Embedded - 72: This Is My NASA Phone

Episode Date: October 15, 2014

Emile Petrone (@emilepetrone) talked with Chris and Elecia about Tindie: buying, selling, changing the rate of hardware innovation, having a burgeoning start up, connecting government agencies to craft electronics, etc.  We talked about many amazing projects on Tindie but there were so many, it is hard to call them out. Arduboy and AirPi Raspberry Pi weather station are two that stood out.

Welcome to Embedded, the show for people who love gadgets. I'm Elisa White, back with my co-host Christopher White. Our guest is Tindy's founder, Emil Petroni. Hi Emil, thanks for being on the show. Sure, thanks guys for having me. Could you tell us a bit about yourself? Sure. So, I'm Emil.

I've basically worked in startups for the last seven or so years, bouncing around the bay with a short stint in Portland along the way. And kind of throughout that process is when I started to play with Arduino. And that's kind of what led to the creation of Tindy is basically my hobby of just tinkering and looking for exciting projects is what kind of spurred me to build Tindy is basically my hobby of just tinkering and looking for exciting projects is what kind of spurred me to build Tindy as the marketplace people know and love today. So about a year ago, we had Kristen on the show. She was a glass artist, but she was very involved with Etsy.

And I asked her to come on the show to explain, well, I had some ideas about craft electronics. Yes. And I wanted to know how it how etsy worked and i understand that tindy has been called the etsy of hardware is that why is that how is that what is that uh sure so we have and uh in this the current issue of popular science that's actually the title of their article about tendi is the Etsy for hardware, the Etsy of hardware. And I think it's for a variety of reasons. You know, we're a marketplace as a community of people that are coming up with unique indie electronics. And so I think from an analogy, you know, it's low volume, high touch, very specialized, very much like crafts are on Etsy.

And if you actually look and compare Etsy versus Tendi, if you search Arduino or Raspberry Pi or any of the electronic or hardware platforms that are out there that everybody that probably listens to this uses, chances are we've got more. I mean, we have five or six times the amount of products that Etsy has for Arduino or something like that. Oh, and on Etsy, if it's Arduino, it says it uses Arduino, not that it's designed to replace or even to be a coding thing. Yeah.

And I think it's basically more a sign of their audience versus our... It's a difference of community at the end of the day. Absolutely. Yeah. So that's why I think people call us that is that people, Etsy is obviously far larger than we are. We're a two person startup and they're basically have defined very much this crafts and built an online community around kind of traditional crafts and arts that I think people know and understand. And the idea that there are small teams or even individuals creating their own hardware is kind of this new idea that that's what we're fostering on Tendi is that inventors should be able to get their projects out into the world very easily and

seamlessly. And that's what we're trying to support and embrace. And so you're not really competing with Etsy. It's more that Etsy provides a matchmaking service, a marketplace. And that's what you're doing for people who make board-level things? I mean, basically, it could be anything from just a bare PCB all the way up to a robot or, you know, I think we've got a $10,000 robot on there right now that does app testing. So, we're basically the technical side. They're obviously the arts and crafts, and we're more of the science and the technology side of kind of very similar ideas that individuals are making great stuff and should be able to get it out there into the world. So, okay, $10,000 robot. What are the other 10D products?

Well, it's not really a 10D product, is it? No. How do you, your market, your sellers, your marketers? Yeah, yeah, sellers. Sellers. Yeah. Okay, so what are some of the sellers you talk about? In terms of like examples?

Yeah. Sure. So we have things like a Raspberry Pi weather station, and that was developed by two 17-year-olds in London for a science fair. And that has turned into a product that they have sold hundreds, if not thousands, of units at this point. And so they put something on Tindy. They list something. Sure.

And then they – what's the process so generally speaking it's an idea that you've already got and you've got some number manufactured whether it's through prototyping service or through you know you've had a previous kickstarter or maybe you've made a run of 10 or 20 just for personal use and you have extras. Then you can just basically list it on the site for free. And that then allows kind of the community to see this product that chances are has never been listed anywhere else on the web. And this is the first time most people will ever find it. And so that's where basically our community is able to then just purchase it directly from you and then you ship it out to them.

And so these teenagers in the UK with their Raspberry Pi weather station, they made this, and then they listed it, and then people went and bought stuff from them. Exactly. Pretty easy. That seems... It's pretty old school, the idea that you make things, and then people just buy it, and then as people buy it, you make more.

