[00:00.000 --> 00:00.780]  Many other people.
[00:01.320 --> 00:03.420]  But I must say, it's really cool.
[00:03.840 --> 00:11.780]  You know, I'm just one person, and I'm not particularly special, you know, any more than any of you in this room, or anyone on the planet.
[00:12.080 --> 00:19.440]  We're all unique individuals, and we all have the power to make choices that can change our lives and the people around us.
[00:19.900 --> 00:21.520]  And why not try?
[00:25.000 --> 00:32.720]  So, along the way, TV-B-Gone kind of took over my life, and I learned a whole bunch of things about how to run a business.
[00:33.680 --> 00:34.820]  Made a lot of mistakes.
[00:35.100 --> 00:41.960]  And I'm going to share some of that with you, and also some of the things I've done right, and hopefully boil it down in a way that makes sense.
[00:41.960 --> 00:51.810]  So, first of all, don't just pick a project that you think might be an okay, kind of cool way to make money.
[00:52.410 --> 00:56.510]  This project, if it succeeds, is going to take over your life.
[00:57.490 --> 00:59.390]  Really, totally take over your life.
[00:59.510 --> 01:03.950]  And if you don't love it, the ups and downs of the thing are going to be an incredible roller coaster.
[01:04.070 --> 01:07.870]  The ups, of course, are wonderful, but the downs, you won't get through them.
[01:08.930 --> 01:11.810]  There were times when the downs, I didn't know if I was going to get through this.
[01:11.950 --> 01:14.930]  But knowing that it's something that I loved allowed me to get through it.
[01:15.090 --> 01:16.570]  And it's amazing.
[01:16.730 --> 01:17.710]  The lows are a bummer.
[01:17.810 --> 01:18.890]  The highs are incredible.
[01:19.250 --> 01:23.750]  And knowing that it's something you love is just what carries, at least that's what carried me through.
[01:25.710 --> 01:26.730]  So, let's see.
[01:27.430 --> 01:27.830]  Yeah.
[01:28.130 --> 01:35.680]  So, there's kind of a weird process of coming up with ideas.
[01:35.680 --> 01:37.840]  Like, where do ideas come from anyways?
[01:38.560 --> 01:40.020]  You know, the ether?
[01:40.400 --> 01:41.500]  Your own creative genius?
[01:42.340 --> 01:45.220]  Some bizarre muse floating around shooting arrows?
[01:45.520 --> 01:46.180]  I don't know.
[01:46.480 --> 01:47.580]  But ideas come around.
[01:48.100 --> 01:55.340]  And, you know, for me, it's a process of inventing, which is really three steps.
[01:55.720 --> 01:58.800]  You see a problem that you want to solve.
[01:59.320 --> 02:04.960]  And for me, it was seeing TVs popping up all over the place in public places that were really annoying me.
[02:04.960 --> 02:10.320]  And then coming up with an idea of how to solve that problem.
[02:10.560 --> 02:14.320]  Like, obviously, a universal remote control with one button that turns them all off.
[02:15.560 --> 02:20.900]  And then the last step is, you know, implementing it and bringing it into reality.
[02:22.480 --> 02:28.040]  The last step is really what I'm going to be talking about because the first two steps are really totally mysterious.
[02:29.000 --> 02:32.840]  The idea and then the solution to it, just some bizarre thing.
[02:33.000 --> 02:34.620]  And they come, these ideas.
[02:35.200 --> 02:38.800]  And when an idea comes, what do you do with it?
[02:41.340 --> 02:43.000]  Because I see it, you've got two choices.
[02:43.400 --> 02:49.800]  The idea, if it's in there and it needs to come out into the world, it'll sit there and just scream at you, I need to come out, I need to come out.
[02:49.940 --> 02:52.600]  And you can fight it or you can go with it.
[02:53.040 --> 02:59.740]  So many people who are otherwise could be good inventors, they have all these cool ideas, but they just fight it all the time.
[02:59.940 --> 03:06.280]  Coming up with so many reasons why they really can't do it because they're doing all these other things or they're not good enough or whatever.
[03:06.460 --> 03:10.820]  We come up with all these reasons not to do something that we think might be really cool.
[03:11.660 --> 03:13.520]  You know, but just be conscious about that.
[03:13.660 --> 03:16.260]  Listen to those weird little things spinning around in your head.
[03:16.260 --> 03:19.800]  Because if you fight it, you're fighting yourself.
[03:20.220 --> 03:22.960]  And if you fight yourself, you know who loses.
[03:25.440 --> 03:26.740]  So why fight it?
[03:26.820 --> 03:27.200]  Go with it.
[03:27.360 --> 03:27.940]  See what happens.
[03:28.280 --> 03:28.960]  It could be cool.
[03:29.460 --> 03:43.120]  So once you have an idea that you know you want to bring into reality, there's a bunch of things that you might think of that are obvious to think about and other things that aren't so obvious to think about.
[03:43.600 --> 03:50.800]  And these are some things that I've boiled down from my process that took a little bit more than one slide's worth of time.
[03:51.120 --> 03:53.840]  But I can put in one slide of time now.
[03:54.660 --> 03:59.800]  You know, to do a project that you're actually going to succeed in getting out in the world, you want to keep it as simple as possible.
[04:00.940 --> 04:03.680]  You know, and here I'm using the TV-B-Gone as an example.
[04:03.840 --> 04:08.540]  If an idea you have is software or craft or whatever, it'll be a somewhat different process.
[04:09.560 --> 04:11.420]  But for me, I'm a hardware geek.
[04:11.520 --> 04:12.280]  I always have been.
[04:12.280 --> 04:18.860]  So having a little microcontroller project and bringing it into the world through manufacturing process is what I'll show you.
[04:19.100 --> 04:27.640]  If you have projects that have, you know, your own analogous process, there's still a lot to be learned from using TV-B-Gone as an example.
[04:28.120 --> 04:32.340]  TV-B-Gone is about as simple a project to manufacture as possible.
[04:32.840 --> 04:34.720]  And it's a lot of work.
[04:34.880 --> 04:36.380]  But it's a lot of fun, too.
[04:36.380 --> 04:41.080]  So hopefully you'll catch that as I'm telling you the downsides as well.
[04:42.100 --> 04:46.800]  But some of the things that you want to think about is, you know, the user interface.
[04:47.380 --> 04:49.120]  This is something people are going to use.
[04:49.300 --> 04:52.480]  I want to have something that helps people in their lives.
[04:52.500 --> 04:54.160]  It's got to be really, really simple.
[04:54.160 --> 05:00.060]  And I don't want to have to like those old Casio watches that maybe a lot of you have heard about, which is universal remote control.
[05:00.220 --> 05:03.700]  You have to program it for each TV you want to turn off.
[05:04.040 --> 05:07.020]  And why bother doing anything else with it when you can turn it off?
[05:07.640 --> 05:08.040]  But...
[05:09.560 --> 05:10.840]  So I just have one button.
[05:11.040 --> 05:13.400]  It just sends out off codes, one right after the other.
[05:13.640 --> 05:18.480]  And eventually the TV in front of you will find its off code that we transmit to it and it turns off.
[05:19.060 --> 05:20.320]  So, one button.
[05:20.600 --> 05:21.220]  Totally simple.
[05:22.100 --> 05:23.020]  What's the form?
[05:23.960 --> 05:27.200]  Well, that weird smiley face at the beginning was my first idea.
[05:27.640 --> 05:28.800]  But when I...
[05:28.800 --> 05:31.720]  When friends of mine wanted a TV-B-Gone...
[05:31.720 --> 05:32.840]  You know, I was just doing it for me.
[05:32.960 --> 05:35.840]  But when friends wanted it, and then when their friends wanted it.
[05:35.860 --> 05:39.040]  And when their friends wanted it, I thought, Wow, I should make a bunch of these.
[05:39.320 --> 05:43.340]  There should be at least some thousands of people that are wacky enough like me to want one of these.
[05:43.680 --> 05:46.840]  So, but my first idea was to have a button.
[05:46.840 --> 05:50.080]  Sort of a perverted 70s smiley face button.
[05:50.720 --> 05:54.960]  Where the eyeballs were the emitters that would turn off the TV.
[05:55.580 --> 05:57.580]  And the nose was the activator button.
[05:58.200 --> 05:59.720]  It was like three inches big.
[06:00.280 --> 06:00.700]  And...
[06:01.300 --> 06:09.160]  As I was telling people about that, people were thinking, You know, I don't know if I'd feel comfortable walking into a room with that button and turning TVs off.
[06:09.520 --> 06:14.260]  So, I came up with this other idea with a friend of mine who is just entering a design school.
[06:14.260 --> 06:19.240]  And it's the Batman-like case that you see on the right of the screen.
[06:20.840 --> 06:23.720]  And, you know, one button remote control keychain.
[06:24.220 --> 06:27.100]  So, you know, and then, you know, what color to make it?
[06:28.280 --> 06:29.960]  Black's kind of nice and stealthy.
[06:30.060 --> 06:33.720]  And the Batman-like image goes along with black.
[06:34.580 --> 06:37.660]  And, you know, how are you going to implement it?
[06:38.140 --> 06:39.560]  Obviously, you want to keep it simple.
