The story of. How we went from a hackerspace in Vienna to a hardware accelerator in China to develop the next generation of educational toys

Transcription

1 The story of or How we went from a hackerspace in Vienna to a hardware accelerator in China to develop the next generation of educational toys

2 Robo s journey started on a cold November day at the Pioneers Festival 2013 in Vienna, Austria: Pioneers is the major event for future technologies and entrepreneurship in Europe. Rustem ;) This is where Rustem Akishbekov, student at the Technical University of Vienna, inspired by all the amazing stories of world-famous entrepreneurs, decided to go for his dream of encouraging young people to become creators and inventors of future technologies. This is how he came up with the idea for Robo Wunderkind: a modular robot that kids can build themselves. In the picture there are the founders of Bellabeat, Protonet, Symptoma, Vires Aero, Kano Computing, Solarbrush, Transmetrics, Empatics and Rustem from Robo Wunderkind

3 The inspiration for Robo Wunderkind came from his hobby of building robots and electronics prototypes. Many of his friends were interested in what he was doing but it seemed difficult for them to get started.

4 Rustem wanted to make THIS accessible to everyone

5 So he built his first prototype: A long way to go to Robo Wunderkind, right?

6 There were a lot of trials and mistakes. We have learned some lessons which we would love to share with you.

7 Rustem shared his idea for Robo Wunderkind with his friends, Anna and Yuri. Rustem met Anna at the Pioneers festival and he knew Yuri from university. Both of them were immediately inspired by the idea of bringing Robo to life.

8 Rule 1 It takes a great team to build a great product

9 Rustem wanted to make Robo Wunderkind beautiful and he wanted to change the way our children learn. So he asked Yuri to create a beautiful design and Anna to figure out how kids could learn with Robo.

10 And now a bit of background story: Is into computers since he was five. Has finished Art School. Studies at the Technical University of Vienna. Does his own design projects and participates in exhibitions in Vienna. Yuri Passionate about bringing better design to such important things like coding and robotics.

11 Passionate about inspiring kids to engage with technology in a creative way. Anna Studied Development Management at the London School of Economics. Has 8 years of varied international work experience in the area of Public Sector Consulting, Marketing and Project Management.

12 So an engineer, a designer and an edtech enthusiast joined forces to work on Robo Wunderkind. Our first office was in Metalab, a hackerspace in Vienna's central first district. *link to the metalab page

13 We fell in love with Metalab because it was a space for real makers: people who wanted to experiment with technology and create. The community of like-minded people we found there had been super supportive!

14 We spent long nights in Metalab working 24/7 together on our first designs.

15 Rule 2 Find great mentors and learn from them

16 We pitched the idea of Robo in Berlin, Tel-Aviv and Split, where we met Semyon Dukach, known business angel and entrepreneur himself. You may have heard about his life story which served as the inspiration for the movie 21*? It was Semyon who suggested that the team takes part in an accelerator program. *link to 21 on IMDb

17 What is an accelerator? Startup accelerators are programs, that provide mentorship and educational components to startups. Sometimes, they also contribute funding. We decided to learn from the best and applied to the worldwide first hardware accelerator based in Shenzhen, China, the manufacturing capital of the world. Cyril Ebersweiler Software is from the Bay, Hardware is from Shenzhen* * v=6pqrt1lm_1w

18 Rule Nr. 3 Move fast

19 The invitation to join the program arrived only three weeks before it started So here we go: essentials packed, China is calling!

20 The HAX office is located in the district called Huaqiang Bei Electronics Market. Every skyscraper hosts a multi-floor department store with a huge assortment of electronic components. We landed in prototyping heaven!

21 Rule Nr. 4 Get to know your factory

22 Besides being a Candyland for electronic components, the second biggest benefit of being in Shenzhen lies in the proximity to future manufacturers. Candace, a UC Berkeley graduate, has joined our team in Shenzhen and helped us navigate our way to Chinese factories.

23 Shenzhen is the home of manufacturers for world famous brands such as Intel, Nokia, Hewlett Packard and Apple. We visited a factory that produces taillights for Lamborghini and factories that are happy to work for startups. We invested time into the choice of our future manufacturer. Having a good relationship with the factory is a MUST for the success of any hardware project.

24 Excitement was in the air when the first parts produced with silicon molding, a high-quality prototyping process, arrived.

25 Rule Nr. 5 Get to know your users

26 We tested Robo Wunderkind with kids of different ages. Young engineers were impatient to get hold of Robo Wunderkind. Our workshop with the Kindergarteners at the School of the Madeleine in Berkeley was a big success. Kids loved it so much!

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28 Rule Nr. 6 Surround yourself with inspiring people

29 One Sunday we were working hard in the HAX office when we suddenly got a surprise visit from Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn. and the person who introduced Mark Zuckerberg to Peter Thiel. Another time it was Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble, who visited HAX and got the chance to play with our Robo.

30 In 2014 we lived in China to prepare for manufacturing of our Robo Wunderkind. And here we were: 10 teams who set off on a journey of building groundbreaking hardware products and our amazing mentors: Cyril Ebersweiler, Sean O Sullivan, Duncan Turner and Ben Joffe.

31 Rule Nr.7 Build your community

32 After the amazing progress we made in China, we went back to Vienna and presented Robo at the Pioneers festival, a year after Rustem had come up with the idea.

33 We have received multiple awards Robo Wunderkind placed in the Top 8 startups selected out of more than 1000 applications. Robo Wunderkind won Startup of the Year 2015 in Vienna We were awarded Robot of the Year by Futurezone and the robotic company Festo We were named Startup of the year 2015 in Austria by Austrian leading business magazine Trend

34 Rule Nr. 8 Aim BIG

35 We believe that the prizes we have received are recognitions of our hard work and also of our vision: with Robo Wunderkind we want to change the way children interact with technology. We want to prepare our children for the future. Our vision has inspired many people, this is why we even were invited to participate in the televised debate about the future of education in Austria with the participation of the Minister of Education and the Secretary of State.

36 After extensive testing and working on the project for two years, we felt that we were finally ready to present our idea to the world. And what place could be better for that than the stage of TechCrunch Disrupt SF. We were excited to participate in the Startup Battlefield, the famous competition featured on the show Silicon Valley.

37 Rule Nr. 9 Put your product in front of people and see what happens

38 We took a leap of faith by launching our Kickstarter and then boom Kickstarter responded with lots of love!

39 It is difficult to describe our level of excitement on the day when our dream came true: our Kickstarter got funded!

40 And YOU have been a huge part of it.

41 We wrote this book to share with you our story of building Robo Wunderkind. It means the world to us that you support our vision of bringing robotics and coding to kids all over the world. Please spread the word about us and connect with us on twitter/facebook/ instagram to follow us on this amazing journey! Thank you! We love you start_robo facebook.com/startrobo robo_wunderkind