when you are breathing in, when you are breathing out.

I can coach you to breathe in much more slowly, and then I can give you biofeedback. I can give you the real-time stress level data. So it's much more seamlessly. So you don't hold anything. You just sit on a cushion, watch your screen, and then listen to the music and guide you how to, when to breathe in, how to breathe out. So it's coming much more natural.

And so is the goal to use it in a corporate environment to monitor your posture? Or is the goal to learn how to meditate? Yeah, we try to meditate people, help people meditate much better. Okay. Yeah. See, I was thinking about using it at work and having it with me all the time. We try to meditate people, help people meditate much better. Okay. Yeah. See, I was thinking about using it at work and having it with me all the time. But the feedback, the biofeedback to calm down after a day seems a little easier.

It seems like you can do a lot of things. Yeah. That's right. So how does the posture part work? Posture, you can imagine it is a kind of a many detail kind of a sensors. We have sensors, right? You can detect your heartbeat, stress level. So if it's so tiny movement, we can detect it.

So when you're moving in, when you're leaning forward, leaning backward, left or right, we can know your changes. So we can predict your sitting postures. So it's more than one sensor. It's many. Yeah, a few.. Yeah, a few. Not many, a few. We want to know it on a cost, so it cannot be many.

More than two, less than 10. Yeah, more than 10. But enough to be quite accurate. So the way it works is we can actually detect the weight distribution across the whole cushion, and that's how we can

extrapolate your posture and know exactly what posture you're adopting. And do you have a goal posture? I mean do you want people to be sitting cross-legged meditation wise or sitting feet down like chair wise? Actually normally if you have if you buy a chair in office, the chair is already very smart to teach you how to sit. But normally, you don't follow it. So actually, if you're buying an iron chair or the steel case chair, it's very well designed already.

So you just need to follow all the curves from the back, sit very quiet, and then slowly here, here standing up straight it's all done already but people just forget about it because the chair is not smart enough yeah Eunho is sitting very straight and probably not

touching the back of his chair he's got great posture and Chris is over here like his head is nearly even with the top of his chair and his tailbone is probably on the

end of the cushion. I'm sure it's quite healthy. Yeah, so actually the cushion is something like we let you fully use your chairs very well because we can know how you sit. And do you think that this will train people to sit better without the cushion? Or do you think it's good while you're using it,

and when you're not, it's just different? I think it's going to be different. Because I think the cushion, the purpose is trying to... I think people want to have a bad habit. So first, they need something to guide them, treat them. Yes. Yeah, and then, and actually people don't want to change their behaviors to get a new habit.

So one-half cushion is something like, we can knock down the barrier to change your behaviors. So you don't need to change anything. Well, it's kind of like Fitbit doesn't make you walk more, but most people who get fitbits walk more because you get measurements and you get used to like feeding your fitbit at lunch so it makes you walk more so it makes you walk more but having i mean it's a pedometer it doesn't move your feet for you and so it sounds like this will help you with your posture because it's a longer term thing.

You know, you use it, you get used to it, you try it out, you figure out what your posture should be. I mean, saying sit up straight doesn't really help anybody. Yeah, you're right. And so this will build the habits. Yeah. I think that's cool. So how much is it?

And when are you shipping? Well, this is a very good question. So we're actually, unfortunately, we can't finish our price points yet. It's going to be a surprise. Yeah, there's going to be a little campaign around that. But what we can say is that it's going to be very affordable and within or even cheaper than your typical wearables

that you see in the market. Now, this is the special price reward for our early adopters. Only the people who back us contribute in our development to get engaged with our products. And this is early adopters. Where are you in our development to get engaged with our products. And this is early adopters. Where are you in product development? So actually when we are in the incubator, in accelerator, so we already get a lot of contacts in the manufacturing.

So right now we already have one basic prototype ready. And we have a form set down so right now we need more kind of engagement with the adopters to get engaged with the development give us their feedbacks they want so in details

so we can refine our designs to really give our products what they want so right now we are in the final stage for the production. Wait a minute. For large-scale production, or are you in the stage where you're building like 10 production prototypes to get more feedback?