[06:39.740 --> 06:43.560]  I've learned all my life how to use microcontrollers effectively.
[06:44.180 --> 06:44.600]  There's...
[06:44.600 --> 06:50.400]  You know, with a microcontroller, you just need to program it to blink an infrared emitter the right way.
[06:50.580 --> 06:54.540]  So, all I need is an infrared emitter, a button, a battery, and a microcontroller.
[06:54.920 --> 06:55.920]  Sounds simple enough.
[06:56.120 --> 06:59.280]  Why go through other contortions when I can do it simply?
[07:00.780 --> 07:03.680]  And the tasks to do...
[07:04.820 --> 07:09.920]  There's a lot of things you need to do when you make a project that you actually want other people to use.
[07:09.920 --> 07:12.640]  And if you want to sell it, there's even more things you need to do.
[07:12.820 --> 07:18.040]  And I'm really glad I did not know how difficult all those things would have been.
[07:18.080 --> 07:19.560]  Otherwise, I might not have done it.
[07:19.680 --> 07:21.380]  But I'm really glad I did.
[07:21.660 --> 07:25.400]  So, I hope by telling you all these things that need to be done, it won't scare you away.
[07:26.040 --> 07:30.940]  Because it really is amazingly cool to put your project out in the world.
[07:31.260 --> 07:34.400]  And if other people like it, and you get...
[07:34.980 --> 07:38.360]  You know, you change reality by putting your idea out in the world.
[07:38.600 --> 07:39.920]  It's quite a trip.
[07:40.560 --> 07:43.300]  So, you know, I encourage you all to check it out.
[07:43.400 --> 07:44.800]  But it is a lot to do.
[07:45.000 --> 07:45.800]  It's a lot of work.
[07:45.940 --> 07:47.580]  And I'll say more about that in a bit.
[07:47.880 --> 07:52.980]  But for TV-B-Gone, I thought it would be pretty simple.
[07:52.980 --> 07:55.400]  But I would have to collect off-codes.
[07:57.460 --> 07:59.700]  And, you know, that was one of my tasks.
[08:00.020 --> 08:03.180]  And that turned out to be quite a big task.
[08:03.500 --> 08:05.940]  But I'm going to say more about that in a sec, too.
[08:06.200 --> 08:15.740]  So, collecting the power codes, designing the case, designing the packaging, are things that I thought about on my task list.
[08:15.940 --> 08:17.960]  It turns out that task list was going to grow.
[08:19.200 --> 08:20.400]  More on that later, too.
[08:20.400 --> 08:24.100]  So, you'll also need a cool name.
[08:24.840 --> 08:28.620]  And in our modern world, that's more difficult than it used to be.
[08:29.620 --> 08:32.400]  Because TV-B-Gone, it was really instantaneous.
[08:32.400 --> 08:37.760]  When I thought of the idea when I was sitting in a restaurant with some friends to catch up on life with each other.
[08:37.820 --> 08:39.000]  We hadn't seen each other in a while.
[08:39.160 --> 08:42.140]  And the TV was up in the corner with the sound off distracting us.
[08:42.240 --> 08:44.120]  We were paying attention to it rather than each other.
[08:44.260 --> 08:45.620]  Which is not why we were there.
[08:46.440 --> 08:50.140]  We started talking about how annoying TVs were and how it would be cool to turn them off.
[08:50.260 --> 08:51.160]  And I came up with the idea.
[08:52.340 --> 08:53.940]  Instantly came up with the name as well.
[08:54.580 --> 08:58.520]  And it turned out that no one had trademarked TV-B-Gone before.
[08:59.020 --> 08:59.540]  Go figure.
[09:00.480 --> 09:04.800]  But, you know, that's one thing you got to do when you think of a name is see if other people have used it.
[09:05.920 --> 09:10.400]  So, TV-B-Gone, you look up on USPTO.gov.
[09:11.160 --> 09:13.800]  Everything that has ever been trademarked before is there.
[09:14.080 --> 09:20.840]  You can also look up at your local place, city, and county to see if other people have registered it.
[09:21.040 --> 09:23.720]  You go online and Google it and see how many hits you have.
[09:24.020 --> 09:26.320]  With TV-B-Gone, there were zero hits.
[09:26.980 --> 09:28.060]  That's kind of miraculous.
[09:28.640 --> 09:30.640]  Usually you'll get like four or five or something.
[09:30.640 --> 09:35.840]  And that's okay, but if you get like a half million, probably time to get another name.
[09:36.160 --> 09:40.520]  But not only that, but it's got to be a name that is not registered on the web.
[09:40.920 --> 09:42.480]  The domain name has to be free.
[09:43.580 --> 09:46.880]  So, and it also has to be easy to remember and easy to spell.
[09:47.700 --> 09:52.500]  So, TV-B-Gone, you know, when you think of TV-B-Gone, just instantly how do you spell it?
[09:52.660 --> 09:53.800]  Does it have dashes?
[09:54.620 --> 09:56.120]  Upper and lower case doesn't matter.
[09:56.120 --> 10:04.720]  But I put it with dashes, without dashes, and TV dash B dash Gone, and with only one dash in either place.
[10:04.860 --> 10:05.900]  You might as well register them all.
[10:06.040 --> 10:08.220]  They're only like, you know, six, seven, eight bucks a piece.
[10:09.300 --> 10:10.200]  So, that's what I did.
[10:15.420 --> 10:16.140]  So, time.
[10:16.880 --> 10:19.640]  In order to do something cool, you've got to make time for it.
[10:20.820 --> 10:22.460]  We do so many things in our life.
[10:22.680 --> 10:24.000]  That's why I don't watch TV.
[10:24.360 --> 10:27.840]  There's no time to do anything else when I watch TV.
[10:28.000 --> 10:30.100]  And I wouldn't have been able to do TV-B-Gone if I watched TV.
[10:30.980 --> 10:33.620]  So, you know, these are just some of the choices I make in my life.
[10:33.720 --> 10:35.280]  You've got to make your choices in your life.
[10:35.440 --> 10:42.240]  So, you have to make time to explore things you love if you're going to be doing things you love.
[10:42.540 --> 10:44.760]  First of all, you've got to find out what those things might be.
[10:44.760 --> 10:47.820]  And then you've got to make time to do those things.
[10:48.780 --> 10:54.920]  Like I said before, it took way more time to do these tasks for TV-B-Gone than I thought.
[10:56.900 --> 11:00.260]  But I gave myself a year to do this.
[11:00.400 --> 11:01.700]  It turned out to be a year and a half.
[11:01.960 --> 11:05.300]  And fortunately, I just had enough money to do that.
[11:05.380 --> 11:07.080]  And it worked out for me.
[11:07.080 --> 11:10.260]  But it did take a year and a half of my life to do this.
[11:10.820 --> 11:14.820]  In particular, getting those codes, they don't publish them.
[11:15.660 --> 11:16.660]  Who would have thought?
[11:17.320 --> 11:19.020]  You just don't go online and see them.
[11:19.040 --> 11:19.980]  Although there are a few of them.
[11:20.140 --> 11:24.360]  But I had to record them from a universal remote control.
[11:25.260 --> 11:27.040]  Actually, lots of them that I went out and bought.
[11:27.260 --> 11:33.300]  And I was thinking, oh, I'd just buy a data acquisition system that I'd hook up to my computer and it would just work.
[11:33.300 --> 11:36.540]  Well, if I had $10,000, that would have been dandy.
[11:37.140 --> 11:38.840]  But I didn't have $10,000.
[11:40.620 --> 11:43.920]  I had, you know, a couple hundred maybe to spend on this.
[11:44.320 --> 11:47.060]  So I had to make my own.
[11:47.300 --> 11:49.440]  That took several months more than I had planned.
[11:49.780 --> 11:51.440]  But that was a fun process.
[11:51.980 --> 11:58.320]  And once I recorded the codes, I didn't realize how varied these codes were.
[11:58.480 --> 12:02.240]  And I had to figure out which ones are duplicates and which ones are sort of duplicates.
[12:02.240 --> 12:05.220]  And is this code different enough from this code?
[12:05.360 --> 12:07.600]  Or too close or too far?
[12:07.820 --> 12:09.700]  And I had to do lots of field testing.
[12:11.940 --> 12:14.380]  Fortunately, field testing is a lot of fun in this case.
[12:16.800 --> 12:18.060]  So, but it takes time.
[12:18.480 --> 12:26.360]  And, you know, this part of the project, coming up with the ideas, implementing, going through, there's some frustrations, roadblocks, obstacles that you overcome.
[12:26.640 --> 12:28.600]  But you overcome them and then you got tired.
[12:28.840 --> 12:32.260]  You know, for me anyways, I was totally on a roll with this whole thing.
[12:32.440 --> 12:34.580]  And it started taking over my life already.
[12:36.300 --> 12:39.280]  So, anyways, coming up with all the things to do.
[12:40.100 --> 12:43.420]  It was kind of overwhelming once I started actually listing them out.
[12:43.840 --> 12:47.340]  Fortunately, I have a lot of friends who are really talented individuals.
[12:47.340 --> 12:49.820]  And friends are really amazing resources.
[12:50.140 --> 12:51.700]  I could have done it all myself.
[12:51.960 --> 12:53.680]  There would be a lot of things I would have to learn.