Wow, that does sound revolutionary. Groundbreaking. Well, is there something that changed in the last 10 years to kind of enable this to happen? It seems like, I don't know, it seems like in the past, if you wanted to do an electronics project, well, you had to have major startup costs and a run of boards was going to cost more

than was feasible for doing something in the 10s to 20s kind of range of volumes. And I think it's definitely. So the cost of prototyping boards has dropped dramatically. And that's here in the States, abroad, that seems like it's basically been universal. And that's here in the States abroad, you know, that seems like it's basically been universal. So that has happened, component costs have dropped. And I think the combination of those plus people are becoming more and more interested and excited

about hardware, because I think, you know, the web has matured to a point where people have this expectation that technology is accessible, and I should be able to wield it in any possible way to create my dreams. And for the last, let's say, 20 years, that's happened with the web. And very much so that tech audience is now saying, well, software has solved so much. Why can't we solve another problem in the physical world with hardware? And so an open source weather station is just a very simple example of something that is just an interesting project that people have made. But another example being a Game Boy Shield for your Arduino. It's, I think, that same idea and dream that if I can come up with an idea, I should be able to manufacture it and get it actually physically produced. And obviously, that's

fueled Kickstarter and all these other platforms as well. But that's all been possible because of the dropping costs. And basically, more and more people are getting interested in that idea of building whatever they think they can. And that seems to be happening all over the world. And some of that's tools. I mean, the tools are cheaper now. You can get KiCad, and that's free, or Eagle, and that's cheaper. Then there's the low barrier of entry.

Exactly. Things like Osh Park where you can get a small subset of boards and now in order to make a tiny board, it costs you, well, maybe it costs you $10 more than it would if you were making $1,000. But if you're only making 15 of them, it's worth the extra money because then you can get them for yourself, for your own garage project.

Definitely. And I think along the same lines is, you know, Arduino has definitely matured as well. Over the last 10 years or so, Arduino has really come into its own. The community has matured. So the tools are out there for people to basically quickly prototype, whether it's building their own boards

or even just the simple platform to just plug and play. You know, there's a number of i think different things that are all coming together kind of this unique time that's making it possible yeah i think i think i agree with most of that and i think the future is even more kind of amazing because once the friction level gets down to the level of software right you're gonna have people making all kinds of things in one-off sort of quantities, and companies are just going to form around stuff

that people before wouldn't even have taken on because it's too daunting a process. Yeah, and I think you can draw the exact same parallels between the evolution of software with the evolution of what's going on with hardware, because the layers and the platforms are basically maturing and being created to bring that difficulty down. And that's just going to continue and continue until that point where you say,

I just need one of these assembled and there will be a solution, whether it's Lane or it's somebody else that's doing just, here's one board that's assembled and it's in the mail in two days or you know even quicker but you're you're focused mostly on electronics and on bare boards not necessarily on 3d printing that's more shapeways is i mean we've had some 3d printing it seems like our our specialty is very much something that has a circuit involved. When I went to the site, it was a little overwhelming. There are all these interesting looking things. I have to admit, I went to the site after doing the Hackaday judging where there were lots of interesting little boxes to click on and dig deep

into. And so it was a very overwhelming experience because I was already a little overwhelmed. But there are lots of sections. Not only the markets, but you go to the front page and there's this board to do that, the weather station, the Teensy, which I have seen a couple of times, and I guess that's a pretty big Tindy wind story. Well, we actually, I don't think we even sell Teensies which I have seen a couple of times, and I guess that's a pretty big Tindy win destroy. Well, we actually, I don't think we even sell Teensies anymore.

I think we sell board derivatives or accessories or basically the Teensie, I think it's like the Teensie community very much like Arduino, the Arduino community and Raspberry Pi and Launchpad through TI. The TI has, TI points people to Tind TI. The TI points people to 10D. Electric M points people to 10D. Spark, all these different little platforms. The communities need just a simple place to basically share projects that are compatible with the platforms overall. And the companies don't want to build that themselves.

So we have, to go back to Teensy, I think I can't tell you off the top of my head, but I know that we have a number of Teensy compatible products that people have listed, whether they're bare boards or some sort of simple projects. We definitely have them. Oh, yeah. You had a bunch because I got lost in that section. You can get lost. That's right. But you do group things. You started this marketplace idea, or markets idea. That's right.

Where you have little sections that are all, everything having to do with like Arduino or Raspberry Pi or drones. And so your markets, how do they work? So the idea for that was we had a traditional taxonomy of categories and sections on the site that people could put products in. And the idea was that people were saying, well, I would like to put my product into more categories and that you need this category. I would like this one. I need more tags.

Right, exactly. It's the tags dilemma. And so our solution was, well, what if we just give control over to the community and say, if you want to create a section of the site or a category, we call them a market since we're a marketplace. If you want to create a market for Teensy, you can make it and then other people can join. And if enough people join, then it opens it up. And then there's a Teensy market. But basically, we've given that full control over to the community to say, you can make a market on Tindy for any number of whatever your interest is.

And we've got a Google Glass market for Google Glass accessories. We have a drone market. If I wanted an Elysia market, could I make 10 of my own projects? Sure. Oh, okay. I didn't really want that. I just wanted to know. Well, you've got a store as well.

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, it seems like the markets get different views. Yeah, that's right. And I think it's basically, it's very much Reddit-esque. Since Tindy came off of Reddit, I figure, let the community drive, and it'll work its way out. And for a small team, we got an exorbitant amount of emails about categories. And since then, the emails have stopped. So I'm very happy about that.

