Gadgetory

everyone it's rafe needleman in san francisco and this is reporters roundtable or weekly show on a single tech top of each time today we're talking about a really interesting change in technology and it is the rise of the of the small inventor it has become easier than ever to launch a business thanks to cloud services and all the technology that is very low cost and it's getting easier now to get those businesses funded as well through projects like Kickstarter project based funding on kickstarter or changes that are coming in in laws about funding businesses and now if you have an idea and you don't know how to make it or build it or design the electronics for it there are places you can go probably just down the street from where you are where people will help you build that and put you in front of the machine that makes it and that's the kind of stuff we're talking about today it is the rise of the inventor and we've got two great guests we're going to do the show is in two parts part one is may sound like Ira Glass on this american life I'll show in two acts act one is an interview a pre-recorded interview with Yancey Strickler from Kickstarter a Kickstarter of course is the place where you go to fund the film or the project or the thing you want to make I have a thing here that was this thing is the trebuchet it's a it's a it's a pre-cut wood thing that was a the development of which was funded on Kickstarter and this and the prototypes were built at techshop and so our guests are first Yancey Strickler the co-founder of Kickstarter and after that interview is done we're going to i have here in the studio with us Jim Newton the founder of tech shop so this device the people who made this device which is awesome by the way it's called the trebuchet to the Streb you--she with an ET te at the end to make it cute they're both here let's get started with this pre-recorded interview with Nancy from Kickstarter and we'll be back with Jim from tech shop so we're starting today with the ante Strickler who is co-founder of Kickstarter a very interesting project started in 2009 to help the crowd funding of all kinds of projects Yancy thanks so much for making the time to join us and thanks for having me we have to get started with some overview here give us kind of the overview on on Kickstarter why you started it and how it's doing today sure um the original idea for kickstarter came from Perry Chen who's one of my co-founders and Kickstarter CEO he was living New Orleans about 10 years ago and he wanted to put on a concert and didn't have the money to do it and from that experience he had this idea of being able to set a threshold where a certain number of people wanted the concert to happen it could have happened and if not it wouldn't have happened to wait for him to sort of test the idea without putting himself at risk personally and so he had that idea and then he and I met in New York about three years later Harry was an artist I was working as a music journalist and together we started working on this idea and about it a year later we met our third founder charles adler who is a designer and and so we had three non-technical founders which as we all know is not a good idea and it took about four years from us working on it to the site finally launching in April 09 so it was a long road and we made every mistake that we could but you know the site launched April twenty-eighth 2009 there was no launch party or anything like that but the site has worked fairly well since then I have to ask you you know for a site that's designed to help people get funding how did you fund yourself when you were getting started before Kickstarter existed yeah yeah I can't tell you how many people suggested that we try kick-started Kickstarter um you know the early money came from friends and family which is actually very similar to the experience that anyone has launched a Kickstarter project the people who really saw the idea and liked it we're actually primarily artists people who had gone through the pains of try to get things funded and that's something that we thought about a lot we have a funding system now in our culture that is geared around profitability ideas are funded based on how much revenue they can produce because these your investment that are being made and so but most ideas you know 99% of ideas will never generate a penny because they just simply want to exist that's the whole point and those kinds of things just didn't have a home you know you could maybe apply for a grant and wait a long time you know you could try taking out a loan you could get money from your rich uncle but there really weren't many other options and so we like the idea of building a site that was a place that was built just around people funding things just because they like them just because they wanted to exist not because of any profit motivation or anything now just in a nutshell people who aren't real familiar with Kickstarter yet I think most people should be with Kickstarter you're not making an investment in a product you're buying a ticket or a product itself or the promise to get the output of the of the project right yeah that's right so there's no financial return of any kind but every project has to offer rewards and so rewards are a copy the thing being made some sort of special edition maybe some special creative access or come visit the set or write a song about you or people offer really whatever they want but financial return is strictly forbidden now Kickstarter got started for an arts project music project and looking at the numbers it looks like most of your projects are in fact arts-based but this is primarily a show about technology and technology entrepreneurship and ideas and I want to talk about that subset how much of the Kickstarter model or the Kickstarter platform is it goes to technology or product based ideas and how are those different from the arts projects yeah you know there's been I think right now the number is about a hundred and sixty-five million dollars that's been pledged on kickstarter and of that 20 million dollars has gone to either technology or design now design on kickstarter includes product design which is