[12:54.060 --> 13:00.040]  But, you know, if you have an idea that other people are interested, if they're not friends before, they become friends.
[13:00.520 --> 13:12.940]  So, these are a list of some of my friends who performed many of the tasks that needed to be done on TV-B-Gone, like making the printed circuit board, which all electronic projects usually have to solder all the parts, designing the plastic case.
[13:13.260 --> 13:16.760]  You know, that was my friend who just entered design school and he did a final project.
[13:16.980 --> 13:17.360]  Perfect.
[13:18.320 --> 13:21.820]  And my friend Nina, who's downstairs, she did See This Sings the Blue.
[13:21.960 --> 13:25.620]  She did the original graphics for it and the graphics for the website.
[13:26.600 --> 13:28.460]  Having a website, of course, is important.
[13:28.920 --> 13:34.600]  And my friend Peter and originally Phil helped me do the website.
[13:36.160 --> 13:38.180]  And on and on and on, all these people.
[13:38.180 --> 13:42.980]  And, you know, with a little help from your friends, you can go a long way.
[13:43.240 --> 13:46.620]  But, of course, you are the one driving the whole thing.
[13:46.720 --> 13:47.500]  It's your vision.
[13:47.680 --> 13:48.380]  It's your project.
[13:49.420 --> 13:55.380]  And you've got to coordinate all these people who are enthusiastically helping you with your project.
[13:58.600 --> 14:01.520]  Of course, there's a lot of things that I didn't think of along the way.
[14:01.620 --> 14:02.860]  And I'm sure it'll be the same with you.
[14:02.960 --> 14:07.360]  These are the things I just did never think about when I thought about putting a product into the world.
[14:08.920 --> 14:09.280]  Barcode.
[14:10.220 --> 14:11.520]  Do you think about barcodes?
[14:11.600 --> 14:14.780]  I guess we think about it a little more now because we have 2D barcodes everywhere.
[14:14.920 --> 14:16.060]  QR codes on things.
[14:16.640 --> 14:18.380]  But, you know, all products have a barcode.
[14:18.460 --> 14:20.460]  And if you want to sell it in a store, you need a barcode.
[14:20.840 --> 14:22.140]  Where do you get a barcode?
[14:22.420 --> 14:23.920]  Do you just draw lines with a marker?
[14:25.160 --> 14:26.540]  It doesn't work too well.
[14:26.740 --> 14:32.400]  And even if you did, there's this central organization called GS1.
[14:32.400 --> 14:34.380]  Sounds like a CIA front.
[14:35.100 --> 14:39.620]  But they are a central international nonprofit organization that you register with.
[14:39.760 --> 14:41.880]  You pay them their extortion fee.
[14:42.040 --> 14:44.160]  And you get your own company code.
[14:44.380 --> 14:47.740]  And you get 2 digits for product codes.
[14:48.080 --> 14:49.380]  And that's the cheapest one.
[14:49.560 --> 14:52.500]  That's 100 different products you can sell then.
[14:55.820 --> 14:57.920]  So, yeah, and then package design.
[14:58.180 --> 14:59.620]  Obviously, you want a cool package.
[14:59.900 --> 15:04.260]  But one thing I didn't know about is that the size of the package is actually very important.
[15:05.180 --> 15:11.340]  If it's too small, so all these people who are buyers at stores say, and they really believe this, so it's true.
[15:12.320 --> 15:16.020]  If it's too small, people won't pay more than a certain amount for it.
[15:16.020 --> 15:23.240]  If it's too big, then your product may not be valuable enough to fit the perceived value of the package.
[15:23.960 --> 15:26.240]  So, you have to have it the right size.
[15:26.500 --> 15:28.920]  And there's a bunch of people talking about that online.
[15:30.200 --> 15:31.780]  And then, carton design.
[15:32.080 --> 15:37.980]  You know, you have this product in a beautiful package, but you're making it, who knows, you know, wherever you choose to make it.
[15:38.080 --> 15:40.880]  And you've got to put it in shipping cartons.
[15:41.100 --> 15:42.840]  Those shipping cartons have to be designed.
[15:43.080 --> 15:44.280]  Someone has to design those.
[15:44.280 --> 15:45.600]  How do you do that?
[15:46.220 --> 15:47.300]  Well, I'll get to that in a bit.
[15:47.900 --> 15:50.080]  And trademark is another thing.
[15:50.240 --> 15:54.360]  If you have a cool name, you can register it on USPTO.gov.
[15:54.520 --> 15:57.340]  It's really easy and costs $350.
[16:00.040 --> 16:03.980]  And then there's also, do you want to patent this thing?
[16:04.420 --> 16:05.980]  Or do you want to make it open-source?
[16:06.180 --> 16:07.620]  Do you do some combination of both?
[16:07.900 --> 16:12.360]  I did the normal thing back then, which there was no open-source hardware.
[16:12.960 --> 16:15.840]  So I patented, which is what all inventors are supposed to do.
[16:15.960 --> 16:17.260]  My brother's a patent attorney.
[16:17.420 --> 16:21.100]  So I went the normal route and patented it, patent pending.
[16:21.400 --> 16:31.240]  But it turned out to be something that was really popular with the hacker crowd, which got me sucked into this whole mess that changed my life for the better in amazing ways, which is why I'm here now.
[16:32.160 --> 16:42.540]  But that's where I learned about open-source software in a big way and got me to think in a big way about open-source hardware and the very negative aspects of patenting.
[16:42.740 --> 16:46.060]  Because patenting in a lot of ways is saying, this is mine.
[16:46.520 --> 16:47.240]  Stay away.
[16:47.440 --> 16:49.400]  If you come near me, I'm going to sue your ass.
[16:50.120 --> 16:51.960]  At least that's the way I think of it now.
[16:52.660 --> 16:57.060]  And the way a lot of people that I met at my first hacker conference thought of it that way.
[16:57.200 --> 16:59.080]  And it really got me to think about this patent thing.
[17:00.320 --> 17:04.100]  And making it open-source has been so perfect for me.
[17:04.100 --> 17:07.140]  And now, you've got to think this through for yourself, though.
[17:07.380 --> 17:10.640]  Like, what are the advantages and disadvantages of patent versus open-source?
[17:10.920 --> 17:15.920]  One big disadvantage of patent is that it costs like $30,000, $40,000.
[17:16.840 --> 17:17.860]  That's a lot of money.
[17:18.160 --> 17:19.790]  If you make it open-source, it's free.
[17:21.230 --> 17:33.010]  Also, you have perhaps thousands of some of the most enthusiastic, talented, creative engineers on the planet working on your project for free and loving it.
[17:34.330 --> 17:38.920]  Giving you all this amazingly cool information to make your project better.
[17:39.640 --> 17:42.860]  And then you can get more ideas from that and share it with them and the rest of the world.
[17:43.030 --> 17:44.920]  And, you know, it gets better from there.
[17:45.100 --> 17:46.160]  I'm just one person.
[17:46.490 --> 17:52.050]  So, thinking of all these engineering ideas on my own isn't as good as having a world of people with an open-source project.
[17:53.470 --> 18:00.050]  And when people download the plans, which I have online, that year and a half of life, that's a lot of life.
[18:00.050 --> 18:01.660]  But it's open-source now.
[18:01.770 --> 18:03.660]  So, no one has to go through that process again.
[18:03.680 --> 18:06.660]  All the codes are out there and it's shared with the world.
[18:07.640 --> 18:08.970]  And people appreciate that.
[18:09.050 --> 18:12.960]  And when they download the plans, I don't get a cent from that if they make it from that.
[18:13.120 --> 18:15.710]  But they show their friends who are totally enthusiastic.
[18:16.050 --> 18:17.330]  Look what this thing does.
[18:17.440 --> 18:18.160]  It's so cool.
[18:18.310 --> 18:20.620]  And like, look, the horse is just about to get there.
[18:20.620 --> 18:21.140]  And poof.
[18:22.280 --> 18:24.100]  So, you know, for example.
[18:25.560 --> 18:29.510]  And those people might buy my kit that I make with Lady Ada.
[18:30.440 --> 18:33.250]  Or that Lady Ada makes with my idea.
[18:33.750 --> 18:37.530]  And they might buy my keychain.
[18:37.810 --> 18:41.570]  Or they might buy the Pro, which is 150 meters TVs of off.
[18:41.570 --> 18:44.640]  And, you know, whatever.
[18:44.940 --> 18:48.440]  Everyone's happy for my project being open-source.
[18:50.660 --> 18:51.570]  Yeah, anyways.
[18:51.830 --> 18:53.010]  The list goes on and on.
[18:53.210 --> 18:54.790]  But that's enough to give you an idea.
[18:55.860 --> 19:00.400]  And the next idea here is funding.
[19:02.020 --> 19:04.510]  Different projects cost different amount of dollars.
[19:04.570 --> 19:06.750]  Or euros or wherever you happen to live.
[19:08.620 --> 19:10.160]  You know, it could be expensive.
[19:10.840 --> 19:13.440]  But for TV-B-Gone, that year and a half that I spent.
[19:13.940 --> 19:16.160]  The total amount, you know, is a year and a half of life.
[19:16.290 --> 19:17.570]  It really cost me a lot of time.