Made the right move when emails stopped. Right. Okay, so I just pulled up the Tindy webpage, and if listeners haven't ever looked at it at all, I want to make sure that you kind of get a flavor of what's up. And I think, do they come up randomly? How does it decide what to show me? Yeah, so I think right now the sort is by featured,

which are popular products that are in stock. The tricky part is that we've got over 3 000 products that have been listed and at any given time almost 400 we may have passed 400 products are actually sold out right now um so things come and go pretty quickly and and so we try and show you stuff that is actually in stock that you can get or backorder. But that's kind of the problem that we face, is showing things that you can actually purchase.

I want to get more into that, but first I'm going to list off a couple of these. There's the Reload Pro. It acts as a current sink, always drawing the same amount of current regardless of the voltage across it. That's pretty specific, but it's number one right now. The TrueRNG V2 hardware random number generator and USB form factor.

I read about that one. It's really cool. The heater meter kit, which apparently goes on your heater and tells you how you're doing. A bare board for a DAC, a Pi DAC. So Raspberry Pi, iQuadIO.com's Raspberry Pi DAC plus hat audio card. So some of them are encased. Some of them are finished products. Some of them are boards. Some are bare boards. Some are assembled.

Some are assembled. Right. Some are boards um some are bare boards some are symbols some are symbols right some are kits some are through kits for kit you know oh yeah like there's there's yeah it seems like some of these are definitely well i made this for myself maybe somebody else is interested and some of them are here's my product very much yeah and i think that that's kind of the very much the exciting part about it is that the idea that I've got something that I'm interested in and throw it into the world because I had to get five or three or ten made. So if I've got extras, then there's no reason they should just sit on a shelf. And it's what happens when you get the spares out into the world. Does it take off? And obviously, some of the time, that's actually the case.

So, wow, that's kind of interesting. I did make some extra motorboards. You could list them. How many would I need to list them? You just need one. I mean, that's the thing. We're an open platform and it's free to list. Okay, it's free to list.

You said that before. And then people are buying things from me, which means I make the money. How do you make any money? So we take 5% of sales. That's right. That's it?

That is it. Wow. So we basically accept the funds and hold them until the seller actually ships. Escrow them. That's right. And so once you've shipped is when the funds become available. And we've already taken our cutoff.

And basically, you can access those funds at any time. And there's a button. All you do is just press send to my PayPal account and the money goes right to you. But what if I needed the money to actually make the boards? We don't look at ourselves as a pre-order platform. So it's not like Kickstarter where if people order enough of them, I'll get the money and then I'll have enough money to make the boards. That's right. Okay.

We had that functionality at one point. And the traction on it was very iffy at best. Trust is a huge issue there. Trust is an issue, but also there's a lot of things that are wrapped up in that. And I actually wrote a blog post about that this morning, which is people that have experienced manufacturing products. So one of them that we had when we first launched that was a QR code clock. And it's totally hilarious. It's a great idea. However, the guy that designed it,

I think he priced it ultimately way too low. Oh, yes. I will charge you 5% more than my bomb. You got it. And that is not how you price things. Especially when you get defective parts and boards back. And then he had to do a second run to fill in the gap and and he learned the hard way that basically i don't think he he came out on top on that one and so you know there there's kickstarter there's indiegogo there's so many of these crowdfunding platforms if you're looking for crowdfunding by all means you know

you can use those and that's what happens many people will list the early prototypes on tindy and then do a kickstarter we have uh the femtodwino guys up in san francisco have have a project that's live right now on kickstarter that started on tindy um so we're just not that platform we're a marketplace when you want to actually physically sell and move product that you've manufactured we're definitely the place okay and not everything is available immediately i mean okay so there's no it's not crowdfunding you're not gonna but you take my money immediately what if the seller decides that they can't build it we refund you entirely okay but um but it could be is there a period of time so the seller has 30 days to ship and i think that that's that's actually the law as well you have you have to ship within 30 days, and if you don't, then you have to refund the money.

And so that's what we do. And there's a huge crossover between SparkFun, or I'm sorry, in terms of Kickstarter and Tindy, because people do start on Tindy and then go to Kickstarter when they want to go from small numbers to large numbers. And then it goes the other way too right it does some people go on kickstarter do their project realize they don't have enough to you know go on amazon with it but they haven't they want to keep going that's right and so tindy provides that yeah we we also have those so the reload pro actually was a kickstarter first and then has now come to Tindy and is doing well.

But I think I was looking at the data this morning. So 80% of successful Kickstarters in the tech category receive less than $100,000 in funding. So 80% is less than $100,000 in sales through Kickstarter. And if you actually look at that, what that means is that 80% of the projects are ultimately not a business in themselves. That's not something that you can actually then spin up into a company. Because once you actually factor in labor,

cost of goods, you're looking at a very, very... It's definitely not a consumer product. Yeah, that's not a business at the end of the day it's definitely not a consumer product yeah yeah that's not that's not a business at the end of the day but it is a great project and and i think that's that's our sweet spot are those projects they should be listed on tindy as as basically something that people do out of their homes and as a side project and i think you know over time it may build itself into a business and that's kind of our goal is we're you know we're expecting that when will

the first person actually quit their job and do their Tindy project full-time? We've had a couple try, but we're waiting for that first big success story. But I think it's- Etsy has a blog that is all about that because it encourages people who are doing this part-time to get serious about it and be full-time and have all of these suggestions on how to tell that it's safe to go ahead and do this full-time and have all of these suggestions on how to tell that it's safe to to go ahead and do this full-time yeah and it will take time i mean we're only two years old so

we're still very young but at some point here in the next two years i expect that it will it will definitely happen and and so i said spark fund earlier uh do you cross over with them do some things get picked up by some of the vendors, Adafruit and SparkFun and Makersheds? Yep, they definitely do. So Fade Candy. Oh, yeah, we had Micah on the show. Micah started on Tendi.