probably something a lot of your lot of viewers here are familiar with ross concludes graphic design people make fonts and they make posters and more traditional kinds of design but those two categories do makeup you know they're together they would be the third largest thing on Kickstarter behind film and music it's it's not something that we had anticipated you know the very first product design project that really made an impact was one called the glyph and that happened about a year and a half ago two guys who were here in New York named Anna Tom put up a really great video for this iphone 4 tripod stand and everything about how they executed the project was just perfect that they had a very clever video their updates were phenomenal they talked about how they made 13 prototypes shipping them back and forth from Sweden before they got the right design and the whole process was really fantastic and two that really put Kickstarter on the map of product designers and then about two months after their project after the glyph a project launched called the tick-tock which was made by guy chicago named scott wilson who is a very reputable designers former creative director at nike and this was to turn an ipod nano into a wristwatch he was making a wristband to do it and that project was really just an incredible blockbuster end up raising almost nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars in about six weeks and the largest project at that point was two hundred thousand dollars so this was international news and for a lot of people the first introduction to Kickstarter and you know when these came through we had mixed feelings about it I mean the glyph we actually turned down a couple times and went back and forth with them we're really encouraging them to present this not as a new product they're bringing to market but more as like here's this thing that we made that we're really excited about it you know make it very human don't make it salesy don't make it an infomercial and because that sort of presentation that tone is something that's important to us but in the end you know as we got to learn more and more about how this world works I began to see a lot of the ways that it does make sense you know dan and tom were guys who were working at larger design firms you know maybe their job was to design some screw or some specific part of something larger but they unable to express their own creativity in these roles they were trained to be designers they're trying to create but they didn't have that out because the you know the bar of getting that money together to do it you know manufacturing run or whatever is pretty high and Kickstarter suddenly just erased that and made it so that they could take an idea straight to market straight to an audience and not have to worry about those things in between and so you know we see design and technology as as different kinds of creative realms where people are expressing themselves but there are but there is a core to these things that's important to us you know I we're not interested in kickstarter being a shopping site you know there's lots of shopping sites we want it to be something a little different we wanted to be here's this thing I'm excited to make and it'd be a lot more fun to make it with you and then it's an experience that you share together and I think that's what the best projects do it sounds like an interesting curation problem that you have because you know you put a marketplace or commerce platform up there on the web and people the users will make of it what they want certainly but you say you you reject project so there is a gate and you are or you and your team are the gate there so what do you look for are you are what will make a product a project get banned or say no or actually go back and say do it again yeah you know there's there's a there's interesting layers of misconception about the kind and level of curation that happens on Kickstarter so to start a project you you create your project and then we check it before it goes live and and we're looking to make sure it meets our guidelines and the guidelines is the most core thing we have to Kickstarter when the guidelines are it has to be a project so a project is something with a beginning and an end it's a finite thing it will produce something that will exist independent of its existence and so we see starting a business is something that is much broader than a project as we think of it for example we also require that everything be a creative project which is means it fits into one of our 13 categories we also don't allow anything that is charity based or cause based funding those things are also not allowed and that's that's the the the main point that we're looking each project from and hum it sorry good you know go ahead what were you gonna say I just gonna ask so if a product project sorry I keep getting this wrong yeah meets all of these guidelines and is by the book acceptable in your experience what makes a project work and what doesn't I know excluding the outliers of a product for an apple product because you know just like here at seen at any time we write about Apple is like okay we know that's going to get traffic whether it's good or bad story it just gets traffic so excluding that what makes something work or not work on Kickstarter yeah you know the point that we really that I I stress a lot is that every Kickstarter is a story and how the how the project is presented is really important you know there are a few things that I view is being core to each project on Kickstarter one it should benefit its backers just as much as its creator you know anything where it's like hey give me all this money and I'm going to make this great thing and you know I'll share a couple photos of with you when it's done it's just inherently I think unfair so we're looking for things where there's a value exchange and we really try to stress that to people there's also a tone to how people come to the projects this is kind of what I was getting at with the glyph we were you know I'm personally and I think we as a group are much more sympathetic to projects that are pursuing some sort of creative goal or some sort