[19:18.500 --> 19:19.830]  But it was... I loved it.
[19:19.920 --> 19:20.920]  So it was a great thing to do.
[19:21.100 --> 19:23.100]  But it cost me $2,000.
[19:24.730 --> 19:25.680]  That's all it cost me.
[19:26.640 --> 19:28.530]  Microcontroller only cost about a dollar a piece.
[19:28.680 --> 19:29.680]  I went through a bunch of them.
[19:30.820 --> 19:33.400]  And I had to come up with my data acquisition system.
[19:34.480 --> 19:36.160]  Which, you know, just a little tidbit.
[19:36.160 --> 19:37.440]  I used to work for...
[19:37.440 --> 19:40.010]  I started a company called 3Ware that makes RAID controllers.
[19:40.380 --> 19:42.600]  And I just did the firmware for it.
[19:42.730 --> 19:44.330]  I programmed the microcontroller with firmware.
[19:44.620 --> 19:46.880]  And so I happened to have a development environment for that.
[19:46.970 --> 19:48.990]  And I hacked it to do data acquisition.
[19:50.490 --> 19:52.600]  If you want more info, ask me later.
[19:53.250 --> 19:54.380]  It was kind of fun.
[19:55.230 --> 19:56.970]  So it was all really cheap.
[19:57.660 --> 20:00.710]  Your project might be a little more expensive.
[20:01.470 --> 20:03.210]  You've got a plan for that.
[20:03.210 --> 20:08.830]  Because during the time when you're working on a project that's taking over your life, you don't have time to make money in other ways.
[20:09.330 --> 20:19.860]  It's really, really rough, I've found for myself and for other people I've talked to, to have part-time and certainly full-time work and work on your project in your spare time.
[20:19.860 --> 20:22.360]  Because you find this takes a lot of time.
[20:22.360 --> 20:23.550]  It does take over your life.
[20:23.710 --> 20:24.770]  And there's just not enough time.
[20:26.500 --> 20:29.360]  So, for me, I saved up and saved up and saved up.
[20:29.440 --> 20:32.570]  And then I had this year's worth of money that stretched a year and a half.
[20:33.340 --> 20:35.510]  So I could work on what I loved.
[20:35.700 --> 20:38.570]  And it turned out TV-B-Gone was what got on a roll and what I did.
[20:39.000 --> 20:42.310]  And I was lucky enough for it to give me enough money to make a living.
[20:43.020 --> 20:45.100]  And just know that this is a possibility.
[20:45.100 --> 20:50.010]  And your project, though, might cost a little more money.
[20:50.510 --> 20:54.250]  Your lifestyle might not be as inexpensive as mine or maybe cheaper or whatever.
[20:54.380 --> 20:55.660]  You've got a plan for all this.
[20:56.440 --> 21:01.550]  And one option is to get help from friends and family.
[21:01.680 --> 21:05.360]  And that's what I did when I just had to stretch to a year and a half.
[21:06.380 --> 21:08.700]  Another option is angel funding.
[21:09.180 --> 21:21.990]  So these people, that's what they do for a living after they've made some pile of money doing maybe something they didn't like as much, is invest in people that they like and or are doing things they think are cool.
[21:22.400 --> 21:26.810]  So they can be a really good asset, according to people I know who've gone that route.
[21:28.190 --> 21:31.530]  They can find other people who can help in various ways.
[21:31.900 --> 21:37.710]  They're enthusiastic, so they can tell you, hey, I've been through it, when there's the down parts of those up and down cycles.
[21:39.290 --> 21:41.460]  And yeah, it can be a cool way to go.
[21:41.460 --> 21:46.660]  And they're like between, you know, a few thousand to maybe a quarter million dollars.
[21:48.580 --> 21:51.220]  And you can get more than one angel investor.
[21:51.540 --> 21:54.640]  Another option is VCs.
[21:55.380 --> 21:57.040]  I guess you already know my opinion.
[21:59.260 --> 22:02.290]  I've worked for companies in Silly Valley.
[22:02.550 --> 22:03.700]  I keep saying that.
[22:04.050 --> 22:04.980]  Silicon Valley.
[22:05.280 --> 22:08.460]  And VCs is the normal route to go there.
[22:08.460 --> 22:14.900]  The normal route for VCs is for people to come up with a cool idea and to get VC funding.
[22:15.140 --> 22:16.420]  The VCs put a lot of money in.
[22:16.520 --> 22:17.830]  They say that they're your friend.
[22:17.980 --> 22:18.520]  They're totally enthusiastic.
[22:19.330 --> 22:28.480]  And then when things aren't going well, they take over the company, fire the founders, and the founders get diluted down to nothing and you're left with nothing.
[22:28.480 --> 22:32.600]  So that's the normal route for VCs, from my opinion.
[22:32.940 --> 22:35.290]  You might have other experiences.
[22:35.420 --> 22:42.900]  But if your project costs so much that you need VCs, like five million or more, maybe that's something you want to do.
[22:43.220 --> 22:47.050]  Maybe you can reconsider how much your project costs and come up with another way.
[22:47.550 --> 22:50.810]  Or maybe you can come up with another idea that's burning inside of you.
[22:52.780 --> 23:02.020]  Obviously, I have my opinions, but just know that a lot of people, a lot of people, share my opinion.
[23:02.840 --> 23:05.480]  You can ask me more questions later if you like.
[23:11.370 --> 23:18.940]  You can manufacture your project on your own once you come up with all the tasks that need to be done.
[23:19.120 --> 23:20.160]  You're finally finished.
[23:21.550 --> 23:29.790]  But if you're making 10,000 of these in a month and your project involves soldering, that's a lot of soldering.
[23:30.480 --> 23:34.200]  I love soldering, but I don't love it that much.
[23:36.100 --> 23:44.980]  So, fortunately, there are these companies that exist called contract manufacturers that exist solely to manufacture other people's projects.
[23:46.160 --> 23:49.020]  And there are a lot of them around the world.
[23:49.020 --> 23:55.000]  Most of them now are centered around Southeast Asia, although they exist in Mexico and other places as well.
[23:55.160 --> 23:56.220]  There's also some in the U.S.
[23:56.860 --> 24:04.240]  I originally wanted to do mine in the U.S., but it turned out that they were too low quality and too expensive, bad combination.
[24:05.200 --> 24:10.020]  So, I asked everyone I knew and who I'd ever worked with.
[24:10.260 --> 24:11.960]  And China seemed to be the place to go.
[24:12.160 --> 24:15.880]  And it pretty much still is high on the list of options.
[24:16.820 --> 24:31.830]  And I actually went to China and visited some of my candidates, because it's really, really important to me that if I'm doing something to improve my life, it necessarily improves the lives of people around me.
[24:31.980 --> 24:36.120]  And I'm not going to do that at the expense of anyone else, even if they're in China.
[24:39.660 --> 24:46.810]  So, I am really glad you agree with that.
[24:47.150 --> 24:51.690]  Because that's not the norm in our strange and bizarre and wonderful planet.
[24:52.430 --> 24:56.970]  So, you know, but, you know, here's my criteria.
[24:58.270 --> 25:00.690]  And all these are really, really important.
[25:00.890 --> 25:05.970]  I would not pick, personally, a contract manufacturer that didn't have all of them.
[25:05.970 --> 25:11.130]  So, I found a couple that were really good.
[25:11.530 --> 25:14.410]  And I found some that were incredibly, amazingly horrible.
[25:14.690 --> 25:20.230]  And I only visited ones that gave me all the information saying that they met these criteria.
[25:20.550 --> 25:23.170]  So, if I didn't go to China, I wouldn't have known.
[25:24.090 --> 25:31.390]  So, I actually met the people that would be soldering my TV-B-Gones and pulling the cranks and pushing the buttons on the assembly lines.
[25:31.390 --> 25:37.450]  And actually, is that the next one?
[25:37.710 --> 25:43.610]  No, I'm going to show you a little bit about manufacturing a bit later so you can see a picture of some of those people.
[25:44.590 --> 25:55.430]  So, another thing to think about is how do you get your product from wherever it's manufactured to wherever it is you're going to be mailing them out to people.
[25:57.310 --> 26:00.010]  There are these companies called freight forwarders.
[26:00.330 --> 26:01.810]  I never heard of that before.
[26:02.010 --> 26:15.910]  But if you are ever in a place where the port, like New York or San Francisco, Oakland, you see these huge ships full of containers which fit on the back of trucks and get transferred to ships or railroad cars.
[26:16.070 --> 26:18.690]  They're called containers and they're standard sizes.
[26:18.690 --> 26:27.270]  And there are companies which fill these containers and move them anywhere around the planet with boats and airplanes and trains and whatever is necessary to get them where they're going.
[26:27.810 --> 26:35.930]  And I got recommendations from people who I'd worked with and who I know and found some that I like.
[26:37.030 --> 26:40.690]  And there's trade-offs in this with manufacturing.
[26:41.530 --> 26:46.630]  You know, if it's in China, that's a lot further to go to ship than if you make it in New Jersey.
[26:48.110 --> 26:55.530]  But the cost of shipping from China to my warehouse in New Jersey is...
[26:56.170 --> 27:02.970]  including the manufacturer and the shipping is still way cheaper and better quality than I could have done if I made it in the U.S.