Oh, excellent. And then that got picked up by Adafruit and SparkFun, and so that project graduated on. There's other products that have been picked up by Adafruit and SparkFun, and so that project graduated on. There's other products that have been picked up by Adafruit, SparkFun, by Make. That still doesn't mean it's enough to be a full-time job. That's right. Just that it's a slightly different, maybe wider audience. And I think the other thing is that they're looking actually to offload the manufacturing

and offload kind of the heavy lifting as well. So it's a much different idea. actually to offload the manufacturing and offload kind of the heavy lifting as well. So it's a much different idea. It's more of you're getting a cut of each sale rather than having to run the ship yourself. Right. Last week we talked about patenting. When you have SparkFun and Adafruit start building your product, it's more like licensing and not like doing it all yourself. That's right.

And I think it's just the approach you want to take at the end of the day. And how big is Tindy? So we're only two people. You and Julia. That's right. Yeah. So I founded the site. And I launched the site while I still was working as a web engineer in Portland in June of 2012.

And then Julia joined, I think, in November. And that is a very small number of people. How much of your time does Tindy take? All of it. Plus some. Yeah. But you also do a fair amount of traveling and talking to people. I do.

I know you went to the Open Source Hardware Summit in Rome. I didn't. Oh, you didn't? I ended up not making it. But we scheduled. We had our calendars, and you had that all blocked off. I did. This was also when he showed up for his initial interview appointment, and I was asleep.

So maybe it isn't entirely in his mind. Thank you for coming again. I've been to the past summits and go to most of the Maker Faires, and I'm at all those events. That's right. And I'm also, I'm on the OSHA board, so the open hardware board. And you were at SolidCon. I was at Solid.

Yeah, I spoke at Solid. Why? I mean, why do you do all of these things? What's wrong with you? I mean why do you do all of these things that they what's wrong with you? why do you do that? you have a company that needs all of your attention

and now you're going to go spend all this time talking to other people about why open source is cool I can see how some of that is a little bit of marketing for you but it's not entirely

so why? I mean I think it's a combination you know at the end of the day it's a combination it At the end of the day, it's a combination. It's marketing. It's helpful to people to help them get their projects up and running.

I was mentoring at Highway 1 last week or the week before. The community is still very small. And I think there's a wide, wide range and, you know, the opportunity is just so great. But the people working on it and we're so, so early. I mean, people still say that it's early in the web. and like the first day of being born is this idea of kind of indie hardware and open hardware and all of the different offshoots of just the basic idea

that individuals and small teams should be able to create and get their products out into the world. So I think it's just a matter of fostering the community at the end of the day is kind of what I'm trying to do. And ultimately, Tindy is kind of just an online representation of that.

There's a community. We're trying to do and ultimately Tindy is kind of just a an online representation of of that is there's a community we're trying to support it um as a site you know we we had 103 visitors 103,000 visitors last month so I think as an overall site and community we're doing a pretty good job but it's still just so tremendously early that it's you know it i'm just trying to water that seed 100 000 visitors sounds huge and yet it isn't our indie hardware is growing but it's still a niche i mean it's still a niche tiny niche and you're like the moss that's growing on the rock and hoping that you get enough water or whatever but this metaphor has gone on for too long that was a similar you said like oh thanks like i don't say like all the time i grew up in california um but how i mean how big could the market possibly be i think that it it will be very shocking to. And I think that the reason I say that is based upon the results that we're seeing on Tindy right now.

So, we're getting orders. NASA calls my cell phone when they want to purchase through the site. Oh, I would give them their own cell phone for that. That would be so cool. This is my NASA cell phone. It would have little pictures of it. Well. That is so cool. So nasa's purchasing off the site

we have government agencies purchasing can you tell us i don't want to say oh that's right publicly oh yeah you don't know um but spaceships spaceships you know it's it's we've got this this 200 million dollar spaceship on the site that people are paying to click the secret area on the screen to get to it but totally go into the space market yeah you know there you go there's there's nasa oh let me copy down that no dear nasa would you like to be on a podcast there you go we've got orders from um all sorts of government agencies all over the world. Canada, Australia, everywhere. I mean, the random number generator alone is...