Yeah, we already have about 10 prototypes. So we need kind of a big kind of contributions to make sure it is the wealth refined, and then we go to 100,000. And that's what Hackcelerator really is good at, is taking things from just a few and introducing you to Shenzhen manufacturers and helping you get a little bit of funding.

That's right. Yeah. So how long is the HackCelerator program and how did you get involved in it? So actually the HackCelerator program is a four-month period. So actually normally we... Actually I know HackCelerator because of my friend who is the first Singapore company who is going to Hacksalator. So actually he's doing a sexy toy.

A what? A sexy toy. Oh, okay. Okay, and then, okay, and then, okay. It's nothing done with my project actually because of him. I know Hacksalator, so I apply Hexalator, and then I get in. So in four months about the programs, so it's a wonderful experience in Hexalator.

So before I go into Hexalator, I have nothing, ideas how to do the manufacturing, how to get the manufacturing, how to get into every components manufactured in very small price and in very good quality, and even how to to to something like you talk to the to the manufacturer it's a kind of a questions to me but when i go to center and with the help for hacksulator they introduce us to a lot of very resourceful very good quality

manufacturers yeah it's very very helpful and do they help you with the funding side as well? Introducing you to VCs and helping you build your slide deck? Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah, and they have a lot of networks in Silicon Valley for the fundings. Because the program's run out of San Francisco, isn't it? They are running for the manufacturing in Shenzhen, for the fundraising in Silicon Valley. Yeah, in San Francisco.

We've had at least one Hacksaw Literator startup on before, Light Up. And they were on just over a year ago and then again about three months ago. And they promised they're going to ship that Kickstarter any day now. What funding model are you going after? You mean after Kickstarter?

Well, I mean, there's VC, there's bootstrapping from your own pocket, there's crowdfunding such as Kickstarter. Which of these big three are you going after? Or angel funding is probably in bootstrapping. Yeah, it's a very good question, actually. So I think what we're doing is we're already in the process of securing a modest seed round. But at the same time,

we also want to go after the crowdfunding option. Although we believe that we can, we're very comfortable raising more venture funding, we do want to go after raising directly from the crowdfunding community. And the reason why we want to do that is we want to engage with them in developing their product. We believe that Dharma is a very intimate product in the sense that people end up interacting with it for many hours every day

while they're sitting on it, whether it's the hardware or the software through the app. And so we really want to engage early on in the development process with our community to get their feedback and develop the product together. So that's why we're going after crowdfunding in addition to venture. And we're saying crowdfunding because you haven't quite chosen which platform. That's correct. And so Kickstarter, Indiegogo, are there any others you're looking at?

These are the big two we're looking at. When are you going to decide? When are you going to decide? How are you going to decide? Yeah, I think this is the things we're trying to decide. Something like because they have different kind of people on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. And Kickstarter has more big audience. Indiegogo has small audience, but they're much more globally. And also they have much more open platforms to embed into your own algorithms,

your coding to the platforms. But Kickstarter is much more popular for the hardware, and also in the US. So it's very, very tough to decide which platform we are going to. So yeah, it's very challenging. So right now we haven't decided yet. So US versus international. Yeah.

And then they have different... Different big audience numbers. So yeah, so there are a few differences. Indiegogo, for example, typically has a much stronger analytics tools and dashboard. So you can track much better where your referrals are coming from, how your campaign is performing, how your advertising is performing.

They also have actually a wider audience than Kickstarter does. However, on the flip side, Kickstarter tends to be more selective with their campaigns. So what makes it to the platform? And therefore, typically, the products, the campaigns have higher quality and the people who that end up on the on their pages are more

willing to buy and are are stronger buyers buyers and so both have you know their own their own advantages their own edges but also some maybe some things that don't work that well and so right now we're still figuring out which one is the best fit for Dharma. And what we advise people who are looking to raise money through crowdfunding on one of those platforms is to actually reach out to the people that work there. Every vertical, whether it's hardware or gaming, they have their own lead person.