[27:04.070 --> 27:10.530]  But if you want it quickly, which sometimes I need to do because people want their TV-B-Gones now and they're ordering a bunch if I can get them now.
[27:10.530 --> 27:15.070]  So I have to pay $1.35 a piece to get each one here.
[27:16.110 --> 27:20.330]  If I go by boat, which, you know, the slow boat from China, those exist.
[27:21.030 --> 27:23.370]  It costs $0.35 a piece that way.
[27:23.770 --> 27:29.530]  If I could do a full container, which I've actually never done, it's considerably cheaper.
[27:31.290 --> 27:33.510]  So that's a little tidbit on shipping.
[27:34.370 --> 27:35.910]  Here's a bit on manufacturing.
[27:36.430 --> 27:43.370]  So just real brief, when you manufacture something, the contract manufacturer is going to help you with doing a lot of things.
[27:44.610 --> 27:47.410]  If you find one that's a good one.
[27:47.850 --> 27:49.850]  They order all your parts for you.
[27:50.210 --> 27:52.850]  They make the plastic cases from your design.
[27:52.850 --> 27:59.750]  They can print the artwork for what people see when they look at your individual packages.
[28:00.150 --> 28:11.490]  They can design those shipping cartons for you and make the printed circuit boards and put the whole thing together, put it on pallets and ship it out.
[28:12.070 --> 28:24.270]  All you have to do after you get the whole process going is wire them money and then pallets full of your product magically appear like a week or two later at a port in, in my case, Shanghai.
[28:24.850 --> 28:30.870]  And then the freight forwarders bring it to your place where you sell it from.
[28:31.330 --> 28:33.470]  But here's those pictures I talked about.
[28:34.030 --> 28:37.050]  The project managers are these happy little guys.
[28:38.490 --> 28:40.650]  That's Kelvin and Ball.
[28:41.810 --> 28:42.910]  Those are their names.
[28:43.030 --> 28:46.270]  They're really cool people and they love doing what they do.
[28:46.390 --> 28:49.770]  The people on the assembly line, I wouldn't say they love doing what they do.
[28:49.990 --> 28:53.890]  But they're pretty content with their jobs.
[28:54.090 --> 28:55.390]  This place treats their people well.
[28:55.750 --> 28:56.890]  They train them well.
[28:57.210 --> 28:58.490]  So they don't want to lose their...
[28:58.490 --> 29:00.930]  In China they often do things for the wrong reasons.
[29:01.170 --> 29:02.410]  The right things for the wrong reasons.
[29:02.890 --> 29:06.630]  So they're doing the right things for what I consider not quite the optimal reasons.
[29:06.830 --> 29:08.070]  But they train their people.
[29:08.170 --> 29:09.390]  They don't want to lose their investment.
[29:09.630 --> 29:11.890]  So they have to treat them well so they don't quit and go somewhere else.
[29:14.190 --> 29:15.430]  So they're treated well.
[29:15.430 --> 29:16.890]  Well, they actually have their own chef.
[29:17.370 --> 29:21.210]  And I'm a vegetarian, and he was like, what do you want if you don't want meat?
[29:21.310 --> 29:22.610]  And I told him, and he made it for me.
[29:22.690 --> 29:24.130]  And same with everyone on the assembly line.
[29:24.550 --> 29:26.850]  So they get three-month contracts.
[29:27.630 --> 29:35.870]  They usually come from various places around, although in Shanghai, where they do it, that's a big city, so people don't have far to come.
[29:36.190 --> 29:37.670]  They don't necessarily live in the dorm.
[29:38.110 --> 29:39.850]  But they have three-month contracts.
[29:40.010 --> 29:44.150]  They can only have two three-month contracts, and then they have to go.
[29:44.290 --> 29:49.670]  But in the three months, they can make enough money to pay for them and their family for a year.
[29:50.550 --> 29:52.310]  How many Americans can do that?
[29:53.130 --> 29:57.070]  So yeah, given the scale of economy, it's pretty cool that way.
[29:59.010 --> 30:05.580]  So after you get it, and it's at your place... Wait, did I skip a...
[30:11.320 --> 30:12.320]  Ah, that's coming later.
[30:12.580 --> 30:13.560]  So, okay.
[30:13.840 --> 30:19.200]  So once you want to sell it, you know you want to sell it, what do you sell it for?
[30:23.520 --> 30:25.020]  That's not an easy question to answer.
[30:25.180 --> 30:26.100]  Like, what is this worth?
[30:26.640 --> 30:32.820]  The parts and the manufacturing, the shipping, these are all very definite numbers that you know, because you paid it.
[30:34.320 --> 30:38.160]  And... Oh, no, I did skip one thing.
[30:38.480 --> 30:39.840]  Let me just go back a second.
[30:39.960 --> 30:43.240]  You know, I said it cost $2,000 to do TV-B-Gone.
[30:43.300 --> 30:44.360]  That was to develop it.
[30:45.560 --> 30:55.960]  And it actually cost me $30,000 once I wanted to press the spend button at my contract manufacturer and then to pay to ship it.
[30:57.240 --> 31:05.460]  And that's where, again, I asked for friends and family because I didn't want to really go in investors, angels, and, you know, my opinion about PCs.
[31:06.380 --> 31:08.180]  So, so yeah.
[31:08.320 --> 31:13.840]  So, but back to here, selling it, what cost do you sell it for?
[31:14.920 --> 31:21.100]  I made the mistake, as many, many people do, of originally selling my TV-B-Gones for too cheap.
[31:21.580 --> 31:27.080]  So I was selling them for $14.99 because this is the United States and you can't sell anything for $15.
[31:28.400 --> 31:37.880]  And, um, so I was designing these whole things, going through all the manufacturing process, dealing with all the online stuff and all the stress of fulfilling all the orders.
[31:38.120 --> 31:49.240]  And at the end of the day, uh, after paying everybody that was helping that long list of friends, after TV-B-Gones became popular, suddenly they were working to make TV-B-Gones happen.
[31:49.580 --> 31:53.580]  And I had to pay all of them and I wanted to pay them what they were worth, which is paying them well.
[31:53.580 --> 32:01.820]  So at the end of the day, I got what was left, which was like zero, zero, zero.
[32:03.840 --> 32:05.580]  That was a lot of work and a lot of stress.
[32:05.720 --> 32:08.260]  Although I love the project, I had to eat.
[32:08.360 --> 32:10.760]  So, um, I had to raise the price.
[32:11.040 --> 32:12.260]  So it's kind of weird.
[32:12.400 --> 32:15.620]  Making money is not as easy as it seems it should be.
[32:15.960 --> 32:23.780]  $15 basically, $14.99, um, times 20,000 TV-B-Gones, which is what I actually made.
[32:23.940 --> 32:30.220]  And, uh, uh, they were super popular overnight, uh, because of a Wired.com article, and those sold in a few weeks.
[32:30.880 --> 32:34.120]  $15 times 20,000 is a lot of money.
[32:34.960 --> 32:38.500]  Why am I not super rich?
[32:38.500 --> 32:40.460]  Well, because I had to pay all those people.
[32:40.900 --> 32:45.460]  And at the end of the day, when I got what was left, and it was zero, that's why.
[32:46.440 --> 32:51.480]  So, um, I raised the price to $19.99, because in America, you can't sell it for $20.
[32:51.940 --> 32:58.860]  And, um, that was enough, as it turns out, for me to have some money left over, uh, at the end of the day after I paid everyone else.
[32:59.520 --> 33:01.880]  So that was a huge surprise to me.
[33:02.720 --> 33:06.080]  Uh, so, you know, I hope you can learn something from that.
[33:06.240 --> 33:12.440]  And also, uh, Lady Ada, uh, uh, Limor Fried and, and Phil Torrone earlier today were talking about this.
[33:12.540 --> 33:18.980]  If you want to sell something, you don't just pick a little bit more, uh, to sell it for than what it costs you total.
[33:19.360 --> 33:24.940]  Uh, if you want to sell it on your website, you might be able to get away with that if you don't pay anybody else.
[33:25.320 --> 33:28.520]  But, um, you know, like I said, after paying everyone else, I was getting zero.
[33:29.000 --> 33:34.660]  Um, if you want to sell it in stores, then you've got to, uh, pick a higher retail price.
[33:35.200 --> 33:38.920]  Hopefully that higher retail price is a price people want to pay as well.
[33:39.380 --> 33:46.300]  Uh, for TV-B-Gone, it turns out that there aren't all that many people that don't want to buy it for $20 that would have for $15.
[33:47.980 --> 33:50.300]  But for other products, you know, it could vary.
[33:50.540 --> 33:59.600]  Uh, and there's no hard, fast rules about that, but, uh, there are some rules of thumb about selling products, uh, uh, at stores.
[33:59.920 --> 34:02.800]  So a store in general wants to make money.
[34:02.940 --> 34:04.800]  That's why they exist primarily.
[34:05.500 --> 34:11.820]  Um, and often they want to double the price that you sell it for, or that they buy from a distributor.
[34:11.900 --> 34:16.860]  A distributor wants to make 40% more than what you sell it to them for.
[34:17.860 --> 34:22.960]  So whatever you want to sell it for has to be enough money to pay you and all of your people.
[34:23.760 --> 34:26.420]  And then you increase it by 40%.