I mean, what you're saying is it's not just random hobbyists. You're getting traction in mainstream kind of customer areas. That's right. I think what was happening is because it's getting easier and easier to have things manufactured, what it's ultimately happening is more and more specialized hardware and more specialized products are being invented that have never before been possible just because of the sheer, the sheer amount that you would have to sell for it to become profitable by a

traditional big, large hardware corporation. And the numbers don't have to, you know, those margins don't have to exist anymore. When it's one, two, three people, you're looking at a wildly different beast than what has traditionally been possible. possible and so because of that it ultimately becomes much cheaper for these companies to just pay 30 bucks for this part or 20 bucks for this part than rather than reinventing the wheel and and so you know i think that when people think indie hardware or small batch hardware they think hobby they don't actually understand or think of kind of like the wider ramification. But to just give one more story, we shipped a robot to Samsung in Beijing.

So when we're shipping us made designed products from the U S to China, to one of the biggest companies in China, something's changing. And I think that that's the spark that is going to grow quite considerably in the next year, in the next five years, in the next decade. I mean, it's going to take a long time, and we're looking to be here for that whole experience and that whole run. Well, to go back to your software analogy, it almost sounds like... Crowdsourcing hardware? No, frameworks.

Now it's easier to build software because you can pick out libraries, you can use the QT library or whatever, and you can think about your application rather than reinventing each low-level or middle-level piece of UIs and all this stuff. And that's never really been the case in the hardware before where you could say, okay, I need to build this thing, but there's all these designs,

and maybe you can find some schematics, maybe you can find some layouts somewhere. But this is like, oh, I got this piece and I got this piece, and I can start piecing something together out of bare boards and parts that you just couldn't do before. And I think to take that even further, you're looking at it as like modules basically so exactly like a software library you basically your plug and play and for prototyping you cannot get quicker this is the easiest you know make an order and two days later you've got the package at your door

and you're off and running. That's going to evolve to where you're seeing Raspberry Pi now has that module where they want people to develop products off of Raspberry Pi, prototype them, and then use whatever the little module in production. And Electric Imp has a similar idea. I think that's what's going to happen. You're going to have the prototyping module for quick prototyping, and then you'll have the development version, which is a much smaller footprint that's just like you're looking to use

in hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of units. And so that's just starting to happen with Raspberry Pi, with Electric Emp, and so we'll see how that kind of continues. Many of these products are open-source hardware, but not everything on tundi is is that true the i don't think anything is patented the overwhelming majority are open open hardware with open schematics open source software you can see everything view it before you purchase that's right so that is that is a, or is that just an effect of what's happened so far?

It's an effect. Okay. The site started off of the Arduino subreddit, and I think that's where that started. That's definitely going to be open source hardware. That's right. And so I think what happened is, because that was where I posted the original question on Reddit,

that really spurred the types of projects that we see. And off of that, obviously, is a whole bunch of open hardware enthusiasts that are already on Arduino and are building other compatible projects that can be used for Arduino. But then, obviously, Raspberry Pi has been doing well. Obviously, Raspberry Pi is not an open,

but open projects for the Raspberry Pi has been doing well. Obviously, Raspberry Pi is not an open, but open projects for the Raspberry Pi. So it is something that's fostered on the side. And this increasing the speed of hardware innovation, which really, I mean, it does seem to be happening. And this marketplace does seem to help. Is that a goal or an effect? That is a goal. And we will be doing... It's a tough goal. It's a tough goal. But we have a very macro vision of the ecosystem. And I would argue

the most macro, just because of our sheer scale and size, that we see who is doing what, where, literally all over the world we have uh last month we had visitors from 182 countries we have orders to 80 something countries so you know we have a very macro view of kind of the ecosystem and so when when we see something that we think you know we can we can impact that at a macro level. But we definitely feel like our mission is to help foster this ecosystem. And can we build software tools to encourage and to accelerate projects coming into the world? We're definitely actively trying to do that.

You should have a tagline. Changing the derivative of hardware innovation. Trademarked. Christopher never likes my quotes. Yeah. You can't have derivative in there. You can get that shirt made. Yeah, exactly.

Yes, but can I sell it on Dindy when I'm done? Put some wires in it and a battery in it. Yeah, yeah. That wouldn't be the first shirt that had wires in a battery. So you said your sellers, they aren't necessarily full-time selling at this point. That's right. And they're mostly, I don't want to say garage engineers, but... I think most of them are actually they have a full-time day job, and then they're making their

own projects on the side, nights, mornings, weekends. I know how that goes. But they are making money. They are. On their hobbies. That their hobbies. That's right. Are there any stories you can say about people who made a significant amount of money or who are making enough money to pay for their next idea? There are plenty that are making enough money to support their next project just because you can find the sheer number of people that have multiple products on the site. The Raspberry Pi weather station, AirPi,

that's definitely one of the great success stories. We've got another project that I think will be bigger than air pie. That's that will be one of those stories. He's actually already left his job on the project he's working on, which is, uh, RG boy, which is a,

uh, open source game boy platform gaming, Arduino gaming platform. That's in the form faction of an, a game boy that will be for sale later this year. Boy platform gaming, Arduino gaming platform that's in the form faction of a Game Boy. That will be for sale later this year. And I think that will be

the new biggest hit. He's already left his job to do this full time, so it will be interesting to see how much it supports him. That's a really cute board. What he's got up so far. It will be exciting.