And so just talk to them, learn more about the platform, what they have to offer. And I think that's what we're doing now. We're in conversation with them and trying to figure out which one is the best option. And Hackcelerator doesn't suggest one or the other, or do they help you get in contact with these people?

Yeah, they're helping us contact other people. But they don't have a preference. I've only talked to Hackcelerator and Kickstarter people, but that is because my sample size is small, not because it's... Yeah, actually, most of the Hackcelerator team is going to Kickstarter. Yeah, we have a Kickstarter page, actually.

Yeah, just Kickstarter slash Hackcelerator. Oh, okay, right, because it's like a curated site for Kickstarter, because Kickstarter has these, if you like NPR pr you'll like these products sort of things yeah well okay so you didn't want to talk about pricing you don't even want to give me a it will cost between ten and a hundred dollars or between a hundred and a thousand dollars no you can guarantee me like it's you can guarantee he's a surprise prize. Surprise prize. $10,000.

Surprise. A good surprise. A good surprise. What experience do you have that makes you think you'll succeed in Kickstarter or Indiegogo? Well, we're working very, very, very hard to make sure that we succeed. And we believe that as long as we, you know, take all the boxes and dot all the I's, we should be okay. What we've done, this is our first crowdfunding campaign, but we've talked to a lot of people who have done this before, who have succeeded. There are a ton of resources online in terms of what the best

practices are. And so we're just trying to get as much information, as much advice as possible. And we believe that with that, we're confident that we're going to succeed. Now, if for whatever reason that doesn't work out... Succeed with getting it funded. Yeah, with meeting our targets, our goals and targets. What about succeed after that? What if you get funded?

What makes you think you're going to build a company? That came out badly? I'm sorry. No, it wasn't a... It was just a... What experience do you have? Why would I fund your Kickstarter not knowing...

Not having heard of you before? Why? Well, I mean, almost every... Well, not almost. Every single company out there, every product out there started somewhere, right?

Um, every single founder was, was, was a first time founder at some point in their life. So I think this is, this is where we are right now. This is our first big project. We're very excited.

We think that we have the technical expertise, uh, and the, the, the drive, the, the, the,

uh, the ambition to, to make this succeed and to bring Dharma to life. And we're going to be working very, very hard to make that happen. And Hexcelerator doesn't want you to fail. And they do provide a lot of support. So, I mean, there's some of that. Absolutely. And we have a lot of support. That is true.

Yes, that's right. We have a lot of support from Hexcelerator. And we have a lot of support from very good advisors. So, yeah. Can you tell me anything about your advisor team? Yeah, of course. So right now, with advisor teams from the healthcare teams, we have Dr. Joan Vertico.

So she's the previous former life science director at NASA. So we have Charles Wang. So he's the founder of Guitar Hero so all kind of so it means we have the house we have the manufacturing for hardware how to do in the marketing in the US so we sat down to give them advice to us how did you get hooked up with the NASA director she's pretty busy uh actually um can you can you get me hooked up with her can she be on the show no yeah i can do my best to try to do that yeah actually it's quite um interesting story to how to get into uh dr john velico from nasa to getting on board for our advisor so actually uh

another time when we are doing a small cushion, we're thinking about we need advice on health to coach us how to do the health much better. So I just searched online and then I found out there's a book called Sitting Cues, Moving Cues. So it's written by Dr. John Vertico. So then it turns out I just sent an email to

her. Yeah. And then she replied. And then I sent them that detail about our what are we doing a very simple demo video and then she's very very excited actually so then we talk about three to four times and then we said um yeah she's on board the member the advisor yeah sometimes sometimes you get what you want just by asking yeah that's pretty cool yeah you just search online find some people you wanted just by asking. Yeah, that's right. That's pretty cool. Yeah, you just search online, find some people you wanted, and just contact them.