of personal achievement rather than a commercial interests you know someone's saying hey if we can raise this 50k you know we'll be able to take our business to the next level and do XY and Z and this opportunity will be available to us I think that's a much less interesting story and one that feels less important to Kickstarter you know also there's just that that finite project thing is really important and then also just how the story is told so you know the really great projects have a video that explain how it is they made this thing they talked through the design process they show the working prototype they've made they talk about the challenges that they faced and how it is they're going to make this thing happen transparency is something that we see is really important especially with product design with product design you know you're you're you're often you know funding something that doesn't exist yet you have that prototype but the act of taking that prototype 2 then something that could be manufactured a you know 10,000 times there's a huge gap in between those things and it's a steep learning curve so we like people to talk about their experience that backers know hey can this person actually pull this off or not and then also just even how far in the process have you got you know there's some projects that have gone up in the past that have had just like a 3d rendering and you know I don't personally think that's enough to really to make a case for you being able to do something so we actually don't get terribly involved in the vetting and we try to give people an idea of the expectations we have you know share as much as you can if we feel like someone isn't sharing anything at all we'll we'll tell them they really need to but in the end we're relying on backers to exercise their discernment you know the things that they're supporting are not shrink wrapped the ready to ship they're not sitting in a Best Buy shelf there is a person who has to make them and that process is part of the Kickstarter experience no in any cases that process is great and sometimes it is disastrous disastrous oh now you're talking my language tell me about disaster well i think that the creative you know the creative process is rarely a linear one and it goes in all kinds of different directions and it's hard to anticipate what's going to go right and what's going to go wrong we want we want bloody details here and I don't have any bloody details for you all right I think in the case of Apple you know if you'd imagine at the iphone was a Kickstarter project you know that's four years of seeing how this thing comes together you know you hear about oh no we have to change from the glass to the plastic screen whatever vice versa processes is important as part of it but there's certainly been cases where people have bit off more than they can chew and and this actually tends to happen projects that or it's more likely to having projects that become incredibly overfunded because maybe someone has is ready to build the thing for ten thousand dollars and they're going to do it with their buddy and a garage somewhere but suddenly when there's a half a million dollars the scale that you have to do becomes much different and suddenly you're talking about making things in Asia and tooling things and and the scope of problems becomes a challenge just becomes much bigger and you know we see people you know people aren't running off with the money here they're they're working hard to do these things but the simple fact is that making things difficult and especially making things at scale and so it's good for backers to have that sense going into a dead hey this thing is not done yet it is it is in progress and we personally think that's cool but you know other people might not be aware that that's what they're jumping into now out here in Silicon Valley Kickstarter has made quite an impact anybody a lot of games are being developed as you mentioned earlier before the show we were talking about some games that are working on Kickstarter and I here probably more frequently answer than you would like we're going to launch our company on Kickstarter we're going to launch on Kickstarter now obviously they're talking about products because that's how you launched on kickstarter but they're thinking this is my company so tell me about launching a business not just designing a product but launching a business using Kickstarter as the platform for that yeah you know I don't think they were a great fit for that you know the reason why we stress the project ideas because we want everyone to have clear expectations going in about what's going to be accomplished you know I'm going to make an album okay cool I can tell when an album is done I can get that album even if the band breaks up I still have that thing you know starting a business and running a business is something that requires constant maintenance it can't just exist on its own and you know it's hard to tell exactly what the rights or rewards are for a business you know might be you get it people might want to offer a discount in the store or you get early access things like that but those things I think are a little nebulous and harder to pin down you know there are ways I mean you know the idea of a creative project is kind of a made-up one and it is a fuzzy line and every day we talk about probably 20 projects that sit right on that fuzzy line and we try to work through what the best decision is and our starting point is always yes we want to accept projects want to find ways to make them work and there are places where the business stuff does get in a gray area where we are more prone to say yes like a food truck tend to like because those are smaller and they seem more accomplishable to us maybe maybe we're wrong but I think thinking about Kickstarter is the place to come and raise your series day probably not the best idea I mean it's a great way to get publicity it's it's surely a great way to make a splash and I think people are right to think about it that way but our focus and our loyalty really is to this to this notion of creativity and and being a place where things are produced that you have a hard