He's going to need a case. There may or may not be a case in development. Good. On Etsy, there's a seasonality to things. There's very much, look, Christmas sweaters. Look, Valentine's crap. And right now, of course, there's Halloween all over. Is there a seasonality to Tindy as well?

So if you search Halloween right now, you will find some children's pumpkin projects, ghosts. Going beyond the Blink M. There are Halloween projects. There are Christmas projects that pop up from time to time. going beyond the blink m there's there's there are halloween projects there are christmas projects that pop up from time to time i'm sure that will happen this year oh look here's an smd training skull kit you might wonder what the training actually goes to i mean that adjective is it go to the smd or to the skull or to the kit? It seems to go to the SMD soldering. That's right.

That's very cute. Most of the little projects like that I think are perfect for kids that are looking for an interesting project to something that's tangible and easy to get started that doesn't cost an arm and a leg and if they break it or they short something then it's

no big deal. A little ghost you could make into an earring or a necklace? I'm already searching for Christmas now. And at $3 and $6, these are... Yeah, sure. If I could convince my nieces they wanted to solder, I would totally buy them for those.

There's a little Christmas tree made out of PCBs. Really? I'm just going to sit back and let you guys keep going. We will totally surf the web while you talk. So there is seasonality. There are some, that's right. And do you encourage that or does it just happen?

It just happens. Okay, so going back to the it just happen? It just happens. Okay. So going back to the, it just happens. What about reviews? How do I trust that? I mean, I've had some very poorly made hardware in my life. Some of it made by other people. Sorry.

Sorry. Sorry. No. Do you have like a REM shot that you can? I add that in later um how do i know what i'm gonna get is good so the reviews on our site are all by people that have previously purchased the product so uh many years ago i was at yelp early on. So I have been a part of online reviews for many years and know the best and the worst of it. And that was a very much a very, you know, I want to put my words here very, very carefully

because it was very much a decision that we made that the review should be by and only by the people who have actually purchased a product through the site that we can trace directly back to an order. When you open that box for people to leave reviews anonymously, it gets very tricky very quickly and and even i mean we've had cases where a seller will will tweet or post on facebook or post you know somewhere that hey i'm going to give you send out some free test units and leave a review on tindy and then i get emails from people saying i'd like to leave a review on this product to which my my answer is, well, I'm sorry, you can't, because we don't know that you've actually purchased it. And it's a very firm rule, and that will never change. But that means a lot of people don't have any reviews. It does.

And I think that's, you know, are no reviews better than fake reviews? And I think the answer is yes. And the other part is that ultimately, reviews only apply to a subset of customers that actually read them, care about them. And at the end of the day, reviews only apply to that subset that actually cares. And there is another side that people just don't.

And so I would rather have Tendi be a trustworthy platform where people know this doesn't have a review. Okay, that's the case. But when there is a review that they can trust actually that that review came from someone that's not the seller, that is actually a customer, and that is actually credible. I think the trustworthiness of the platform supersedes that of any individual product. And when I review, do I review particular products or is it for the store? For the product. As a store owner, that's a little harder. On Etsy, it's per store.

So that's why I'm kind of asking. Yeah, and I think that there's... The way that they do it, it's also a little confusing as well. Because if I read the review and it says, this product, I really loved how it looked and the way this dress looks on me. Something like that. It looks really good thank you if if i have five dresses that really doesn't answer the question i mean it's it's very much you know i i don't i know people at etsy and i'm not trying to say this is a right or wrong

decision but i think that that is a way to get around this the point that you just made which is well if if a product doesn't have any reviews, is it going to sell? And there are ways, well, what if we just throw the reviews onto every product? To me, that feels just a little misleading. Well, I think for Etsy, and maybe not for Tindy, it's that you are, if you were making one of something. I mean, if you're making an artisan thing, you're making a craft that each one is individual, then there is no way to review that one. That's right. You have to review the artist as a whole.

That's right. And so you are saying with Tindy that it's more that the individual items will be produced in such quantity that reviews make sense and that the sellers themselves don't need to be judged on their virtues. Yeah.

Exactly. Well, while we're still on the subject of Etsy, are you familiar with Regretzi? I know of Regretzi. And how does that apply to you? To be honest, I can't remember what Regretzi is, other than someone pointed it out when Tendi first launched. So, I did, after I left my job to do Tendi full-time, I did an AMA that was number one on all of Reddit. And I think that was where Regretzi first popped up, because at that point, the site had gone down because of the Reddit hug.