If they don't reply to you, get some reference, then contact them, and then, yeah, they will reply to you. And what is she helping you with, the medical part? I mean, are you looking at doing clinical trials? So we are planning to do that, because this is why we are doing crowdfunding. So we need planning to do that so because when we are so it means this is why we are doing crowdfunding so we net people to engage we net people try

we can do a kind of a hundred people trials to see how can we use the NASA's experience to help you to see better in office so it's not so it is beyond the technical part it is more about

about experience about the healthcare experience, the medical side, how to coach you, guide you into a better sitting habit. That's right. You too can be a gerbil with excellent posture. One of the interesting things about wearables and health wearables kind of exploding as a market is the line between a medical device and something that aids your health. And the line is kind of a legal one,

right? If you start claiming things like, well, if you use our cushion, you know, for a month, you'll experience lower stress levels or lower blood pressure. You can't say things like that without going through the FDA process. Whereas if you just you know if you're more vague so are you guys kind of navigating that space are you thinking about that are you considering going through the fda process so you can make some more claims because that's very difficult and expensive yes i know that so i mean so we definitely were going to give people bad experience by passing that by passing fda but we know fda is very expensive and it'll take about two to three years to do it so we will

continue to do to go into the fact to the fda but before we get fda approval we will still we are giving the people data so we try in small samples to give people data yes so i testing 100 people so how we coach them how we guide them what is their performance we are going to share all this information to the our adopters let them feel confident and let them feel yes we're really really contribute to to help them solve the problems so we know we are not a medical products so we cannot claim we can really help you but we're going to show you the data to say yes we're really really doing our effort to really try to prove that to get much more confidence to you to use our products i mentioned my shirt earlier and that was where i kind of got stuck was building enough of them to be able to take

them to lots of people and say, okay, does it actually work? Or is it just my imagination that some accelerometers and some motors can help you with your shoulder and back posture? So I think you're on a good track there. Yeah, that's right. So because we can get enough information about your sitting habits, not just a simple accelerometer to get some rolling information. There were like five accelerometers, not just one.

Yeah, okay, five. No, I'm not doing a competing product. And I really like the idea of heart rate and stress and helping you meditate. I think that's really cool. What are you going to do if it doesn't fund? What are your life plans if this doesn't work out? Well, I mean, as we mentioned earlier,

we're working very hard to make sure that it funds. It does. No, I got that. But if for whatever reason that doesn't work out. The economy tanks, it's not your fault. The economy tanks, you know, back like a couple of years ago. I think, well, obviously, first we'll look inwards and see what happened. Was it because we poorly ran the campaign?

Or was it that our product inherently doesn't have that market fit that we believe strongly that it does? And so based on what our findings are we'll have a better plan but what we know for sure is that we have a very powerful technology that could have many applications so we decided to go after a smart cushion and sitting as a first target just because we believe that there's a huge problem there and we have the opportunity to help a lot of people

but then there are a lot of other applications that we cannot you know also uh consider yeah actually i want to add one more things so i don't know why they're not cooler why they're not so the one so the one right now is quite popular in on kickstarter coolest cooler coolest cooler yeah okay the coolest corner so so the experience for them is six months ago they're on Kickstarter they failed they didn't get any they didn't achieve that goal

didn't meet their pledge yeah they didn't achieve the goal actually six months they didn't fund or they didn't ship

they didn't fund it they didn't fund it yeah they didn't fund it six months later they get 8 million funded on Kickstarter. 8 million.

So failing the first time doesn't mean failing forever. That's right. So although you believe your product is going to succeed, you can do more analysis to say what made the product didn't succeed on Kickstarter.