[34:27.500 --> 34:34.480]  That's what you sell it wholesale for, you know, plus or minus, depending on, uh, uh, obviously you sell higher volumes, you can bring the price down.
[34:34.720 --> 34:43.660]  Um, and then you have tack onto that, maybe double the price from there, 50% or 40%, depending on the store, beyond that.
[34:44.840 --> 34:47.040]  And that fix your retail price.
[34:47.120 --> 34:49.500]  And hopefully, like I said, that's a price people want to pay.
[34:49.740 --> 34:53.620]  If it isn't, think of that before you press the spend button.
[34:55.140 --> 35:02.500]  Otherwise, you might have a warehouse full of things that you'll sell to some company that, uh, starts selling them really cheap on eBay.
[35:04.220 --> 35:12.240]  So, um, yeah, another thing, website, uh, in some sense, the website's super simple.
[35:12.400 --> 35:15.200]  You just say, hey, tvbgone.com, I sell TV-B-Gones.
[35:15.550 --> 35:24.500]  But, um, you really want the website experience of whoever's using it to be, uh, inviting and useful and easy.
[35:25.020 --> 35:29.480]  Because if people have to navigate through a whole bunch of pages and figure out, okay, this is a really cool thing.
[35:29.600 --> 35:30.340]  How do I buy it?
[35:30.480 --> 35:34.420]  If it takes them a bunch of clicks to do it, they might give up before they even find it.
[35:34.760 --> 35:36.760]  So, uh, there's my website.
[35:37.240 --> 35:45.260]  I put a lot of thought into this by looking at lots of websites I thought were, uh, I mean, how many of you have ever looked at a website that you thought sucked?
[35:47.820 --> 35:49.080]  I think it's 100%.
[35:49.080 --> 35:51.880]  So, um, we all know what not to do.
[35:51.900 --> 35:54.960]  And we've all probably seen websites we thought worked pretty well.
[35:55.040 --> 35:56.120]  So, that's what I did.
[35:56.120 --> 36:00.980]  And I looked at the view source and saw the HTML and, uh, learned some PHP.
[36:01.520 --> 36:04.780]  And then I hired my friend Chris to do the rest.
[36:05.020 --> 36:06.500]  Because he's really good at it.
[36:06.600 --> 36:08.460]  And he made the, the shopping cart.
[36:08.720 --> 36:11.440]  Um, and shopping carts, they're really good ones now.
[36:11.580 --> 36:12.220]  Like Zen Cart.
[36:12.480 --> 36:13.500]  And, um, what is it?
[36:13.580 --> 36:14.000]  Oscart?
[36:14.100 --> 36:14.740]  Is that the only one?
[36:14.900 --> 36:16.260]  Uh, and maybe a few others.
[36:16.820 --> 36:21.700]  And, uh, but back then, none of the ones that existed were all that good for what I wanted.
[36:21.700 --> 36:25.180]  So, we actually went through the pain of creating our own custom one.
[36:26.180 --> 36:30.040]  The cool thing about that now is, uh, I can make it do whatever I want now.
[36:30.260 --> 36:34.440]  But a lot of people really like the flow from seeing the front page to actually going there.
[36:34.640 --> 36:36.000]  And it's really easy to do it.
[36:36.050 --> 36:39.940]  You just click buyers online or buy now.
[36:40.340 --> 36:44.360]  Um, you know, and it's kind of weird, but in its own way inviting.
[36:45.140 --> 36:48.440]  Um, and with TV on, I don't know, I like retro.
[36:48.680 --> 36:49.940]  And my friend Nina likes retro.
[36:50.200 --> 36:54.420]  So, there's the retro trippy stuff, which I recycled for brain machines, by the way.
[36:55.090 --> 36:56.240]  That trippy pattern.
[36:56.900 --> 36:57.540]  Recycling's good.
[36:58.120 --> 36:59.920]  So, um, go green.
[37:02.320 --> 37:05.960]  Order fulfillment is another thing I didn't put much thought into and should have.
[37:07.260 --> 37:14.920]  You have a whole bunch of your products, um, and, uh, a whole bunch of people may or may not be buying it.
[37:15.080 --> 37:24.420]  Uh, but if people are buying it, you've got to put them in boxes or envelopes and put labels on them and put postage on them, bring them to the post office and get them somewhere where they'll end up at your customers.
[37:24.900 --> 37:28.300]  If you're doing like a handful a day, sure, do them your own, on your own.
[37:28.520 --> 37:36.900]  I was getting thousands of orders a day, which I did not plan for after that where.com article selling 20,000 in like three and a half weeks.
[37:37.480 --> 37:40.050]  And, uh, can you say stress?
[37:41.160 --> 37:47.800]  I had a couple of friends with TV-B-Gones in their garages at that point before I found out about order fulfillment centers.
[37:48.500 --> 37:57.800]  And, um, they hired lots of their friends and somehow we actually got orders to our customers before they got way too angry.
[37:57.980 --> 38:04.100]  You know, if you're selling something and you've got a whole bunch of angry emails coming in, like if you get one angry email, it kind of sucks.
[38:04.100 --> 38:09.680]  But if you get a hundred, I mean, I get 300 emails a day and that sucks in, in and of itself.
[38:09.680 --> 38:18.140]  But imagine if all of those were angry ones that actually happened to me when my order fulfillment center messed up once.
[38:18.360 --> 38:22.440]  Um, so the thing is order fulfillment is a real pain.
[38:22.550 --> 38:37.200]  And if you pick, if you pick an order fulfillment center, which exists solely to send your product to your end customers, if you pick one that does, that makes mistakes, you get a hundred angry emails in a morning.
[38:38.800 --> 38:40.260]  That is way no fun.
[38:40.800 --> 38:45.050]  Um, the first order fulfillment center that I picked made a lot of mistakes.
[38:45.050 --> 38:46.440]  So I picked another one.
[38:46.720 --> 38:48.440]  They made even more mistakes.
[38:48.660 --> 38:53.500]  And not only that, but that second one, whenever I pointed out their mistakes, they would yell at me.
[38:55.220 --> 38:56.500]  That had to change.
[38:56.640 --> 39:05.020]  Fortunately, at that point, one of my friends who I used to live with, a housemate, uh, many years ago, uh, started, uh, his own fulfillment center.
[39:05.140 --> 39:08.700]  And I didn't even know it until he called me and said, Hey, you know, you're doing TV-B-Gone.
[39:08.900 --> 39:10.480]  I just started a fulfillment center.
[39:10.860 --> 39:13.200]  Do you, uh, think you could use me?
[39:13.280 --> 39:14.420]  I really could use some work.
[39:14.740 --> 39:20.680]  And, um, that was when that other company started yelling, yelled at me for the third time and I knew I had to quit.
[39:20.840 --> 39:21.760]  So it was perfect timing.
[39:21.760 --> 39:26.900]  So it's been a breeze since, um, order fulfillment is an error prone process.
[39:27.400 --> 39:33.420]  Um, they will make mistakes, but you want to pick a place that takes responsibility for their errors and fixes them.
[39:33.580 --> 39:40.200]  This place I have now, they still make mistakes, but they usually tell me before my, uh, customers tell me angrily.
[39:40.780 --> 39:44.760]  And even good customers are, are miffed when they get something that's wrong.
[39:45.080 --> 39:46.920]  Uh, I'm sure you've been through that yourself.
[39:48.180 --> 39:50.860]  So, um, there's a bit about order fulfillment.
[39:51.720 --> 39:55.220]  Customer support is definitely something I did not think of.
[39:57.600 --> 40:01.520]  I make a remote control with one button.
[40:12.050 --> 40:16.930]  So, just because something's easy for you doesn't mean that it's easy for the rest of the world.
[40:18.830 --> 40:23.250]  Think about that when you put something out and make sure you have someone...
[40:23.250 --> 40:27.230]  So I, I don't have, um, a phone that people can call.
[40:27.350 --> 40:34.570]  I have voicemail, uh, on my website that people can call, uh, and, and email that is answered, uh, rather quickly.
[40:35.430 --> 40:38.190]  Uh, and, oh boy.
[40:38.850 --> 40:43.870]  You know, uh, I've been a teacher most of my life in many ways.
[40:44.170 --> 40:51.130]  And, um, uh, before I was a teacher professionally, I used to think that there was really, there's no such thing as stupid people.
[40:51.910 --> 40:54.110]  That people just need a little more time and effort.
[40:54.430 --> 40:56.810]  But, you know, stupid people actually exist.
[40:57.250 --> 40:58.810]  They really, really do.
[40:59.230 --> 41:00.090]  So, um...
[41:02.930 --> 41:07.530]  And if I wasn't convinced of that from being a teacher, I am definitely convinced of that now.
[41:07.910 --> 41:14.270]  So, um, but you have to, you know, TV-B-Gone is not just for intelligent geeks.
[41:14.430 --> 41:16.630]  It's for the mass market.
[41:16.750 --> 41:24.290]  And so we have the broad spectrum of people, not only stupid people in the United States, but stupid people everywhere and everyone everywhere.
[41:24.550 --> 41:27.330]  So, um, customer support is necessary.
[41:28.170 --> 41:32.850]  Uh, and my friend Peter, uh, does that really well.