time getting made otherwise it to the to that point I have seen I think not very many but certainly more than one product or company get out there and say we're putting our product up on Kickstarter and then the subtext being sometimes explicitly stated for publicity they don't necessarily need the Kickstarter money but Kickstarter has become this platform for advertising a new product yeah yeah I mean it's interesting we're not i'm not opposed to that you know i think that it ends up its kick serve as a way to make a lot of eyeballs suddenly turn to you and you and you have your moment and from our perspective as long as people do what they say they're going to do and they offer people value in exchange that's fine you know we're we're not here to judge the basis of need or you know this person already has enough money or things like that we have no interest in getting that granular but it is I mean I think it is a good way to think about it listen we need to talk about the JOBS Act which is one of the economic stimulus bills winding its way through our government it's passed the house it's the jumpstart our business startups act and this is a very interesting piece of legislation a version of it will probably pass the Senate I think and it makes it it changes the accessibility of investment dollars to small businesses and makes it possible for a mom-and-pop startup or a 10-person startup to solicit investment money and to take money from non-accredited investors up to ten thousand dollars per year per investor this is sending ripples through the entrepreneurial economy I'm wonder what the JOBS Act what you think of the jobs act if it will have any impact on Kickstarter um yeah it sounds like you know as much maybe even more about it as I do you know certainly there are parts of this that's that I think are very helpful especially you know changing the notion of what a credit investor as seems like something a lot of people have supported for a while you know part of this bill appears to be allowing crowdfunding investment or something along those lines and you know that's not something that we've had any part of and you know I'm not sure whether or not something that we would do we've just sort of been watching and following the news like anybody else because to us I think that what's important about Kickstarter and the reason why it's been able to connect the way that it has is because you know ideas are fund it's just because people like the ideas because they want them to exist no one is looking something trying to judge whether or not it'll be profitable or whether it be a good investment no but that stinking base that's the space you created that's that's the rules you put in in your board game is you're not investing in the business per se you're investing in the work product and you're getting one of them one of them or something like that in return right when the entrepreneurial economy opens up and the same people who are abiding buying say a trebuchet which is a product I bought on Kickstarter are instead of buying the product are now buying the company that might change the way people view Kickstarter and then might not people want to say sell investments in the company instead of investments in the product per se and will you allow that uh you know i think it i mean it is very different that would be a very different equation and when you look at kickstarter where the most common pledge amounts 30 bucks in the average pledge amount seventy dollars you know these are consumer price points and i think a consumer experience of patron experiences is something that people are comfortable with you know we have not i can't think of many if any emails from backers saying hey can I in some way back this and get you know invest in something instead I don't think that's exactly what people are in here for in terms of weather kicks are will do this you know we're just word is waiting and seeing how this plays out I mean it's hard to tell what the final legislation will be and you know what the terms are going to be so it's really hard to tell but I think that what is important about what we're doing is the is the lack of investment part because I think it allows a lot more things the opportunity to exist and what otherwise because the bar is significantly lower the question isn't you know will this producer return for me and from that angle I think almost every project on Kickstarter would be a bad investment and instead it's just is this something that we would like to see exist and we want to share and be a part of and I just think that's a fundamentally different question and that's the question that really motivates us and that I think has been the disruptive thing but obviously you know I don't know we'll see what happens sorry not anticipating any major business model changes for kickstarter uh no not that I can see but you know who knows at some point these businesses will be allowed to solicit for investment on Facebook Twitter you name it you would you see that as competition for your model um I it's hard to tell i don't think so i'm just just seeing it from you know this thousand-yard view from where we are i mean i think that i don't know i think that the things that that are motivating a lot of the people in kickstarter is just again the desire to create you know and if you look at you know film which is our largest categories you know 50 million dollars i don't know that how many filmmakers will be looking for investors I mean the notion of patrons is such a simpler one you know there isn't that level of fiduciary accountability you aren't having to you know cast some texas oil tycoon second mistress in your lead to get the check you know the trades that you're having to make ur not nearly as onerous and said it is a clean exchange of hey you give me this money you get this credit and you know you get to come visit the set and it's more about experience and more about something other than a financial return and you know maybe were too optimistic or naive or what but i feel like that is a really powerful motivator and one that gets to more of the core of I don't know of the human spirit of our desire to create an hour desire to