Maybe it's not because of your product. Maybe's not because of the product maybe it is because sometimes the time is not right maybe it is not a summer season something like

the cooler six months ago it is the winter nobody is buying cooler right now they launch in summer and then every people

buy it and then wow 8 million the audience is really fickle yeah so sometimes we should analyze something maybe the feeling is not because of about your product sometimes it's about timing sometimes

because i'll pull out pull off marketing so many reasons you should analyze which part is causing my feeling on kickstarter then you feel there's nothing wrong with my product every people around me like it you You should continue to do it. So this is my feeling. Actually, I have interviewed many people around me. People feel, wow, it's cool. I like it. So yeah, so even we didn't succeed on Kickstarter,

I think we're going to try again to build the products, make people use it. Because we believe the sitting problem is a big problem in the market. And we are doing the right things to help people solve our problems. This was a good answer. I'm glad I pushed. Some people are ready to go on to the next idea. And you're very passionate about this one.

And that gives me hope that you're going to be passionate and thorough. And I do hope your funding, once you get it thank you it all works out but even if it doesn't now i'm like okay well if i can't be an early adopter on kickstarter indiegogo i can still be an early adopter and i'm happy about that so thank you very much that was a good answer i know i pushed a bit. Yeah. How did you two meet? Yeah, it's a very interesting story, actually. So I think it's because of Silicon Valley, I think. Yeah, I guess it's one of those stories,

like the magic of Silicon Valley. So when Junhao moved here from China to raise funding, he actually ended up in my house in Palo Alto. He was subletting from a friend of mine, from a classmate of mine. And that's basically how we met. He literally knocked on my door and walked in. And so yeah, and then we started chatting and I got to learn about his company, his product, and I got really excited. I have horrible posture. I love technology. And then our skills were also complementary.

He brings the technical side I can complement with the rest. And so we just started working together in our living room. I know Silicon Valley is sort of like this. I remember Steve Dalton off the air was telling us that as he was going around Silicon Valley in Lyft cars, he would get to talking to the drivers, and invariably they were people who were thinking about doing a company, and that it was really such an environment

of everybody wants to build something cool. Almost like LA, everybody down there has a screenplay. Exactly. Exactly. But you haven't finished your coursework yet, have you? I have not, no. And so your MBA at Stanford next year? Right, so I have one more year to go.

And actually, some people ask, well, are you going to drop out? Because apparently that's always the cool thing to do. That's totally my next question. Happy to answer it. Yeah, and I guess my answer would be, I don't see a need to drop out right now. I think that actually the MBA,

specifically at Stanford, is a great platform to build a company and to refine a product. Are you using Dharma as homework? Because that's cool. That is definitely going to, yeah, absolutely. And it's super cool because you also get feedback from a ton of faculty members, other students. We have access to a lot of resources at Stanford.

So we think it's actually a strong point, not something working with us and for us, not against us. It's like having your professors as part of your board of advisors. Yeah, exactly. Without having to pay them. Well, it's without having to pay them directly. There's quite an expensive tuition, but we don't have to pay them directly.

So do you have any advice for people with an idea who are just starting out? What do I mean? You know, you a year ago, do you have any advice for the person who's in your position who has an idea and a passion about something and wants to get started but isn't quite here yet isn't quite here yet uh i think uh normally if you want to do in a startup right so normally you feel you have nothing help from anybody you feel lonely you don't sometimes you need to find co-founders need to find business side kind of helps so but actually if when you feel you have nothing

help from outside but if you continue to share your ideas with other people go to the meetups go to attend some conference apply some incubator and you will get help definitely so if you're just

trying to do it all the help is coming to you a lot of people with startup ideas want to be very secretive don't want to tell you anything about it

unless you sign an nda uh i think yes i think one year ago i'm in the same position yeah i don't want to share with anybody i think it's secret so yeah i think people are going to steal my ideas they're going to copy my ideas to do the same thing as me and they're going to be my competitors but taste of that yeah people don't care ideas are pretty cheap compared to execution that's right execution's pretty hard that's right yeah i think one one litmus test that someone taught me a while back was if you're really afraid that someone will copy your idea if they hear it maybe it's not such a good idea in the first place if it's not that defensible right so i think that's that's that could be something that for people to think about yeah when you have a fairly specialized skill set,

having worked with fibro-optics for years. Yeah, about six years already. It's probably easier for us to say that, but yeah. No, I think that's true all over. People say, well, you signed my NDA, and I'm like, I have a podcast. Don't tell me anything you don't want me to babble on air. What about you, Sharif? Do you have advice for people in the position you're in now?