[41:33.010 --> 41:36.710]  We have a whole bunch of templates with, you know, you mean it doesn't go through floors?
[41:36.830 --> 41:39.770]  And then he just says, you know, uh, email 3B.
[41:40.810 --> 41:48.310]  And, um, sometimes though, he, he gets, uh, emails that just anger him so much that he has to call me and vent.
[41:48.670 --> 41:50.050]  So, it's my project.
[41:50.210 --> 41:50.850]  That's my job.
[41:51.650 --> 41:53.090]  Um, yeah.
[41:53.390 --> 41:55.590]  So, customer support.
[41:55.970 --> 41:57.210]  Be prepared for that.
[41:58.030 --> 41:59.670]  Um, publicity.
[42:00.130 --> 42:04.630]  If your project's, uh, popular, you'll get publicity whether you want it or not.
[42:05.330 --> 42:09.810]  And TV-B-Gone, I was really, really lucky that I got tons of publicity.
[42:10.250 --> 42:16.530]  You know, People Magazine, you know, my picture on a full page of People Magazine, that is bizarre.
[42:17.770 --> 42:18.870]  Life is weird.
[42:19.130 --> 42:20.010]  It's really cool.
[42:20.530 --> 42:22.430]  So, um, uh, yeah.
[42:22.530 --> 42:27.090]  New York Times, uh, spent four days with me, following them around, taking pictures, interviewing me.
[42:27.330 --> 42:29.910]  And, um, I'm in the front page of the technology section.
[42:30.030 --> 42:35.250]  I'm on CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, TV News for turning off TVs.
[42:35.530 --> 42:37.290]  I mean, life, life is weird.
[42:37.450 --> 42:44.830]  But that's a once in, in a lifetime kind of thing that'll never happen to me and probably never at anyone in this room.
[42:45.150 --> 42:47.210]  Um, so I really, really lucked out there.
[42:47.350 --> 42:51.450]  But the thing is, advertising, you have to let the world know that your product exists.
[42:51.450 --> 42:52.430]  How do you do that?
[42:53.090 --> 42:54.870]  So, you know, it's really, really cool.
[42:55.010 --> 42:58.790]  You can tell everyone you know, uh, you could advertise, but that's super expensive.
[42:59.030 --> 43:02.670]  What's way better than advertising is news.
[43:03.830 --> 43:08.430]  So, we all probably have opinions of the free press in our country.
[43:09.170 --> 43:17.570]  Um, but the thing is, these are individuals who are doing their job and they're doing it poorly, but, uh, they do it as best as they can and they want ready-made news.
[43:18.010 --> 43:23.990]  If you give it to them, they will broadcast it, they will print it, they will put it out into the world and they'll do it for free.
[43:24.850 --> 43:28.090]  So, write compelling stories, make it controversial, even if it isn't.
[43:28.270 --> 43:30.630]  All news really, really is good news.
[43:31.050 --> 43:32.650]  It gets people to know about it.
[43:32.870 --> 43:37.710]  TV-B-Gone, I was really lucky that it seems like it should be controversial, but it's not.
[43:38.270 --> 43:40.470]  It's just a f*cking TV turning off.
[43:45.220 --> 43:50.640]  So, um, I got all the advantages of it being seeming to be controversial when it's actually not.
[43:50.780 --> 43:52.680]  So, people, uh, the press loved it.
[43:52.820 --> 43:56.060]  They, they had a heyday with it and I got tons of free press.
[43:56.160 --> 44:05.660]  But even if it's not something that's so compelling to the media, you give them, uh, PR releases, press releases, um, and, uh, they print it, they broadcast it.
[44:05.980 --> 44:15.340]  And if, uh, it catches on one place, other places pick up on it, media viruses go out in the world, bloggers pick up on it, uh, word of mouth gets really, really big.
[44:16.100 --> 44:30.880]  One thing I learned in, uh, my studies of, uh, media literacy kind of stuff, which I'm up on, uh, as well as advertising, people have to hear about something in general, on average, seven times, seven times before they'll actually buy it.
[44:31.000 --> 44:34.540]  But they know they want to buy it or not within 30 seconds of hearing of it.
[44:34.980 --> 44:36.320]  Emotionally, they just know.
[44:36.500 --> 44:47.840]  And then you give them just a little bit in your press release, uh, giving the intellect enough information to convince, uh, to overcome the reluctance to spend money.
[44:48.060 --> 44:52.280]  Because they already know whether they want to buy it or not, and you're only going after the people that know they want to buy it.
[44:52.480 --> 44:56.760]  So, and you put it out in the world so that they'll hear it at least seven times.
[44:57.020 --> 45:02.820]  Word of mouth, newspaper, um, uh, mention on a drive time radio interview, whatever.
[45:03.100 --> 45:05.780]  Seven times, some of, they can all be the same, all different.
[45:06.180 --> 45:12.620]  But, uh, you just want to put it out there so people hear it, enough people hear it seven times so that your product is known.
[45:13.060 --> 45:14.240]  And people are buying it.
[45:18.180 --> 45:23.120]  If your, if your product is popular, you probably don't want to answer the phone yourself.
[45:23.600 --> 45:25.240]  So I hired someone to do that.
[45:25.800 --> 45:30.260]  And, um, the people I picked, uh, are a little better than that.
[45:36.170 --> 45:40.890]  So I said, you know, it's full of ups and downs.
[45:41.610 --> 45:48.050]  And, and it really is, um, running a business is not my idea of what I totally love in life.
[45:48.230 --> 45:51.870]  But running the business makes everything else I do possible.
[45:52.330 --> 45:54.170]  So it's way worth it.
[45:54.470 --> 45:59.330]  But there are times when it really, really, really sucks.
[45:59.610 --> 46:02.030]  I mean, it really sucks.
[46:02.310 --> 46:05.350]  Um, uh, let's see, how am I doing for time?
[46:05.510 --> 46:06.070]  What time is it?
[46:06.650 --> 46:07.430]  Five minutes?
[46:07.890 --> 46:08.890]  Ah, okay.
[46:09.110 --> 46:12.690]  So, uh, let me just tell you quickly, someone stole TV-B-Gone in the U.K.
[46:12.690 --> 46:13.890]  He used to be a customer.
[46:14.290 --> 46:17.710]  Um, and I violated my one rule.
[46:20.450 --> 46:21.590]  I have a rule.
[46:22.410 --> 46:23.650]  I have one rule.
[46:24.450 --> 46:26.090]  It's a really important rule.
[46:27.770 --> 46:29.890]  You should not violate this rule.
[46:31.470 --> 46:33.510]  Really, you should not violate this rule.
[46:35.410 --> 46:36.330]  It's important.
[46:41.770 --> 46:44.170]  This should be something you should follow in life.
[46:44.570 --> 46:48.750]  Uh, but life and business are the same because it's your business.
[46:48.750 --> 46:49.630]  It's your project.
[46:49.790 --> 46:50.610]  It's something you love.
[46:50.730 --> 46:52.830]  You don't want to mix in people you don't like.
[46:53.050 --> 46:56.130]  Every time I violated this rule, it has bitten me badly.
[46:56.130 --> 46:59.050]  And it leads to those incredibly sucky down times.
[46:59.750 --> 47:02.130]  I hope you will not violate this rule.
[47:02.670 --> 47:05.690]  Um, so this guy in the U.K. stole TV-B-Gone.
[47:05.830 --> 47:06.590]  He started selling it.
[47:06.670 --> 47:07.630]  It was a piece of shit.
[47:08.470 --> 47:10.350]  And I got all the angry emails.
[47:10.710 --> 47:12.350]  I already told you what that's like.
[47:12.410 --> 47:13.590]  You probably already know.
[47:13.750 --> 47:17.370]  So anyways, I sold to him because it seemed easy enough.
[47:17.370 --> 47:18.930]  But this guy was a total bully.
[47:19.070 --> 47:20.470]  He was a manipulative bastard.
[47:21.090 --> 47:22.770]  And I sold to him.
[47:23.350 --> 47:27.490]  And it came back to bite me that way when he said, you know, I started getting these emails.
[47:27.790 --> 47:29.050]  And, uh, I asked him what was up.
[47:29.150 --> 47:30.490]  And he said, you weren't giving me a good enough price.
[47:30.590 --> 47:31.410]  So I made my own.
[47:32.870 --> 47:34.470]  And it's an open-source project.
[47:34.510 --> 47:38.470]  All I had to do was copy my open-source plans online, which are really well documented.
[47:38.570 --> 47:39.330]  And he didn't do that.
[47:39.430 --> 47:40.350]  And he stole my trademark.
[47:40.490 --> 47:41.830]  And he didn't ask anything about it.
[47:42.090 --> 47:44.750]  And he got a lot of angry customers because of it.
[47:44.910 --> 47:46.090]  Anyways, it worked out.
[47:46.230 --> 47:48.770]  All I had to do was pay $120,000 to a lawyer.
[47:50.190 --> 47:52.270]  For which I got 60% back.
[47:52.890 --> 47:54.330]  Because that's all you get in the U.K.
[47:55.310 --> 47:57.250]  And now all his customers are mine.
[48:01.330 --> 48:08.790]  So there's no guarantee that if you make your own project, even if you totally love it, and it's burning inside of you to come out, that it will give you enough money to make a living.