be part of things that are being created I think that's a really core thing Nancy thank you so much Yancey Strickler is the co-founder of Kickstarter if you've got a widget or a piece of art or a film or some music or a band or a food truck that you want to put together and you're looking for some funding resources for that you really owe to yourself to check out Kickstarter Nancy again thanks so much for your time all right thank you hey so that was a great interview with Yancey Strickler the co-founder of Kickstarter he was calling skyping in from his New York office i'm here today with Jim Newton who's the founder of tech shop which is a place you can go to get your stuff built actually to build it yourself to be specific that's right thanks so much for making the time yeah thanks for having coming in I want to talk about tech shop and about you know where the make it your self movement is going and what you're doing with with all these shops that you're opening up across the country and I guess elsewhere too but first to continue the threat of what we were just talking about with Nancy jobs act now we recorded that interview a couple of days ago the JOBS Act for those of you who don't know is going to change the rules of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley and elsewhere and it's Friday right now and we think next week there'll be a vote on the Senate so this is bubbling up as major news let's talk about this briefly I mean this will make it possible for people to raise money from on Twitter and stuff like that and to go public more easily what do you think I mean you work with entrepreneurs all the time what does the job back mean for inventors well right now if you're a small company and you're going to go out and try to raise money you have very strict restrictions on what you can do and what you can't do and it's based on a state-by-state basis it's like in California you can register with the state's equivalent of the SEC and you can advertise your securities your stock offer most other states do not allow you to advertise even if you register with the states so you're limited to doing road shows face to face you can't you can't send out an email and say hey come to our you know we're looking for investors in our product with it so the the provision that is making that it's getting the most press may not be the most important but isn't getting the most press because it's sexy is the whole idea of crowdfunding and how does that impact the guys you know who are making the trebuchet or you know whatever the somebody is making a widget the glyph which we saw on the answer interview what does crowdfunding mean to you well as far as raising investment goes it's way easier to get you know a couple hundred people to kick in you know 2,500 bucks yeah than it is to get you know one or two people to kick in huge amounts of money yeah right now there's restrictions on the number of people that you can get to invest in your company through the exemptions that the SEC provides for companies so this actually is great because you know you could blast out to your Twitter like you said and say hey you know everybody put in 25 bucks we're trying to get this thing going I I think that's great I mean I put money into Kickstarter into a Kickstarter project is this one and I might put money into another one but at some point if everybody who has an idea is starting to throw the stuff up on in their Twitter feeds or in their facebooks hey fun my project I don't know personally I worry about funding fatigue setting in is I any think it's gonna be an issue yeah i think that actually could happen and I yeah I don't know how far it can go you know we've only been exploring this since you know since Kickstarter opened I mean there have been crowd-sourced funding I mean that's that's how investment is you know and right that is how investment is end to end to just to counteract what I just said we certainly seen no waning of interest in the public's want to buy stop stock market is a great example the crowd source finding yeah they don't call it that but that's exactly what it is mmm all right let's talk about tech shop now give us a elevator pitch what what is tech shop and why should we care sir so a tech shop is a do-it-yourself workshop you join for 100 bucks a month you come in and use our facility to make anything you can imagine we've got I guess they're putting some pictures up on here we've got you know everything from milling machines and lathes woodworking textiles sewing equipment welding woodworking electronics laser cutters injection molding plastic equipment that's a water jet cutter that can cut through six inches of anything you know just we've got everything that you could imagine mmm that you need to make anything so this is the the corner garage where people i mean people used to go in i guess the 50s and 60s they would do this at an auto shop and you would have the health club model for our shop and you take your you park your Model T that you were trying to hot rod down there yeah and it was not just a place but a community how does that work that's that's that's the whole thing behind TechShop the community is what's so important you can build your own shop in your garage if you've got the money in space mhm but man you're going to really want your neighbor to come over and see what you're working on you know and having all these other creative people around all the time a tech shop you talked about crowd-sourced your crowdsourcing your idea your crowdsourcing you're the intellectual property for your for your idea mm-hmm how much of what's happening at techshop is just people goofing around and how many people are building businesses or products that will become businesses yeah I don't know what the percentage is exactly because it varies but I definitely think the majority of the people there what they aspire to make money from whatever they're working on really right because who wouldn't want to have to be able to make their living from their hobby you know everybody would love to be able to do that yeah so if you dig deep into some of these people they'll tell you they're not doing this for commercial purposes but if