How the SLMS helped me build a hearable startup

On Dermot’s request, I’ve written up my story of how the makerspace helped me to co-launch an IoT startup, put together the very early prototypes, and get the experience that led me to getting a project management position.

I joined the SLMS about two and a half years ago, back when the construction on phase one was ongoing and needed volunteers. I was interested in meeting some new people and getting some electronics experience to compliment my embedded software engineering background, so I went to a handful of the make the space days and did what I could to cut up wood, pour cement, and set mouse traps. After a while I met with a maker who pushed me to go to the 2015 ICL Bioversity Hackathon.

I ended up going along with a couple of the other members, and through one of them was introduced to an audiologist who had an idea to put together a hearing aid made for the untapped baby boomer market. He had a deep understanding of the field, and was obviously passionate about an idea that to me looked technically possible, so I joined up along with a couple of designers and engineers. It took two days of frantic collaboration, 3D printing, and at one point taking a saw to bluetooth headset to gut the components, but we were able to put together a rough looks like prototype, a set of conceptual designs and prints, and a half credible design plan. And, despite some tough competition from the other SLMS makers and ICL scientists, it was enough to win.

After that, we became a hackathon team, going to every hackathon we could that looked vaguely related to hardware and health and picking up new engineers and designers as we went. We managed to win half a dozen, which got us a little bit of seed funding and enough positive word of mouth that the audiologist (now CEO) could secure some proper investment. While this was happening, I started regularly visiting the space to make use of their 3D printer and soldering equipment to work on some early proof of concepts. In retrospect they were some very primitive versions of what we were hoping to put together, but they were enough to give us enough credibility to sell what we were working on to the people we needed to, and off the back of that we were able to get a very good team together. Easily the most varied and skilled team I’ve ever worked with. I learnt a hell of a lot putting those prototypes together and working with those experts to improve them.

I’d had an interest in project management for a while. I was finishing up a technology management MBA around the same time this all started, and had gained a Scrum Master certification beforehand. My job at the time had made it very clear what they thought about this, and that I was more likely to lose my job then get a chance to practice it with them. So when I was offered I jumped at the opportunity to join up with the hackathon team full time. The company went through a couple of names, but we eventually settled on ‘Eave’. I was able to use my training and experience to organise the team and the work the best I could. It was my first real management position, and was an invaluable experience to back up my theoretical training.

Around this point we were able to get enough funding to get some shared office space in London, and we ended up pivoting from tiny hearing aids to advanced internet connected over the ear hearing protectors. As wild as that change sounds, one thing that came out of the hackathons we worked on was that there was a real market demand from large companies for some protection for their workers, something we could build by scaling up the work we’d already done. Between the CEO doing some class A networking and a pair of fantastic wunderkind hardware engineers we were able to hire, we built a full working prototype and sold the idea to some massive energy companies that bought into it enough to trial it. While this phase of the development was happening, I became a silent member of the SLMS. I just didn’t have the time to attend anything with the hours needed.

After about two years of work, we eventually developed a full prototype ready for mass production. With the bugs pretty much cleared and the hardware set in stone, there simple wasn’t much work left for an embedded engineer/technology manager to do. So I found a new position that I’m now in as a full time scrum master. It’s everything I’d trained for, and I’m hoping that it’ll be what the rest of my career will be.

The work was long, tough, and stressful, and I think I had as many bad days there as good. But the experience was in retrospect a fantastic opportunity to build on my skills. So I have the SLMS to thank for meeting a multi hackathon winning team, launching a startup, getting a product to release, then getting a good management position.
You can read more about the startup at www.eave.io.

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boom! that’s great, sincerely.

That’s super cool! Thanks for sharing

I’m curious, that’s a scrum master?

Google says:

“A scrum master is the facilitator for an agile development team. Scrum is a methodology that allows a team to self-organize and make changes quickly, in accordance with agile principles. The scrum master manages the process for how information is exchanged.”

Which is as clear as mud to me :confused:

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Billy from your experience are there any areas we we should look at, refinements to make, to help us be more effective? Decision making comes to mind.

Scrum master/agile makes a lot more sense on a project basis. It is used in any decent software house that isn’t from the IBM era. Essentially it is about rapid iteration of a project - working in small (~2 week) ‘sprints’ so that a team can be ‘agile’ in the way they work. In other words, it is about being able to change direction or focus quickly as you aren’t tied down to a super long roadmap. A scrum master basically helps teams to focus on the right stuff and make sure they are working in a properly agile way.

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@afshind and @Beth, a scrum master is a very specific kind of project manager. One that specialises in using agile management techniques, that are typically good for getting a team to create very fast prototypes rapidly. My day to day job is managing those procedures, advising the team on other good practices that might help them, and doing whatever else I can do to make their life easier. FYI, I just came back from the space where I was working on a handheld device to help them pace their meetings.

@afshind, nothing comes to mind. I haven’t been too involved in the management of the space so I can’t say what’s going right or wrong. There are a lot of things I like, but I can’t think of anything to correct off the top of my head.

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Today Dermot asked for a couple of images from the development that could feed into a blog post. I don’t want to put anything too recent up (in case it violates my NDA), but I do have a couple from the initial development I did at the space, and a couple from the Bioversity hackathon to show.

The works-like prototype from the hackathon:

The looks-like prototype from the hackathon:

And a handful of development pics of the following early prototypes made at the makerspace:





Plus a picture of the final product after the pivot towards hearing protectors (taken from the official website):

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Nice, thanks.

This reminds me, I listened to a podcast that touched on “active” ear defenders. Now what was it…