Yeah, I think, I mean, it's kind of similar to what Junhao is saying, but if you have an idea, just talk to people, test it as fast as possible, because the sooner you, well, I mean, people say most ideas won't end up seeing the light of day. So the sooner you fail, you can move on to the next idea. And just keep trying until you hit something interesting. Because the next idea doesn't have to be different than this idea. It just has to be executed a little differently than you did this time.

And there's definitely a lot of lessons learned by testing. So I think just testing and talking about it, but then moving to execution as fast as possible. Definitely a lot of lessons there. Have there been any surprises so far? Yeah, so the surprises I'm not sure of. Yeah, quite interesting. So because a very long time ago, we were thinking about, yes, so yeah, we're very lonely, and then we're from Singapore,

and then we want to singapore and then we have we have we won't go to the u.s market but people keep questioning so yeah so you are from singapore you're not born in u.s how can you address u.s market so some people always question so and then we thought yeah yes yes yes and then we have advisor we have something else and then but something like when you're trying to push to it and then, yeah, people are coming around you and then we get helps. And then I met friends from Shreve classmate

and then it turns out that I'm living with Shreve and then finally, yeah, Renan, we're working together. So it's a very big surprise for me. Yeah, and it's quite exciting for me to get that Renan is helping us. I'm excited to be part of the team as well. I think for me it's just, speaking to what Junhao was saying,

the power of your network. I think some people talk about it, but especially now since I joined, I started working, it's the amount of resources that people can pull out of their network is really incredible. For example, we were looking for people to help us with design and UX. I just made a post on Facebook and got 10, 15 recommendations for really qualified people. So just don't underestimate

the power of your network. Cool. What about the phone apps? How are you going to handle supporting all the different platforms? Yeah, we're going to handle supporting all the different platforms yeah we're going to support ios android apps and maybe some mac pc do you have a plan for writing the software that will run on all of these things yeah we already have the ios guy on board and i have a friend who is working in qualcomm who is doing the Android so he can give me a very good reference doing Android apps.

So definitely we're going to push you to iOS and Android apps at the beginning. Then we're going to get the Mac apps for you to get a better experience. Big screen. Guidance. It's hard to support all of the platforms all the time. So the first time we're going to

the first time we're going to push the iOS first. So and then maybe about one to two months later we're going to push the Android apps. Later we're going to push

the Mac app. So it's iOS, Android, Mac. So you've got to graduate it. Yeah. Graduate it at the same time.

Windows is in there somewhere, right? Windows later. That's such a change. It's unbelievable. Apple started stocking a lot of health products and Internet of Things

health products in their stores. Are you guys kind of in the back of your mind thinking, well, maybe we could get into that route? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, iOS, 8, HealthKit, and then iWatch. Yeah, so I think for HealthKit coming out from iOS 8 and also iWatch, I think it's a very good opportunity for us. It is not competing, actually.

It is complementary with our products because iWatch, you're aware about it. HealthKit, it means our data can be used for many other kind of wearable devices, many medical products, so people can have better understanding from work, office, home, sports, so all combined together.

So iWatch is unique, so it can be a very unique complementary to all your other wearable devices. That's right. Apple has this whole health kit thing, and Google announced their health-related API too. Yeah, it's very similar, I think. That's right.

Samsung has something too, but I don't know that people would go out of their way to support that specifically. But that's nice because you can write your apps and you can do your apps, but if you're involved in their APIs, you can let your data be available to other apps, like the Flowy app that was pretty cool.

Yeah, and we're very excited about this opportunity of being able to interact with other devices and integrating all this health data and empowering the user to make better decisions. So yeah, we're very excited about that. And hopefully, Chris, as you mentioned, one day we'll see the Dharma next to the Beats in the Apple Store.