you dig down and really reach you'll find out well you sure they'd love to be able to do that what are some of the best projects you've seen come out of there man there's a whole list of them there's there's the dota case which is an ipad case that's you know been considered by a lot of critics to be the best one on the market the president's the president carries one around with his ipad in it and he didn't get it so he didn't get it for free he bought it on the market oh no it's good yeah oh yeah we have I've seen those those are beautiful to the bamboo book like case exactly yeah there's a server server cooling system that was developed by a couple of our guys and got licensed by Emerson know the embrace blanket that is designed to save the lives of babies in the third world when they're born prematurely they can't regular regulate their body temperature and general electric just invested in that put a bunch of money in so I mean but there's all these other projects you know hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them we've got you know over 3,500 active paying members in our in our five locations right now which is the most active location san Francisco has the most members is that right yeah yeah and have you seen uh people doing these kind of what do they call these Japanese inventions that are really ridiculous that are cool they're got rube Goldberg's like the toilet paper holder if it's on your heads you know you don't really see that kind of stuff no I mean the stuff is more even though so I talking about danna it's it's you don't get the crazy inventor types that's that's really more of a stereotype I think okay now as I said at the introduction to show that the landscape for inventors is changing both because of funding models and crowdsourcing like Kickstarter and for because of availability of shops and hackerspaces you know tech shop is one and there are others and then there are there tools coming along there's open source and free design tools and then there's 3d printing what do you make of 3d printing is that as it's certainly sexy but as big a deal as it's being touted as it's certainly sexy yeah and a lot of times there's no way that you can practically make the thing that you want to make especially on the prototype stage you know about this little device here on the table yeah you know you could make the case for this without spending a hundred thousand dollars on a tool-and-die and getting injection molded you could do that in an afternoon so I think from that standpoint 3d printing is really powerful but you know some of the press that 3d printing is getting makes it sound like you know okay throw away all the other tools and all the other human you know implements 3d printing is all we need from now on and that's certainly not the case it's also by the way as I understand it the case that you can make things with the 3d printer that cannot be made any other way yeah and 3d printing is slow it's actually easy to make things accidentally that you can't manufacture that metric molds won't worry so am old would be millions of dollars you know to try to do this uh so I say we've got it I got an idea I have an idea and it's something I want to build it at a tech shop a prototype at techshop tech shop is for prototyping really not manufacturers I you know Patrick with the dodocase he made the first two thousand units at TechShop is that right do you take a lot of that no we don't I really don't take now okay i think if we took a cut of it people would just find another way to do it I don't think they'd come in there are models so there's models like y combinator and quirky that that do get into that into that space have you thought about expanding or doing a an advanced program or an offshoot a quirky likes to do that is attached somehow detect shop you know we're always playing with different ideas yeah I like the idea of helping picking out the most promising technologies that we see come through our place and helping them get up to the next stage you mean projects or manufacture technologies ah both I mean if if our manager identifies someone that's making something and they the manager thinks that's really got a lot of promise we might approach them and ask them if they need help to get this up to the next stage to form a form a company or get introductions to people or get investment is that part of the services or is that just what you do yeah I would love to do that so I mean if I have an idea for a goofball I told you my goofball idea before we started the show so oh and I can prototype it there maybe manufacture a few dozen uh what's your advice for the inventor versus say ten years ago for you know the product that I think could be the next I know it rock or whatever I mean I'll base this on you know right now it's so easy to reach your audience even with the most obscure little thing you can reach people through you know all these social networks through ebay through etsy through Kickstarter you couldn't do that 20 years ago 10 years ago it was a it would have been impossible find that niche customer and now you can find a customer base for anything that you can think up yeah it changes everything there's a I I don't know if this is a Kickstarter or a tech shop project but i have a canon s90 camera which is a beautiful camera they're not make it made anymore it's the s100 the new model the problem is it's it's flat and had no grip on it and there was a guy who was milling out of aircraft aluminum these beautiful stick on grips I don't know how I found that I never would have found that at a camera shop otherwise he probably sold my guess in the hundreds maybe thousands but that's ok now you can get a roll mill custom is that he ordered one back said his machine to mill it yeah you think 25 years ago what would you have had to do to get that out into anyone's hands right put it in a like a photography magazine and an ad in the back maybe and have you know mail order there's no way that stores are going to carry it and even if they do you can't fill up the pipeline of all the stores to get a distribution generate at the right level anyway um brave new world yeah so I want to talk a little bit about