And I was just answering as many questions as possible just to make sure that I kept the questions coming while we were getting the site back up. But that's obviously been solved. That is not a problem we have anymore. That that was two years ago just to be clear to listeners regret see is sort of the cake racks of the artisan market um you can have things like this beautiful glass poop um and you have to wonder what were they thinking when they posted it it says you know swirled scandinavian glass paperweight but it looks like a poop and things that just you should have really thought

i mean why would you put a fake mustache made of 100 human hair on a clear face it's just because you're trying to get on regrets well yes so i i hope that you you don't on the other hand it is tempting for me personally it's harder to make regrettable electronics in an obvious way that can be scraped from a website are you sure because i'm pretty sure does it blow up is still open as a as a url name and we could totally register that and then just buy one of every tindy and blow them no it's not worth our time. You know, I think that. Think of the reviews.

This one blew up very well. That's right. Right. If you put this in the microwave. I think we'll put this in under the category of, you know, signs we've made it. When Regrendi shows up, then we know, you know, we've made it when when regret regretty shows up then we know you know we're doing something that's the other problem is the tindy doesn't really lend itself that's right so good luck with that one you have some new stuff that's happening um there was tindy you which was the tindy university to help people learn how to build these

things to go from here's a napkin sketch or here's a schematic to here's physical objects because that step isn't always obvious yeah um how's that going so that is on the back burner for now and and the reason is as we were looking to get that started, and as we were starting to kind of pull together some sort of curriculum and information we wanted to share, it became very clear that we could do a much better job of facilitating projects coming to life by actually building some, some tools onto the existing site. And so that's actually what we're doing now is,

is in the next few weeks, month, maybe a month and a half, we will have an announcement for something that we're, we're currently building that will help people get things manufactured. We're not there today, but come on but stay tuned. All right.

Well, I mean, you did hint some things with stuff coming up. And I mean, there were some things that made me wonder if you and Osh Park were talking to each other. So that's the category of hints that I've gotten. You don't have to tell me if that's true. I know Lane when I was... Of Osh Park. Yep, yep.

I talk to him every once in a while. We're not actively working with them on anything right now. Okay. Well, send me a link when you're ready to announce this properly. Okay, fair enough. So you personally, you've been talking about how this is software. Yeah. And that's, okay, you're doing software for hardware.

I can't say anything against that because technically that's what I do. But you took a year off to learn Python. Yes. And then founded a company based on hardware. Yeah. Do you think about taking a year off to learn python yes and then founded a company based on hardware yeah do you think about taking a year off to learn schematic capture or or or electronics or or manufacturing python doesn't seem like what you do for hardware well that was two or three years ago maybe three years ago at this point i can't remember it all passes so quickly right now days feel like months

and months feel like decades so hopefully at some point when we have enough people that I can offload more of what I'm currently doing I can get back to more playing and tinkering with hardware but at this point actually my days are

consumed with emails, tickets, and customer support. I'm sorry, I didn't must not have phrased that well. What do you do? I mean, you did take a year off to learn Python and work on software. And you've mentioned software a couple of times, but what do you do i mean email tickets yeah but what does my day involve sure let's go with that so i built the first tindy so the the first you know version of the site was i built myself and so then once Julia came on,

we've had contractors come and go over the last few years. But basically, Julia's managing the software. So from a day-to-day perspective, I actually don't really write any code anymore. I may fix things here and there and add features where I want to feature and basically play. But I do basically everything that is not writing code so that's where inbox support tickets talking speaking traveling to you know basically literally everything except

you know deploying features is kind of you know whatorneys, accountants. All the fun stuff. Should I go on? I just keep going deeper and deeper. I'm still wondering how the... Board meetings. There was Python, and now there's like the industrial version of the MBA. Yeah.

I'm really kind of wandering around here. I think that is startup life you don't really get to be a pigeon in your pigeon hole anymore you kind of have to cover all the holes in hopes that you don't fall in so far we're doing alright with that where are you speaking at coming up? that is a good question. I should have looked on your calendar, huh?

I can't think of it. I will be at the Highway 1 demo day this week. Highway 1 is an accelerator. That's right. And so they help people go from idea to getting a little bit of seed money to even introducing them to venture capitalists. That's right. And so they help people go from idea to getting a little bit of seed money to even introducing them to venture capitalists. That's right, yeah. Okay. They're a part of PCH, so that's a hardware manufacturer.

And they're basically like an interface to China. So Apple is their big customer that uses them to get everything manufactured that is not an iPhone, MacBook, computer. They do everything from the booklets when you open the box to the box to the injection molding piece that it's sitting in to all of that. So Highway 1 is a part of that ecosystem. But they do a lot more than that.

I mean, we had the chip site on Craig Selender, and he went off to Highway 1 to productize some of what he's been working on with computer vision. And they do a lot of other niche products, but they're slated more for getting to consumer. That's right. I mean, Highway 1 is very much looking for the next runaway success to go to Kickstarter. Yeah. And we've had people from Hackcelerator on the show as well. And so they're very similar.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But both are incubators to help facilitate a project that should be in a mass consumer quantity go from zero to shelves. Yeah, and that's a hard problem when it does require some specialized knowledge. That's right. You said that you kind of want to let the community of Tendi drive some of the decision making about how it's organized and how it's used. Do you have a vision beyond that of your own that, well, I'd like to, you know,

we have Tindy version one, we want to go beyond and start reaching into other areas or doing different things without stomping on that community vision necessarily? Is this, I mean, is this as you envision Tindy continuing for a long time? Yeah, I mean, I think that the current marketplace and the current community we have is going to be what we continue to fuel for many years to come. And we are only going to add more features, functionality, and tools to basically empower them to do more.