[48:09.750 --> 48:17.130]  But what is guaranteed is that if you don't make time to do what you love, you will definitely not be doing what you love in your life.
[48:17.990 --> 48:32.270]  If you don't take the time and start doing, finding what you love and doing what you love, putting your own ideas out into the world, you will definitely not be making a living doing what you love.
[48:32.470 --> 48:41.790]  And there's a really good possibility because a lot of us in this room have already done this and in this Congress have figured out a way to make a living doing our projects.
[48:41.790 --> 48:50.970]  And just know, if you have a job that you don't love, or worse yet, you don't like, or even worse yet, that you hate, there are other possibilities.
[48:51.390 --> 48:53.370]  And like I said, if you want someone to poke you...
[48:55.790 --> 48:56.550]  Contact info.
[48:58.310 --> 48:59.470]  So that's my wrap.
[49:10.460 --> 49:12.020]  Do we have time for any questions?
[49:14.320 --> 49:15.620]  So any questions?
[49:15.900 --> 49:21.920]  You can... I'm totally willing to answer any questions always, anytime, email, phone, text, whatever, in person.
[49:22.420 --> 49:23.250]  But yeah.
[49:24.560 --> 49:29.880]  I got to ask, what is the stupidest question you've gotten for customer support?
[49:30.420 --> 49:31.880]  Oh, you have to aim it?
[49:39.420 --> 49:48.960]  I was just wondering if you noticed an immediate financial effect after publishing the specs online, or like a change in order volume or anything like that?
[49:49.180 --> 49:49.880]  After what?
[49:50.080 --> 49:51.800]  After you published the specs online?
[49:52.420 --> 49:55.520]  Oh, once I made it open-source, sales went up.
[49:55.980 --> 50:02.880]  Because more people are telling each other word of mouth, they're totally excited, they're showing their friends, and many of their friends are buying the keychains, many are buying the kits.
[50:03.980 --> 50:07.700]  Yeah, so... and more people are telling, and so more people got those seven times.
[50:11.680 --> 50:13.700]  Are the off codes fairly static?
[50:13.940 --> 50:18.660]  Do you have to update from time to time to make sure that new TVs can still be turned off?
[50:19.160 --> 50:20.920]  Yeah, so I have to keep updating.
[50:21.120 --> 50:29.740]  The thing is, though, there's something like 50 billion TVs that have been made in the history of people on the planet, almost all of them in the last few decades.
[50:30.360 --> 50:34.560]  And all of those have the same codes, even when they make new TVs.
[50:35.400 --> 50:45.600]  So... but there's a handful of new codes every year that come out, and I try to keep up with it by buying universal remote controls, recording them, and adding them to my database.
[50:49.650 --> 50:50.450]  Great presentation.
[50:50.750 --> 50:57.270]  Anything special you did with your press release or dealing with the press, did all that great... getting on the New York Times and people.
[50:57.450 --> 50:59.030]  I mean, that was just more than an accident.
[50:59.230 --> 51:03.690]  I'm sure that you had some special insights that you can share with us about how we do it ourselves.
[51:04.650 --> 51:17.590]  You know, after I was in all these places and on TV, I got all of these letters and emails asking me who my PR people were, because it was a brilliant strategy, a brilliant campaign, campaign.
[51:18.090 --> 51:19.870]  And I didn't have PR people.
[51:22.530 --> 51:24.170]  It was a total fluke.
[51:24.890 --> 51:32.790]  It was just... I was on Wired.com, and it turns out that Wired.com, people actually read Wired.com.
[51:33.710 --> 51:47.450]  And NPR, National Public Radio in the U.S., read that, and they called me after being awake all night so I could get the shopping cart working for the few people that might read Wired.com and maybe buy this bizarre thing.
[51:47.750 --> 51:49.270]  And no sleep.
[51:49.430 --> 51:55.890]  And evidently, I did okay in a live radio interview before, like, however many million people in the United States for drive time.
[51:56.270 --> 51:58.110]  And that's when all the other people called me.
[51:58.330 --> 52:04.050]  So, I wish I could say that I planned that because I'd be amazingly brilliant.
[52:04.210 --> 52:09.050]  But I don't think anyone can plan something so amazingly complex and bizarre.
[52:10.190 --> 52:11.890]  So, yeah.
[52:11.990 --> 52:17.290]  But after that, then I did hire some PR people who know how to write press releases better than me.
[52:18.010 --> 52:21.670]  But there were people, friends, again, who were good at the stuff, who helped.
[52:23.370 --> 52:23.810]  Hi.
[52:23.970 --> 52:31.590]  When you first put together your list of your close friends that were going to work with you on this project, how did you determine, you know, is it percentage?
[52:31.810 --> 52:32.350]  Is it hourly?
[52:32.610 --> 52:38.490]  How did you feel that you would positively, you know, pay them for their efforts?
[52:41.250 --> 52:43.950]  You know, I'm kind of an anarchist.
[52:44.430 --> 52:49.830]  And I've never really considered myself a capitalist, but we live in a society which is predominantly capitalist.
[52:49.830 --> 52:52.870]  So, I make use of that as best as I can.
[52:53.390 --> 52:56.290]  And, you know, we need money to pay rent and all that stuff.
[52:56.550 --> 53:04.630]  So, I figured if I'm making enough to live on... And incidentally, I make barely enough to live the life I live on TV-B-Gone.
[53:04.890 --> 53:06.310]  But I love the life I live.
[53:06.470 --> 53:09.010]  So, I'm making a living doing what I love, which is just perfect.
[53:10.270 --> 53:11.850]  So, it's worked out really well.
[53:12.010 --> 53:15.090]  I just asked my friends what they thought they wanted to be paid.
[53:15.830 --> 53:24.810]  And it turned out when I add all that together, after all that's paid and the shipping and all that stuff, I take what's left and it's barely enough for me to live.
[53:25.030 --> 53:25.950]  So, it works out.
[53:26.050 --> 53:30.010]  If it didn't, I would negotiate with them saying, like, we're all in this together.
[53:30.330 --> 53:31.250]  Should we keep doing this?
[53:31.250 --> 53:32.610]  It's not working for me.
[53:33.030 --> 53:33.090]  Yeah.
[53:33.250 --> 53:36.870]  So, people come up with ideas, including payment compensation.
[53:37.790 --> 53:39.050]  And I get final say.
[53:39.190 --> 53:39.750]  It's my vision.
[53:39.890 --> 53:40.430]  It's my company.
[53:40.470 --> 53:43.850]  But I'm not going to make any decision that other people are dissatisfied with.
[53:44.510 --> 53:54.810]  That's sort of the decision-making process at my company, which I call Cornfield Electronics, because I came up with the name when I lived in Urbana, Illinois, surrounded by thousands of miles of corn.
[53:56.630 --> 53:57.070]  Hi.
[53:57.290 --> 53:58.210]  Interesting presentation.
[53:58.470 --> 54:00.130]  Thank you very much for sharing your insights.
[54:00.670 --> 54:02.630]  I'm wondering, you have a project.
[54:02.770 --> 54:03.770]  You're ready to go.
[54:03.910 --> 54:07.230]  You believe in it yourself, but you're trying to get it out there to the public.
[54:07.550 --> 54:09.590]  The public's not responding so much.
[54:10.210 --> 54:16.330]  What kind of spark do you think you need in order to get it really out there and get that fire started?
[54:16.950 --> 54:19.510]  Well, there's no one simple answer for that.
[54:19.730 --> 54:24.170]  If it's still burning inside of you, you just got to keep trying different ways.
[54:24.870 --> 54:32.570]  And friends and colleagues, fellow hackers, are great resources.
[54:32.910 --> 54:36.290]  So, if something's burning inside of me, I'm enthusiastic about it.
[54:36.390 --> 54:37.510]  I tell everyone about it.
[54:37.750 --> 54:42.230]  And if ideas come my way, I pick up on them, their opportunities.
[54:43.070 --> 54:50.030]  And if not, then even if it's burning inside of me, I did what I could, maybe it's time to move on.
[54:50.630 --> 54:53.110]  These are decisions you've got to make along the way.
[54:53.230 --> 54:59.350]  I've certainly done projects that I hit obstacle after obstacle after obstacle, and it's just not happening.
[54:59.590 --> 55:01.590]  I had to do other things with my time.
[55:02.290 --> 55:04.390]  So, you know, it can go that way, too.
[55:04.510 --> 55:07.790]  Or it can just be something that sort of supplements me as I'm doing other things.
[55:08.310 --> 55:09.310]  So, yeah.
[55:09.590 --> 55:11.530]  So, no simple answer for all that.
[55:11.710 --> 55:14.590]  But yeah, we just have to weigh that out continually.
[55:14.950 --> 55:18.790]  Because what I love now isn't necessarily what I love later.
[55:20.490 --> 55:20.970]  Thanks.
[55:21.230 --> 55:21.410]  Yeah.
[55:23.570 --> 55:25.510]  So, I guess that's it.
[55:25.730 --> 55:26.890]  So, thanks, everyone.
[55:26.890 --> 55:27.030]  Thank you, everyone.
[55:31.670 --> 55:36.650]  And feel free to ask me questions for the rest of the Congress or any time in our lives.