education we talked briefly about community but and about the whole hot rod ethic is that are we entering into a new maker era a new hardware hacker mentality and if so how do people like me or anybody who wants to build this thing learn the skills necessary to conceptualize design manufacture and eventually sell an idea without going to you know the late-night advertisement inventors will help you get your product for millions of dollars what's the new model how do you learn this stuff you know you come to tech shop and you tell our dream consultant what your idea is we've got a whole staff of half of them or dream consultants so they're there to help you with the machines help you with your project yeah and so you tell them what your idea is and they'll say hey you know you could use this machine over here you could use this material why don't you start with taking this class on this particular machine and see see what you think of that and one thing about tech shop everything in the shop is designed you know it looks all it looks scary the waterjet cutter that can cut through you know a six by 10 foot piece six inches thick whatever you want the milling machines the lathes they all look pretty scary but everything without exception in tech shop is designed for the complete novice to be able to come in take a hour or two hours of classes and get on that machine and actually use it and that's all included in the membership the use of the machines is all included in the members of the classes are extra okay because we've got you know we do 200 classes a month at each location more or less so you know we're not going to price our models so that it pays for you to take all those classes because you don't want to probably take all this class right under stay just pay for the ones that you want to take oh I have a question from the chat room here saying you better consult with a patent attorney to ensure you're violating any patents do you have is that part of your consulting services as well and had an audition no all right okay so watch out but it is an issue is it not if you disclose it you know anywhere you disclose your patent yeah idea you need to protect yourself so we've got our members sometimes they'll sign NDA's with other members before they talk to them really you know it's actually the most powerful thing about tech shop is just get it out get it out to market faster than anyone else don't wait for a patent to issue in all cases sometimes it's good but not always I like that thinking but I wonder if it's realistic considering the patent trolls we have out there who are just sitting on ideas that have that are buried in some file cabinet somewhere just waiting to be the smacked it well I guess they wouldn't want to smack down the mom-and-pop inventor until they're big right yeah hey one other thing I saw that you said you mentioned that you have like craft as well as manufacturer and I saw that you know make magazine love make magazine yeah just for the possibilities it opens up in your mind they launched another magazine I think was called craft yeah craft which is about textiles is that a parallel culture here I'm just curious about because I'm not tapped into that one at all Dale and sheri from make you know it would be better to probably explore what the difference in similar areas are those two worlds they certainly blend together a tech shop yeah quite seamlessly you know some people you know we think we often will see people come in to one side or the other they'll come into the the hard arts side and they'll start to explore you know the sewing machines for part of their project and vice versa somebody will come in thinking they're just going to do crafting and quilting or whatever in when they take a laser class where they take a welding class and they this whole new world opens up to them you know I think I should come there just so I can make my son a Horta the outfit Star Trek order for Halloween mmm all right uh what's next for tech shop I mean you've got you said five location yeah we have five locations right now we're opening we're trying to open five more this year and we're on track with pretty much locked and loaded on three of them and what in what are their they all us are they guys all in the u.s. right now okay there's a you have any in London because I've heard there's similar if not not yet okay but you oh well yeah yeah we're exploring that too so what are the locations right now in San Francisco celoso downtown San Francisco downtown I'm sorry menlo park yeah downtown San Jose mm-hm we have one in raleigh durham north carolina and then we have one that we just opened actually the grand opening is in May Detroit with Ford Motor Company as a partner I like that if I wouldn't it's open right now it's been open for months customers are using it everything but our grand opening is going to be on May fifth I want to visit the Detroit shop and see what people are doing in the Motor City it's really cool yeah talk about you know talk about energizing the community that needs a resource like this you know what's interesting is yesterday I was on another show press here and there was a guy from Volkswagen rd and they're moving a whole segment of engineers to Silicon Valley to get into the whole software ethos very interesting blending of cultures yeah it is anything else you want to talk about with tuck shop I don't know people should come and take a class and check it out make stuff hey ray for a quick i just wanted to point out you're curious about building your son a star trek outfit on wednesday the 21st of marsh there is a wearable tech and eat text house mita so you can attend at seven o'clock did you even know this I should have planted that no I can't track of everything our teams doing anymore so you should definitely check that out right I absolutely Jim Newton is the founder of tech shop congratulations on your success so far and keep it going let's keep that hacker make it yourself build it yourself ethos going I'd like to thank you an see who was with us earlier on the show as well from Kickstarter Steve thanks for producing back next week with another great episode of reporters roundtable see you then