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Better search tools, better organizational tools, that kind of thing. Better all of the things. Better all of the things. Whose dog is embodied on the Tinty logo? There is no dog that... No one has a dog.

I used to have a dog. Would you like mine? I would love yours. That was a little to her. She's eager. I'm a little worried now. I don't know how to answer that, but I used to have a dog growing up. I felt like there was tons of cat logos that were popping up a few years ago

and that dogs were not adequately represented, which is why Tindy is a dog. It's a cute dog. I like the privets. Thanks. What Tindy makers, sellers should i invite to be on the show next what are you interested in really we're getting to this point in the show and you're going to ask my audience no no what are you personally things like widgets gadgets something whizzy and neat sensor-based things you like sensor- and neat. Sensor-based things.

You like sensor-based things. I like sensor-based things. I think you should talk to Tom with AirPi. And I think you should talk to Jason, who does the app testing robot. I can come up with a whole list of them. I don't want to like just spur one off. But I have plenty of people I could just send you to.

I mean, there are lots of people making really phenomenal things. And I mean, this goes back to looking at the Hackaday semifinalists. They just, man, they're crazy cool. And just phenomenal amounts of time and energy put towards things they love instead of things that are getting paid for. That's one of the things I like from most of the Tindy vendors that I have looked at, which is that they really love what they are doing. Yes. And that is so cool. And I think that people recognize that.

There's a lot of TLC going on behind the scenes that enables a lot of these projects, and it's not something they're getting paid for, obviously, and they're probably not going to recoup their costs at the end of the day, but they're super fun. And as far as hobbies on your resume go, it's a pretty darn decent one. Yeah, that's right.

Chris, do you have anything left to ask? Just, you know, are you happy with what's happened so far? And you feel confident that you'll be able to continue making a contribution to the community? So last week we published a graph of our actual growth. And I think we're pretty ecstatic where we are and very, very excited moving forward. It's only going up and it is looking good. That is very cool.

It's tough to have a business like that. It is very tough. And it does require all the hours of the day. There will be a book that will be written sometime in the near, in the distant future, not the near future, that will be very entertaining when this story is told.

Yes. After the robots take over, they'll write the story of, should I come back? In public? Or is this going to be one of those things you only pass around to people you really like and not the people you wrote about? Well, when I was learning how to code,

I had a blog called Proud Noob. So I'm pretty comfortable with just being pretty transparent. Today's not the day to... The story is still being written, but there will always be... There will be some good stories that should be told.

It's not a straight up and to the right type of graph. It's not a straight up and to the right type graph. It's up, down, and all around, but it's pointed in the right direction, and we're pretty stoked. Has there been anything through this process that has been completely unexpected as you've developed things and built it?

Like, oh my God, I didn't think that would happen that way or that this would work. Well, I got invited to the White House this summer, so that's pretty much, that's true. That basically... That one pretty much is not something I expected. How was that? It was pretty fun.

It was pretty wild to see the president and to meet Will.i.am and Bill Nye, and I think there was somebody else that I can't think of off the top of my head. They tend to have a pretty high surrealness rating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's when you're just like, when that email comes over that says you're in, yeah, you kind of take a second

to think about, well, I didn't think this would happen two weeks ago or, you know, six weeks or let alone, you know, if you go back, you know, pre-Tendi, where did I think I would be in a year and a half? You know, it's pretty wild. It's pretty cool. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes good things happen to people who stick with it. So, very cool. I think I'm about out of questions. Do you have any last thoughts you'd like to leave us with?

So we are hiring. So if there are any full stack Python, Django engineers that are interested. Web developers. You got it. Not C embedded software programmers. That's right. But web people. That's right.

Let me know. I think. The jobs at T web people. That's right. Let me know. I think... Jobs at Tindy? Yeah, yeah. I think that's an email. Or just my email is emile.com. Just shoot me an email. That must be quite the email box.

There are multiple inboxes. And if you missed that or you want to talk to me about it, you go ahead and email show at embedded.fm or hit our contact link, and I will definitely forward things along. Perfect. Thanks, guys. All right. Well, thank you for chatting with us. Thanks, Emil. My guest has been Emil Petroni, founder and CEO of Tindy, the easiest way to buy and sell indie hardware.

You can reach Emil on Twitter, and Tindy also has a Twitter handle. More importantly, they have a huge website with lots of neat things. Tindy.com. That's T-I-N-D-I-E dot com. We'll link to it

in the show notes, of course. Also, thank you to Christopher White for producing and co-hosting. And thank you all for listening. If you'd like to say hello, of course, email us or hit that contacts link or even tweet at embedded.fm. Final thought for this week. Wow, there are some really good ones here. I think from the Dalai Lama, because I think it really made sense with this episode. So share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.