Oh, yeah, exciting. What are your next plans, like, tactically for the next few weeks? You're talking about doing the crowdsourcing mid-September? Yeah. What are you doing between now and then? So, between now and then,

our efforts are focused as much as possible on getting the word out to get people to learn more about Dharma, about the dangers of sitting. So sitting is a disease for those that didn't know. It's a huge problem. So we want to educate people as much as possible about that problem and why it's a problem and how bad it is.

It's pretty bad, actually. And then, you know, educate people as much as possible about that problem and why it's a problem and how bad it is. It's pretty bad, actually. And then just get as much awareness as possible prior to our launch. Yeah, so right now we have four people working on it. So me and Shubh is working on the marketing push to the US market. We have another two. Yeah, another two.

Right now they're in China working with two yeah another two we're down there in China working with the factories so we're not we're not stopping doing the

products we're not waiting to get the funding to get started we're ready because we want to make sure

that we meet all our deadlines and targets and ship on time because we know that's a big deal on Kickstarter

or on product funding campaigns very cool it's pretty unusual I think to actually have all your ducks in a row well before the Kickstarter or whatever,

the crowdfunding is done. I think that probably good advice for other people is don't wait until you've got, do what you can up front so you're prepared. Because like you said, a lot of these things, people get very angry. I know there's been several high-profile campaigns that get funded, and it's, well, it's been two years,

and some of them were products that were very timely. It was an accessory for a particular phone, and it comes two years later. It's like, well, I don't have that phone anymore. Yeah, Pat. This is not that kind of product, but it's still cool that you're moving forward quickly. Yes, but difficult because you have to pay for all of it to happen. Yeah, you have to have something to...

Yeah, and this is where the seed round comes in to help finance that and make sure that we're on track. Cool. Well, I wish you the best of luck. I think I'm about out of questions. Christopher, do you have any? No, since, yeah, I think we've covered a lot. I mean, I keep wanting to ask you about price and to discuss how they're going to set their price.

And how it works. I think we've established that maybe that's what I want to do. Anything beyond this? I mean, I know you're focused on this particular product, but are you thinking, okay, what's next after that? How can we further enhance this beyond this first version? Yes. I know you can't probably answer specifics, but...

Yeah, so actually we have a very, very big vision. We're not just trying to do in our smart cushion. We try to do something like, so smart smart health home so this is my big vision so why we're doing the smart health home so because normally right now the wearable is a big trend and people are doing every wearable devices people are doing smart homes doing to make your home it's much more smart intelligent cool but for me i think if the home is much more smart, intelligent, cool. But for me, I think if the home is smart, yeah, it's good, but it's not really solving a very good problem.

So the things in my vision is my home should be smart enough to care about my health. This is my vision. Like embedding sensors and all kinds of common things. Care about me, care about my health care about my sleep, care about my parents at home, where all these things so this is my vision

a baby so this is my vision coaching is the first step it's care about your office first, you can embed it into your home anywhere else I think it's a good first step because it's a wide market

and people understand it. That's cool. All right. Well, Sharif, do you have any last things you'd like to add? Well, I know that you were very keen on price. And so what we can say is that if you guys keep an eye out

on our Facebook and Twitter pages, I think you'll have a very pleasant surprise coming up in a couple weeks prior to launching the campaign. So I highly recommend you guys like our page, follow us on Twitter, and keep an eye out. All right. Well, those links will be on the show notes. Junghao, do you have any last things you'd like to add? Yeah, I think because this is the gadget show, so a lot of people are from engineering side

and then maybe in Silicon Valley, so a lot of people want to do startups. So yeah, I think I want to have a quick kind of advice or kind of a promotion, something like kind of a accelerator. So I think if you really want to do hardware, so considering to go to china first time to visit factories and then join a hardware incubator so it really really help you to do

some things on the hardware side because i think normally people try to do hardware the difficult sign is uh yes you know a very cool ideas so it may be unique but you don't know how to manufacture it and then you need and you don't know how to manufacture it. And you also need mentors to say whether your idea is fit into the market. So I can give you very rough ideas how our around four months experience in Huxley. In the first month, normally we are, we have very big famous mentors

globally coming to Shenzhen, our office, to guide you to refine your ideas. So you keep talking to the mentors. We have mentors from IDEO. We have mentors from very good experience, kind of Bonnie Huang, who's a very expert. So it means we have all these kind of very good experts to teach you, guide you, how to do the hardware, the market fit. So it means we have all these kind of very good experts to teach you, guide you, how to do the hardware, the market fit.

This is the first month. Second month is they are taking us to the factories to find the manufacturer that is fit into your products. And in the final about one and a half month, we are mainly focused on how to do a Kickstarter campaign, how to do the media, how to do the marketing, and then how to brand your ideas. So it means from the beginning, maybe you have only one simple prototype, one idea,

but when you finish this for a month, you know what you are going to do, you know how to do it. You know how to do it much more successful. So it's very very unique experience you can keep you on track

how to do hardware very well yeah so yeah hardware is hard I know

but if you get some helps you can do it very good very well yeah this is my final advice for all engineers all the people who want to do

hardware startups and I believe hardware is a very big training in the following 10 years, compared to the internet things, bubbles coming from 2000 to 2010. But right now, I believe the hardware is coming back. We should do hardware startups. Oh, I totally agree.

Although the hardware is hard part people i've heard some people just get i mean you you want to start a flame war saying that is one of those things um why do you say it i mean how is too hard yeah i mean what is hard about hardware you toss up a schematic and yeah i and it's not that hard. I've met hardware engineers, you know. And I am trolling you. I'm not serious. But I am curious why you're saying that. Actually, for hardware things, it's because you need to build something. Molecules. Act actual physical molecules that's

right so it means so unlike the software thing so i mean so for the software you can change your ideas in two weeks in one week you can test out very very frequently so it means you're putting out one idea this month and then maybe next time you totally changed because the cost is very low so you can keep changing ideas refine your ideas very quickly, doing testing with the online or whatever. But if you're doing hardware, when you're choosing ideas, your benefit is very brilliant ideas.

You keep doing it, spend one year, and then you turn out that nobody buy it. And you've sunk a lot of money in. That's right. Not just your time. That's right. The actual outlay of cash.

That's right. Time and because you need to, because because for how we need to test some things and then you but time is limited the money is limited so how can you find a very good ideas market fit and you know how to manufacture it so it's time consuming so if you don't know how to do it, if you don't have a very good guidance, a mentor to teach you to find a good market fit, and then how to manufacture it to get a very simple prototype to test it,

it's very hard. Hardware can be very hard. I agree. But you know how to do it. It's super fast. Yeah. So you're shipping by Christmas? Not that super fast. not that super fast i mean i mean i mean you can know um very clearly um what the right things you are doing you feel much more confidence you know

what kind of resource you're going to find you know how to do it you have clues yeah and I thank you that does help a lot I think that's great advice and and I'm excited about Dharma I'm looking forward to your crowdfunding

and well since I heard about the meditating stuff I'm more excited about it so yeah sometimes I was focused on posture

but when I do meditation it's so everyone is meditating actually I'm meditating chef is meditating yeah and actually we are thinking about doing a meditation cushion anyone is interested in the future?

wow full hands off well thank you both for interrupting your weekend to talk to me thank you for having us my guests have been Yunhao Hu, CEO of Dharma, and Sharif

Kasatli, who will have a title soon, I'm sure of it. And their crowdfunding campaign starts in mid-September. And I will tweet it, and the link will be in the show notes as soon as it's ready. In the meantime, you can follow them on Twitter

or like their Facebook page. And now thank you to Christopher White for co-hosting and producing, and thank you for listening. You may now return to your normally slumped posture, at least until your gadgetry reminds you to sit up straight. If you'd like to talk to us, email us at show at embedded.fm or hit the contact link at embedded.fm. I had some posture-related quotes for the final thought this week, but I think I'm actually going to quote my guest, Dr. Who.

And that is, my home should be smart enough to care about my health.